111,883 research outputs found
Dimension Expanders via Rank Condensers
No full textAn emerging theory of "linear algebraic pseudorandomness: aims to understand the linear algebraic analogs of fundamental Boolean pseudorandom objects where the rank of subspaces plays the role of the size of subsets. In this work, we study and highlight the interrelationships between several such algebraic objects such as subspace designs, dimension expanders, seeded rank condensers, two-source rank condensers, and rank-metric codes. In particular, with the recent construction of near-optimal subspace designs by Guruswami and Kopparty as a starting point, we construct good (seeded) rank condensers (both lossless and lossy versions), which are a small collection of linear maps F^n to F^t for t<<n such that for every subset of F^n of small rank, its rank is preserved (up to a constant factor in the lossy case) by at least one of the maps.
We then compose a tensoring operation with our lossy rank condenser to construct constant-degree dimension expanders over polynomially large fields. That is, we give a constant number of explicit linear maps A_i from F^n to F^n such that for any subspace V of F^n of dimension at most n/2, the dimension of the span of the A_i(V) is at least (1+Omega(1)) times the dimension of V. Previous constructions of such constant-degree dimension expanders were based on Kazhdan's property T (for the case when F has characteristic zero) or monotone expanders (for every field F); in either case the construction was harder than that of usual vertex expanders. Our construction, on the other hand, is simpler.
For two-source rank condensers, we observe that the lossless variant (where the output rank is the product of the ranks of the two sources) is equivalent to the notion of a linear rank-metric code. For the lossy case, using our seeded rank condensers, we give a reduction of the general problem to the case when the sources have high (n^Omega(1)) rank. When the sources have constant rank, combining this with an "inner condenser" found by brute-force leads to a two-source rank condenser with output length nearly matching the probabilistic constructions
An Improved Bound on the Zero-Error List-Decoding Capacity of the 4/3 Channel
No full textWe prove a new upper bound on the size of codes C 1,2,3,4
with the property that every four distinct codewords in C have a coordinate where they all differ. Specifically, we provide a self-contained proof that such codes have size at most 26n/19 + o(n), that is, rate bounded asymptotically by 6/19 ≤ 0.3158 (measured in bits). This improves the previous best upper bound of 0.3512 due to (Arikan 1994), which in turn improved the 0.375 bound that followed from general bounds for perfect hashing due to (Fredman and Komlós, 1984) and (Körner and Marton, 1988). Finally, using a combination of our approach with a simple idea which exploits powerful bounds on the minimum distance of codes in the Hamming space, we further improve the upper bound to 0.31477
The Quest for Strong Inapproximability Results with Perfect Completeness
No full textThe Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) has pinned down the approximability of all constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), showing that a natural semidefinite programming relaxation offers the optimal worst-case approximation ratio for any CSP. This elegant picture, however, does not apply for CSP instances that are perfectly satisfiable, due to the imperfect completeness inherent in the UGC. For the important case when the input CSP instance admits a satisfying assignment, it therefore remains wide open to understand how well it can be approximated.
This work is motivated by the pursuit of a better understanding of the inapproximability of perfectly satisfiable instances of CSPs. Our main conceptual contribution is the formulation of a (hypergraph) version of Label Cover which we call "V label cover." Assuming a conjecture concerning the inapproximability of V label cover on perfectly satisfiable instances, we prove the following implications:
* There is an absolute constant c0 such that for k >= 3, given a satisfiable instance of Boolean k-CSP, it is hard to find an assignment satisfying more than c0 k^2/2^k fraction of the constraints.
* Given a k-uniform hypergraph, k >= 2, for all epsilon > 0, it is hard to tell if it is q-strongly colorable or has no independent set with an epsilon fraction of vertices, where q = ceiling[k + sqrt(k) - 0.5].
* Given a k-uniform hypergraph, k >= 3, for all epsilon > 0, it is hard to tell if it is (k-1)-rainbow colorable or has no independent set with an epsilon fraction of vertices.
We further supplement the above results with a proof that an ``almost Unique'' version of Label Cover can be approximated within a constant factor on satisfiable instances
Inapproximability of H-Transversal/Packing
No full textGiven an undirected graph G=(V,E) and a fixed pattern graph H with k vertices, we consider the H-Transversal and H-Packing problems. The former asks to find the smallest subset S of vertices such that the subgraph induced by V - S does not have H as a subgraph, and the latter asks to find the maximum number of pairwise disjoint k-subsets S1, ..., Sm such that the subgraph induced by each Si has H as a subgraph.
We prove that if H is 2-connected, H-Transversal and H-Packing are almost as hard to approximate as general k-Hypergraph Vertex Cover and k-Set Packing, so it is NP-hard to approximate them within a factor of Omega(k) and Omega(k / polylog(k)) respectively. We also show that there is a 1-connected H where H-Transversal admits an O(log k)-approximation algorithm, so that the connectivity requirement cannot be relaxed from 2 to 1. For a special case of H-Transversal where H is a (family of) cycles, we mention the implication of our result to the related Feedback Vertex Set problem, and give a different hardness proof for directed graphs
On the Interpolation Step in the Guruswami-Sudan List Decoding Algorithm for ReedSolomon Codes
No full textDivide-and-conquer method for interpolation in Guruswami-Sudan (GS) list decoding algorithm is considered. It is shown that the Groebner basis (GB) of the ideal of bivariate interpolation polynomials (IP) can be obtained as a product of trivariate polynomials corresponding to disjoint subsets of interpolation points. The impact of monomial ordering on the interpolation complexity is studied.
Approximate Hypergraph Coloring under Low-discrepancy and Related Promises
No full textA hypergraph is said to be X-colorable if its vertices can be colored with X colors so that no hyperedge is monochromatic. 2-colorability is a fundamental property (called Property B) of hypergraphs and is extensively studied in combinatorics. Algorithmically, however, given a 2-colorable k-uniform hypergraph, it is NP-hard to find a 2-coloring miscoloring fewer than a fraction 2^(-k+1) of hyperedges (which is trivially achieved by a random 2-coloring), and the best algorithms to color the hypergraph properly require about n^(1-1/k) colors, approaching the trivial bound of n as k increases.
In this work, we study the complexity of approximate hypergraph coloring, for both the maximization (finding a 2-coloring with fewest miscolored edges) and minimization (finding a proper coloring using fewest number of colors) versions, when the input hypergraph is promised to have the following stronger properties than 2-colorability:
(A) Low-discrepancy: If the hypergraph has a 2-coloring of discrepancy l << sqrt(k), we give an algorithm to color the hypergraph with about n^(O(l^2/k)) colors. However, for the maximization version, we prove NP-hardness of finding a 2-coloring miscoloring a smaller than 2^(-O(k)) (resp. k^(-O(k))) fraction of the hyperedges when l = O(log k) (resp. l=2). Assuming the Unique Games conjecture, we improve the latter hardness factor to 2^(-O(k)) for almost discrepancy-1 hypergraphs.
(B) Rainbow colorability: If the hypergraph has a (k-l)-coloring such that each hyperedge is polychromatic with all these colors (this is stronger than a (l+1)-discrepancy 2-coloring), we give a 2-coloring algorithm that miscolors at most k^(-Omega(k)) of the hyperedges when l << sqrt(k), and complement this with a matching Unique Games hardness result showing that when l = sqrt(k), it is hard to even beat the 2^(-k+1) bound achieved by a random coloring.
(C) Strong Colorability: We obtain similar (stronger) Min- and Max-2-Coloring algorithmic results in the case of (k+l)-strong colorability
Revisiting Alphabet Reduction in Dinur’s PCP
No full textDinur’s celebrated proof of the PCP theorem alternates two main steps in several iterations: gap amplification to increase the soundness gap by a large constant factor (at the expense of much larger alphabet size), and a composition step that brings back the alphabet size to an absolute constant (at the expense of a fixed constant factor loss in the soundness gap). We note that the gap amplification can produce a Label Cover CSP. This allows us to reduce the alphabet size via a direct long-code based reduction from Label Cover to a Boolean CSP. Our composition step thus bypasses the concept of Assignment Testers from Dinur’s proof, and we believe it is more intuitive - it is just a gadget reduction. The analysis also uses only elementary facts (Parseval’s identity) about Fourier Transforms over the hypercube
author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 – Supplemental material for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct
No full textSupplemental material, author-bios-SRD-19-0063.R1 for The Network Structure of Police Misconduct by George Wood, Daria Roithmayr and Andrew V. Papachristos in Socius</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Super-polylogarithmic hypergraph coloring hardness via low-degree long codes
No full textWe prove improved inapproximability results for hypergraph coloring using the low-degree polynomial code (aka, the"short code" of Barak et. al. [FOCS 2012]) and the techniques pro-posed by Dinur and Guruswami [FOCS 2013] to incorporatethis code for inapproximability results. In particular, we prove quasi-NP-hardness of the following problems on n-vertex hypergraphs: • Coloring a 2-colorable 8-uniform hypergraph with 2 2Ω(√log log n) colors. • Coloring a 4-colorable 4-uniform hypergraph with 22Ω(√ log log n) colors. • Coloring a 3-colorable 3-uniform hypergraph with (log n) Ω(1√ log log log n) colors. In each of these cases, the hardness results obtained are (at least) superpolynomially stronger (if not exponentially stronger as in the third case) than what was previously known for the respective cases. In fact, prior to this result, (log n)O(1) colors was the strongest quantitative bound on the number of colors ruled out by inapproximability results for O(1)-colorable hypergraphs. The fundamental bottleneck in obtaining coloring in approximability results using the low-degree long code was a ultipartite structural restriction in the PCP construction of Dinur-Guruswami. We are able to get around this restriction by simulating the multipartite structure implicitly by querying just one partition (albeit requiring 8 queries), which yields our result for 2-colorable 8-uniform hypergraphs. The result for 4-colorable 4-uniform hypergraphs is obtained via a "query doubling" method exploiting additional properties of the 8-query test. For 3-colorable 3-uniform hyper-graphs, we exploit the ternary domain to design a test with an additive (as opposed to multiplicative) noise function, and analyze its efficacy in killing high weight Fourier coefficients via the pseudorandom properties of an associated quadratic form. The latter step involves extending the key algebraic ingredient of Dinur-Guruswami concerning testing binary Reed-Muller codes to the ternary alphabet.</p
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