arXiv subjects

Dustin G. Mixon

Publications and source records attributed to Dustin G. Mixon.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Linear programming bounds for cliques in Paley graphs

The Lovász theta number is a semidefinite programming bound on the clique number of (the complement of) a given graph. Given a vertex-transitive graph, every vertex belongs to a maximal clique, and so one can instead apply this semidefinite programming bound to the local graph. In the case of the Paley graph, the local graph is circulant, and so this bound reduces to a linear programming bound, allowing for fast computations. Impressively, the value of this program with Schrijver's nonnegativity constraint rivals the state-of-the-art closed-form bound recently proved by Hanson and Petridis. We conjecture that this linear programming bound improves on the Hanson-Petridis bound infinitely often, and we derive the dual program to facilitate proving this conjecture.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Kesten-McKay law for random subensembles of Paley equiangular tight frames

We apply the method of moments to prove a recent conjecture of Haikin, Zamir and Gavish (2017) concerning the distribution of the singular values of random subensembles of Paley equiangular tight frames. Our analysis applies more generally to real equiangular tight frames of redundancy 2, and we suspect similar ideas will eventually produce more general results for arbitrary choices of redundancy.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Exact Line Packings from Numerical Solutions

Recent progress in Zauner's conjecture has leveraged deep conjectures in algebraic number theory to promote numerical line packings to exact and verifiable solutions to the line packing problem. We introduce a numerical-to-exact technique in the real setting that does not require such conjectures. Our approach is completely reproducible, matching Sloane's database of putatively optimal numerical line packings with Mathematica's built-in implementation of cylindrical algebraic decomposition. As a proof of concept, we promote a putatively optimal numerical packing of eight points in the real projective plane to an exact packing, whose optimality we establish in a forthcoming paper.

math.MG↗

arXiv2019

A Delsarte-Style Proof of the Bukh-Cox Bound

The line packing problem is concerned with the optimal packing of points in real or complex projective space so that the minimum distance between points is maximized. Until recently, all bounds on optimal line packings were known to be derivable from Delsarte's linear program. Last year, Bukh and Cox introduced a new bound for the line packing problem using completely different techniques. In this paper, we use ideas from the Bukh--Cox proof to find a new proof of the Welch bound, and then we use ideas from Delsarte's linear program to find a new proof of the Bukh--Cox bound. Hopefully, these unifying principles will lead to further refinements.

math.MG↗

arXiv2019

Optimal line packings from nonabelian groups

We use group schemes to construct optimal packings of lines through the origin. In this setting, optimal line packings are naturally characterized using representation theory, which in turn leads to a necessary integrality condition for the existence of equiangular central group frames. We conclude with an infinite family of optimal line packings using the group schemes associated with certain Suzuki 2-groups, specifically, extensions of Heisenberg groups. Notably, this is the first known infinite family of equiangular tight frames generated by representations of nonabelian groups.

math.FA↗

arXiv2019

The optimal packing of eight points in the real projective plane

How can we arrange $n$ lines through the origin in three-dimensional Euclidean space in a way that maximizes the minimum interior angle between pairs of lines? Conway, Hardin and Sloane (1996) produced line packings for $n \leq 55$ that they conjectured to be within numerical precision of optimal in this sense, but until now only the cases $n \leq 7$ have been solved. In this paper, we resolve the case $n = 8$. Drawing inspiration from recent work on the Tammes problem, we enumerate contact graph candidates for an optimal configuration and eliminate those that violate various combinatorial and geometric necessary conditions. The contact graph of the putatively optimal numerical packing of Conway, Hardin and Sloane is the only graph that survives, and we recover from this graph an exact expression for the minimum distance of eight optimally packed points in the real projective plane.

math.MG↗

arXiv2018

Derandomizing compressed sensing with combinatorial design

Compressed sensing is the art of reconstructing structured $n$-dimensional vectors from substantially fewer measurements than naively anticipated. A plethora of analytic reconstruction guarantees support this credo. The strongest among them are based on deep results from large-dimensional probability theory that require a considerable amount of randomness in the measurement design. Here, we demonstrate that derandomization techniques allow for considerably reducing the amount of randomness that is required for such proof strategies. More, precisely we establish uniform s-sparse reconstruction guarantees for $C s \log (n)$ measurements that are chosen independently from strength-four orthogonal arrays and maximal sets of mutually unbiased bases, respectively. These are highly structured families of $\tilde{C} n^2$ vectors that imitate signed Bernoulli and standard Gaussian vectors in a (partially) derandomized fashion.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

Utility Ghost: Gamified redistricting with partisan symmetry

Inspired by the word game Ghost, we propose a new protocol for bipartisan redistricting in which partisan players take turns assigning precincts to districts. We prove that in an idealized setting, if both parties have the same number votes, then under optimal play in our protocol, both parties win the same number of seats. We also evaluate our protocol in more realistic settings that show how our game nearly eliminates the first-player advantage exhibited in other redistricting protocols.

math.CO↗

arXiv2018

SqueezeFit: Label-aware dimensionality reduction by semidefinite programming

Given labeled points in a high-dimensional vector space, we seek a low-dimensional subspace such that projecting onto this subspace maintains some prescribed distance between points of differing labels. Intended applications include compressive classification. Taking inspiration from large margin nearest neighbor classification, this paper introduces a semidefinite relaxation of this problem. Unlike its predecessors, this relaxation is amenable to theoretical analysis, allowing us to provably recover a planted projection operator from the data.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2018

Fair redistricting is hard

Gerrymandering is a long-standing issue within the U.S. political system, and it has received scrutiny recently by the U.S. Supreme Court. In this note, we prove that deciding whether there exists a fair redistricting among legal maps is NP-hard. To make this precise, we use simplified notions of "legal" and "fair" that account for desirable traits such as geographic compactness of districts and sufficient representation of voters. The proof of our result is inspired by the work of Mahanjan, Minbhorkar and Varadarajan that proves that planar k-means is NP-hard.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2018

Packings in real projective spaces

This paper applies techniques from algebraic and differential geometry to determine how to best pack points in real projective spaces. We present a computer-assisted proof of the optimality of a particular 6-packing in $\mathbb{R}\mathbf{P}^3$, we introduce a linear-time constant-factor approximation algorithm for packing in the so-called Gerzon range, and we provide local optimality certificates for two infinite families of packings. Finally, we present perfected versions of various putatively optimal packings from Sloane's online database, along with a handful of infinite families they suggest, and we prove that these packings enjoy a certain weak notion of optimality.

math.MG↗

arXiv2017

Partisan gerrymandering with geographically compact districts

Bizarrely shaped voting districts are frequently lambasted as likely instances of gerrymandering. In order to systematically identify such instances, researchers have devised several tests for so-called geographic compactness (i.e., shape niceness). We demonstrate that under certain conditions, a party can gerrymander a competitive state into geographically compact districts to win an average of over 70% of the districts. Our results suggest that geometric features alone may fail to adequately combat partisan gerrymandering.

math.CO↗

arXiv2017

Equiangular tight frames that contain regular simplices

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a type of optimal packing of lines in Euclidean space. A regular simplex is a special type of ETF in which the number of vectors is one more than the dimension of the space they span. In this paper, we consider ETFs that contain a regular simplex, that is, have the property that a subset of its vectors forms a regular simplex. As we explain, such ETFs are characterized as those that achieve equality in a certain well-known bound from the theory of compressed sensing. We then consider the so-called binder of such an ETF, namely the set of all regular simplices that it contains. We provide a new algorithm for computing this binder in terms of products of entries of the ETF's Gram matrix. In certain circumstances, we show this binder can be used to produce a particularly elegant Naimark complement of the corresponding ETF. Other times, an ETF is a disjoint union of regular simplices, and we show this leads to a certain type of optimal packing of subspaces known as an equichordal tight fusion frame. We conclude by considering the extent to which these ideas can be applied to numerous known constructions of ETFs, including harmonic ETFs.

math.FA↗

arXiv2017

An impossibility theorem for gerrymandering

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deliberating over whether a proposed mathematical formula should be used to detect unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. We show that in some cases, this formula will only flag bizarrely shaped districts as potentially constitutional.

math.CO↗

arXiv2017

Monte Carlo approximation certificates for k-means clustering

Efficient algorithms for $k$-means clustering frequently converge to suboptimal partitions, and given a partition, it is difficult to detect $k$-means optimality. In this paper, we develop an a posteriori certifier of approximate optimality for $k$-means clustering. The certifier is a sub-linear Monte Carlo algorithm based on Peng and Wei's semidefinite relaxation of $k$-means. In particular, solving the relaxation for small random samples of the dataset produces a high-confidence lower bound on the $k$-means objective, and being sub-linear, our algorithm is faster than $k$-means++ when the number of data points is large. We illustrate the performance of our algorithm with both numerical experiments and a performance guarantee: If the data points are drawn independently from any mixture of two Gaussians over $\mathbb{R}^m$ with identity covariance, then with probability $1-O(1/m)$, our $\operatorname{poly}(m)$-time algorithm produces a 3-approximation certificate with 99% confidence.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2017

Optimal line packings from finite group actions

We provide a general program for finding nice arrangements of points in real or complex projective space from transitive actions of finite groups. In many cases, these arrangements are optimal in the sense of maximizing the minimum distance. We introduce our program in terms of general Schurian association schemes before focusing on the special case of Gelfand pairs. Notably, our program unifies a variety of existing packings with heretofore disparate constructions. In addition, we leverage our program to construct the first known infinite family of equiangular lines with Heisenberg symmetry.

math.FA↗

arXiv2017

A brief introduction to equi-chordal and equi-isoclinic tight fusion frames

Equi-chordal and equi-isoclinic tight fusion frames (ECTFFs and EITFFs) are both types of optimal packings of subspaces in Euclidean spaces. In the special case where these subspaces are one-dimensional, ECTFFs and EITFFs both correspond to types of optimal packings of lines known as equiangular tight frames. In this brief note, we review some of the fundamental ideas and results concerning ECTFFs and EITFFs.

math.FA↗

arXiv2017

Polyphase equiangular tight frames and abelian generalized quadrangles

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a type of optimal packing of lines in a finite-dimensional Hilbert space. ETFs arise in various applications, such as waveform design for wireless communication, compressed sensing, quantum information theory and algebraic coding theory. In a recent paper, signature matrices of ETFs were constructed from abelian distance regular covers of complete graphs. We extend this work, constructing ETF synthesis operators from abelian generalized quadrangles, and vice versa. This produces a new infinite family of complex ETFs as well as a new proof of the existence of certain generalized quadrangles. This work involves designing matrices whose entries are polynomials over a finite abelian group. As such, it is related to the concept of a polyphase matrix of a finite filter bank.

math.FA↗