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Daniel A. Spielman

Publications and source records attributed to Daniel A. Spielman.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2012

Exact Recovery of Sparsely-Used Dictionaries

We consider the problem of learning sparsely used dictionaries with an arbitrary square dictionary and a random, sparse coefficient matrix. We prove that $O (n \log n)$ samples are sufficient to uniquely determine the coefficient matrix. Based on this proof, we design a polynomial-time algorithm, called Exact Recovery of Sparsely-Used Dictionaries (ER-SpUD), and prove that it probably recovers the dictionary and coefficient matrix when the coefficient matrix is sufficiently sparse. Simulation results show that ER-SpUD reveals the true dictionary as well as the coefficients with probability higher than many state-of-the-art algorithms.

cs.LG↗
arXiv2010

Electrical Flows, Laplacian Systems, and Faster Approximation of Maximum Flow in Undirected Graphs

We introduce a new approach to computing an approximately maximum s-t flow in a capacitated, undirected graph. This flow is computed by solving a sequence of electrical flow problems. Each electrical flow is given by the solution of a system of linear equations in a Laplacian matrix, and thus may be approximately computed in nearly-linear time. Using this approach, we develop the fastest known algorithm for computing approximately maximum s-t flows. For a graph having n vertices and m edges, our algorithm computes a (1-ε)-approximately maximum s-t flow in time \tilde{O}(mn^{1/3} ε^{-11/3}). A dual version of our approach computes a (1+ε)-approximately minimum s-t cut in time \tilde{O}(m+n^{4/3}\eps^{-8/3}), which is the fastest known algorithm for this problem as well. Previously, the best dependence on m and n was achieved by the algorithm of Goldberg and Rao (J. ACM 1998), which can be used to compute approximately maximum s-t flows in time \tilde{O}(m\sqrt{n}ε^{-1}), and approximately minimum s-t cuts in time \tilde{O}(m+n^{3/2}ε^{-3}).

cs.DS↗
arXiv2010

An Elementary Proof of the Restricted Invertibility Theorem

We give an elementary proof of a generalization of Bourgain and Tzafriri's Restricted Invertibility Theorem, which says roughly that any matrix with columns of unit length and bounded operator norm has a large coordinate subspace on which it is well-invertible. Our proof gives the tightest known form of this result, is constructive, and provides a deterministic polynomial time algorithm for finding the desired subspace.

math.FA↗
arXiv2010

Spectral Sparsification of Graphs

We introduce a new notion of graph sparsificaiton based on spectral similarity of graph Laplacians: spectral sparsification requires that the Laplacian quadratic form of the sparsifier approximate that of the original. This is equivalent to saying that the Laplacian of the sparsifier is a good preconditioner for the Laplacian of the original. We prove that every graph has a spectral sparsifier of nearly linear size. Moreover, we present an algorithm that produces spectral sparsifiers in time $\softO{m}$, where $m$ is the number of edges in the original graph. This construction is a key component of a nearly-linear time algorithm for solving linear equations in diagonally-dominant matrcies. Our sparsification algorithm makes use of a nearly-linear time algorithm for graph partitioning that satisfies a strong guarantee: if the partition it outputs is very unbalanced, then the larger part is contained in a subgraph of high conductance.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2009

Graph Sparsification by Effective Resistances

We present a nearly-linear time algorithm that produces high-quality sparsifiers of weighted graphs. Given as input a weighted graph $G=(V,E,w)$ and a parameter $ε>0$, we produce a weighted subgraph $H=(V,\tilde{E},\tilde{w})$ of $G$ such that $|\tilde{E}|=O(n\log n/ε^2)$ and for all vectors $x\in\R^V$ $(1-ε)\sum_{uv\in E}(x(u)-x(v))^2w_{uv}\le \sum_{uv\in\tilde{E}}(x(u)-x(v))^2\tilde{w}_{uv} \le (1+ε)\sum_{uv\in E}(x(u)-x(v))^2w_{uv}. (*)$ This improves upon the sparsifiers constructed by Spielman and Teng, which had $O(n\log^c n)$ edges for some large constant $c$, and upon those of Benczúr and Karger, which only satisfied (*) for $x\in\{0,1\}^V$. A key ingredient in our algorithm is a subroutine of independent interest: a nearly-linear time algorithm that builds a data structure from which we can query the approximate effective resistance between any two vertices in a graph in $O(\log n)$ time.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2009

Twice-Ramanujan Sparsifiers

We prove that every graph has a spectral sparsifier with a number of edges linear in its number of vertices. As linear-sized spectral sparsifiers of complete graphs are expanders, our sparsifiers of arbitrary graphs can be viewed as generalizations of expander graphs. In particular, we prove that for every $d>1$ and every undirected, weighted graph $G=(V,E,w)$ on $n$ vertices, there exists a weighted graph $H=(V,F,\tilde{w})$ with at most $\lceil d(n-1) \rceil$ edges such that for every $x \in \mathbb{R}^{V}$, \[ x^{T}L_{G}x \leq x^{T}L_{H}x \leq (\frac{d+1+2\sqrt{d}}{d+1-2\sqrt{d}})\cdot x^{T}L_{G}x \] where $L_{G}$ and $L_{H}$ are the Laplacian matrices of $G$ and $H$, respectively. Thus, $H$ approximates $G$ spectrally at least as well as a Ramanujan expander with $dn/2$ edges approximates the complete graph. We give an elementary deterministic polynomial time algorithm for constructing $H$.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2008

A Local Clustering Algorithm for Massive Graphs and its Application to Nearly-Linear Time Graph Partitioning

We study the design of local algorithms for massive graphs. A local algorithm is one that finds a solution containing or near a given vertex without looking at the whole graph. We present a local clustering algorithm. Our algorithm finds a good cluster--a subset of vertices whose internal connections are significantly richer than its external connections--near a given vertex. The running time of our algorithm, when it finds a non-empty local cluster, is nearly linear in the size of the cluster it outputs. Our clustering algorithm could be a useful primitive for handling massive graphs, such as social networks and web-graphs. As an application of this clustering algorithm, we present a partitioning algorithm that finds an approximate sparsest cut with nearly optimal balance. Our algorithm takes time nearly linear in the number edges of the graph. Using the partitioning algorithm of this paper, we have designed a nearly-linear time algorithm for constructing spectral sparsifiers of graphs, which we in turn use in a nearly-linear time algorithm for solving linear systems in symmetric, diagonally-dominant matrices. The linear system solver also leads to a nearly linear-time algorithm for approximating the second-smallest eigenvalue and corresponding eigenvector of the Laplacian matrix of a graph. These other results are presented in two companion papers.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2008

Faster Approximate Lossy Generalized Flow via Interior Point Algorithms

We present faster approximation algorithms for generalized network flow problems. A generalized flow is one in which the flow out of an edge differs from the flow into the edge by a constant factor. We limit ourselves to the lossy case, when these factors are at most 1. Our algorithm uses a standard interior-point algorithm to solve a linear program formulation of the network flow problem. The system of linear equations that arises at each step of the interior-point algorithm takes the form of a symmetric M-matrix. We present an algorithm for solving such systems in nearly linear time. The algorithm relies on the Spielman-Teng nearly linear time algorithm for solving linear systems in diagonally-dominant matrices. For a graph with m edges, our algorithm obtains an additive epsilon approximation of the maximum generalized flow and minimum cost generalized flow in time tildeO(m^(3/2) * log(1/epsilon)). In many parameter ranges, this improves over previous algorithms by a factor of approximately m^(1/2). We also obtain a similar improvement for exactly solving the standard min-cost flow problem.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2007

Support-Graph Preconditioners for 2-Dimensional Trusses

We use support theory, in particular the fretsaw extensions of Shklarski and Toledo, to design preconditioners for the stiffness matrices of 2-dimensional truss structures that are stiffly connected. Provided that all the lengths of the trusses are within constant factors of each other, that the angles at the corners of the triangles are bounded away from 0 and $π$, and that the elastic moduli and cross-sectional areas of all the truss elements are within constant factors of each other, our preconditioners allow us to solve linear equations in the stiffness matrices to accuracy $ε$ in time $O (n^{5/4} (\log^{2}n \log \log n)^{3/4} \log (1/ε))$.

math.NA↗
arXiv2005

Smoothed Analysis of the Condition Numbers and Growth Factors of Matrices

Let $\orig{A}$ be any matrix and let $A$ be a slight random perturbation of $\orig{A}$. We prove that it is unlikely that $A$ has large condition number. Using this result, we prove it is unlikely that $A$ has large growth factor under Gaussian elimination without pivoting. By combining these results, we bound the smoothed precision needed by Gaussian elimination without pivoting. Our results improve the average-case analysis of Gaussian elimination without pivoting performed by Yeung and Chan (SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl., 1997).

math.NA↗
arXiv2005

Lower-Stretch Spanning Trees

We prove that every weighted graph contains a spanning tree subgraph of average stretch O((log n log log n)^2). Moreover, we show how to construct such a tree in time O(m log^2 n).

cs.DS↗
arXiv2004

Solving Sparse, Symmetric, Diagonally-Dominant Linear Systems in Time $O (m^{1.31})$

We present a linear-system solver that, given an $n$-by-$n$ symmetric positive semi-definite, diagonally dominant matrix $A$ with $m$ non-zero entries and an $n$-vector $\bb $, produces a vector $\xxt$ within relative distance $ε$ of the solution to $A \xx = \bb$ in time $O (m^{1.31} \log (n κ_{f} (A)/ε)^{O (1)})$, where $κ_{f} (A)$ is the log of the ratio of the largest to smallest non-zero eigenvalue of $A$. In particular, $\log (κ_{f} (A)) = O (b \log n)$, where $b$ is the logarithm of the ratio of the largest to smallest non-zero entry of $A$. If the graph of $A$ has genus $m^{2θ}$ or does not have a $K_{m^θ} $ minor, then the exponent of $m$ can be improved to the minimum of $1 + 5 θ$ and $(9/8) (1+θ)$. The key contribution of our work is an extension of Vaidya's techniques for constructing and analyzing combinatorial preconditioners.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2003

Smoothed Analysis of Algorithms: Why the Simplex Algorithm Usually Takes Polynomial Time

We introduce the smoothed analysis of algorithms, which is a hybrid of the worst-case and average-case analysis of algorithms. In smoothed analysis, we measure the maximum over inputs of the expected performance of an algorithm under small random perturbations of that input. We measure this performance in terms of both the input size and the magnitude of the perturbations. We show that the simplex algorithm has polynomial smoothed complexity.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2003

Smoothed Analysis of Interior-Point Algorithms: Termination

We perform a smoothed analysis of the termination phase of an interior-point method. By combining this analysis with the smoothed analysis of Renegar's interior-point algorithm by Dunagan, Spielman and Teng, we show that the smoothed complexity of an interior-point algorithm for linear programming is $O (m^{3} \log (m/σ))$. In contrast, the best known bound on the worst-case complexity of linear programming is $O (m^{3} L)$, where $L$ could be as large as $m$. We include an introduction to smoothed analysis and a tutorial on proof techniques that have been useful in smoothed analyses.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2002

Smoothed analysis of algorithms

Spielman and Teng introduced the smoothed analysis of algorithms to provide a framework in which one could explain the success in practice of algorithms and heuristics that could not be understood through the traditional worst-case and average-case analyses. In this talk, we survey some of the smoothed analyses that have been performed.

math.OC↗
arXiv2002

Exponential algorithmic speedup by quantum walk

We construct an oracular (i.e., black box) problem that can be solved exponentially faster on a quantum computer than on a classical computer. The quantum algorithm is based on a continuous time quantum walk, and thus employs a different technique from previous quantum algorithms based on quantum Fourier transforms. We show how to implement the quantum walk efficiently in our oracular setting. We then show how this quantum walk can be used to solve our problem by rapidly traversing a graph. Finally, we prove that no classical algorithm can solve this problem with high probability in subexponential time.

quant-ph↗