98,023 research outputs found

    Nearly Optimal Independence Oracle Algorithms for Edge Estimation in Hypergraphs

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    Consider a query model of computation in which an n-vertex k-hypergraph can be accessed only via its independence oracle or via its colourful independence oracle, and each oracle query may incur a cost depending on the size of the query. Several recent results (Dell and Lapinskas, STOC 2018; Dell, Lapinskas, and Meeks, SODA 2020) give efficient algorithms to approximately count the hypergraph’s edges in the colourful setting. These algorithms immediately imply fine-grained reductions from approximate counting to decision, with overhead only log^Θ(k) n over the running time n^α of the original decision algorithm, for many well-studied problems including k-Orthogonal Vectors, k-SUM, subgraph isomorphism problems including k-Clique and colourful-H, graph motifs, and k-variable first-order model checking. We explore the limits of what is achievable in this setting, obtaining unconditional lower bounds on the oracle cost of algorithms to approximately count the hypergraph’s edges in both the colourful and uncoloured settings. In both settings, we also obtain algorithms which essentially match these lower bounds; in the colourful setting, this requires significant changes to the algorithm of Dell, Lapinskas, and Meeks (SODA 2020) and reduces the total overhead to log^{Θ(k-α)}n. Our lower bound for the uncoloured setting shows that there is no fine-grained reduction from approximate counting to the corresponding uncoloured decision problem (except in the case α ≥ k-1): without an algorithm for the colourful decision problem, we cannot hope to avoid the much larger overhead of roughly n^{(k-α)²/4}. The uncoloured setting has previously been studied for the special case k = 2 (Peled, Ramamoorthy, Rashtchian, Sinha, ITCS 2018; Chen, Levi, and Waingarten, SODA 2020), and our work generalises the existing algorithms and lower bounds for this special case to k > 2 and to oracles with cost

    Marriage record of Meeks, Yorkester K. and Manigault, Kattie

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    Marriage license for Yorkester K. Meeks and Kattie Manigault. Scott Bartley was the officiant

    Joshua Davis: Author of Spare Parts

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    Citation: K-State First (2016). Joshua Davis: Author of Spare Parts [Flier]. Manhattan, Kansas: K-State First.Flyer advertising Joshua Davis's author talk at Kansas State University

    Steven Johnson Author Talk Poster

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    K-State Book NetworkA poster advertising an author talk by Steven Johnson at Kansas State University on September 3, 2014. Steven Johnson's book "The Ghost Map" was the 2014-2015 common book

    Randomised Enumeration of Small Witnesses Using a Decision Oracle

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    Many combinatorial problems involve determining whether a universe of n elements contains a witness consisting of k elements which have some specified property. In this paper we investigate the relationship between the decision and enumeration versions of such problems: efficient methods are known for transforming a decision algorithm into a search procedure that finds a single witness, but even finding a second witness is not so straightforward in general. In this paper we show that, if the decision version of the problem belongs to FPT, there is a randomised algorithm which enumerates all witnesses in time f(k)· poly(n)· N, where N is the total number of witnesses and f is a computable function. This also gives rise to an efficient algorithm to count the total number of witnesses when this number is small

    Extremal properties of flood-filling games

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    The problem of determining the number of "flooding operations" required to make a given coloured graph monochromatic in the one-player combinatorial game Flood-It has been studied extensively from an algorithmic point of view, but basic questions about the maximum number of moves that might be required in the worst case remain unanswered. We begin a systematic investigation of such questions, with the goal of determining, for a given graph, the maximum number of moves that may be required, taken over all possible colourings. We give several upper and lower bounds on this quantity for arbitrary graphs and show that all of the bounds are tight for trees; we also investigate how much the upper bounds can be improved if we restrict our attention to graphs with higher edge-density

    Stable marriage with groups of similar agents

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    Many important stable matching problems are known to be NP-hard, even when strong restrictions are placed on the input. In this paper we seek to identify structural properties of instances of stable matching problems which will allow us to design efficient algorithms using elementary techniques. We focus on the setting in which all agents involved in some matching problem can be partitioned into k different types, where the type of an agent determines his or her preferences, and agents have preferences over types (which may be refined by more detailed preferences within a single type). This situation would arise in practice if agents form preferences solely based on some small collection of agents' attributes. We also consider a generalisation in which each agent may consider some small collection of other agents to be exceptional, and rank these in a way that is not consistent with their types; this could happen in practice if agents have prior contact with a small number of candidates. We show that (for the case without exceptions), the well-known NP-hard matching problem Max SMTI (that of finding the maximum cardinality stable matching in an instance of stable marriage with ties and incomplete lists) belongs to the parameterised complexity class FPT when parameterised by the number of different types of agents needed to describe the instance. This tractability result can be extended to the setting in which each agent promotes at most one "exceptional" candidate to the top of his/her list (when preferences within types are not refined), but the problem remains NP-hard if preference lists can contain two or more exceptions and the exceptional candidates can be placed anywhere in the preference lists

    Solving hard stable matching problems involving groups of similar agents

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    Many important stable matching problems are known to be NP-hard, even when strong restrictions are placed on the input. In this paper we seek to identify simple structural properties of instances of stable matching problems which will allow the design of efficient algorithms. We focus on the setting in which all agents involved in some matching problem can be partitioned into k different types, where the type of an agent determines his or her preferences, and agents have preferences over types (which may be refined by more detailed preferences within a single type). This situation could arise in practice if agents form preferences based on some small collection of agents' attributes. The notion of types could also be used if we are interested in a relaxation of stability, in which agents will only form a private arrangement if it allows them to be matched with a partner who differs from the current partner in some particularly important characteristic. We show that in this setting several well-studied NP-hard stable matching problems (such as MAX SMTI, MAX SRTI, and MAX SIZE MIN BP SMTI) belong to the parameterised complexity class FPT when parameterised by the number of different types of agents, and so admit efficient algorithms when this number of types is small

    Solving hard stable matching problems involving groups of similar agents

    No full text
    Many important stable matching problems are known to be NP-hard, even when strong restrictions are placed on the input. In this paper we seek to identify structural properties of instances of stable matching problems which will allow us to design efficient algorithms using elementary techniques. We focus on the setting in which all agents involved in some matching problem can be partitioned into k different types, where the type of an agent determines his or her preferences, and agents have preferences over types (which may be refined by more detailed preferences within a single type). This situation would arise in practice if agents form preferences solely based on some small collection of agents' attributes. We also consider a generalisation in which each agent may consider some small collection of other agents to be exceptional, and rank these in a way that is not consistent with their types; this could happen in practice if agents have prior contact with a small number of candidates. We show that (for the case without exceptions), several well-studied NP-hard stable matching problems including Max SMTI (that of finding the maximum cardinality stable matching in an instance of stable marriage with ties and incomplete lists) belong to the parameterised complexity class FPT when parameterised by the number of different types of agents needed to describe the instance. For Max SMTI this tractability result can be extended to the setting in which each agent promotes at most one “exceptional” candidate to the top of his/her list (when preferences within types are not refined), but the problem remains NP-hard if preference lists can contain two or more exceptions and the exceptional candidates can be placed anywhere in the preference lists, even if the number of types is bounded by a constant

    Surfaces minimales dérivées des exemples de Costa-Hoffman-Meeks

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    Cette thèse porte sur la construction de nouveaux exemples de surfaces minimales dérivées de la famille de surfaces de Costa-Hoffman-Meeks. Il s'agit d'une famille de surfaces minimales complètes plongées avec trois bouts et genre k > 0. Soit M_k la surface de Costa_Hoffman_Meeks de genre k. Dans le chapitre 1, j'ai démontré que M_k est non dégénérée pour k > 37. J'ai donc étendu les résultats de S. Nayatani qui assuraient que la surface M_k est non dégénérée seulement pour k=1,...,37. Ce résultat permet de montrer dans les chapitres 2 et 3 l'existence de nouveaux exemples de surfaces minimales de genre g arbitraire à l'aide d'une procédure de collage d'autres surfaces déjà connues (parmi lesquelles y figure la surface M_k). Sans ceci, ces résultats ne seraient valables que pour k 0. Ce résultat peut être censé un cas particulier d'un théorème générale de désingularisation de l'intersection de deux surfaces minimales annoncé par N. Kapouleas et jamais publié. Le chapitre 3 est consacré à la construction de trois familles de surfaces minimales simplement périodiques plongées dans R^3 dont le quotient a genre arbitraire. Les résultats présentés dans ce chapitre (obtenus en collaborations avec L. Hauswirth et M. Rodríguez) généralisent plusieurs anciennes constructionsThis thesis is devoted to the construction of new examples of minimal surfaces derived from the family of surfaces if Costa-Hoffman-Meeks. Surfaces in this family are complete embedded with 3 ends and genus k > 0. Let M_k denote the surface of Costa-Hoffman-Meeks of genus k. In chapter 1 I showed M_k is non degenerate for k > 37. So I extended the results of S. Nayatani which insured M_k is non degenerate only for k=1,...,37. That allows to prove in chapters 2 and 3 the existence of new examples of minimal surfaces by a gluing procedure involving already known surfaces (among which figures M_k). Without it theses results would hold only for k 0, which are complete and embedded. This result can be considered as a particular case of a general theorem of desingularization of the intersection of two minimal surfaces announced by N. Kapouleas and never published. Chapter 3 is devoted to the construction of 3 families of singly periodic minimal surfaces, embedded in R^3, whose quotient has an arbitrary value of the genus. The results showed in this chapter (obtained in collaboration with L. Hauswirth and M. Rodríguez) generalize many previous construction
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