arXiv subjects

Mikkel Thorup

Publications and source records attributed to Mikkel Thorup.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Compact Cactus Representations of all Non-Trivial Min-Cuts

Recently, Kawarabayashi and Thorup presented the first deterministic edge-connectivity recognition algorithm in near-linear time. A crucial step in their algorithm uses the existence of vertex subsets of a simple graph $G$ on $n$ vertices whose contractions leave a multigraph with $\tilde{O}(n/δ)$ vertices and $\tilde{O}(n)$ edges that preserves all non-trivial min-cuts of $G$, where $δ$ is the minimum degree of $G$ and $\tilde{O}$ hides logarithmic factors. We present a simple argument that improves this contraction-based sparsifier by eliminating the poly-logarithmic factors, that is, we show a contraction-based sparsification that leaves $O(n/δ)$ vertices and $O(n)$ edges, preserves all non-trivial min-cuts and can be computed in near-linear time $\tilde{O}(m)$, where $m$ is the number of edges of $G$. We also obtain that every simple graph has $O((n/δ)^2)$ non-trivial min-cuts. Our approach allows to represent all non-trivial min-cuts of a graph by a cactus representation, whose cactus graph has $O(n/δ)$ vertices. Moreover, this cactus representation can be derived directly from the standard cactus representation of all min-cuts in linear time. We apply this compact structure to show that all min-cuts can be explicitly listed in $\tilde{O}(m) + O(n^2 / δ)$ time for every simple graph, which improves the previous best time bound $O(nm)$ given by Gusfield and Naor.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Random $k$-out subgraph leaves only $O(n/k)$ inter-component edges

Each vertex of an arbitrary simple graph on $n$ vertices chooses $k$ random incident edges. What is the expected number of edges in the original graph that connect different connected components of the sampled subgraph? We prove that the answer is $O(n/k)$, when $k\ge c\log n$, for some large enough $c$. We conjecture that the same holds for smaller values of $k$, possibly for any $k\ge 2$. Such a result is best possible for any $k\ge 2$. As an application, we use this sampling result to obtain a one-way communication protocol with \emph{private} randomness for finding a spanning forest of a graph in which each vertex sends only ${O}(\sqrt{n}\log n)$ bits to a referee.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2019

Faster Algorithms for Edge Connectivity via Random $2$-Out Contractions

We provide a simple new randomized contraction approach to the global minimum cut problem for simple undirected graphs. The contractions exploit 2-out edge sampling from each vertex rather than the standard uniform edge sampling. We demonstrate the power of our new approach by obtaining better algorithms for sequential, distributed, and parallel models of computation. Our end results include the following randomized algorithms for computing edge connectivity with high probability: -- Two sequential algorithms with complexities $O(m \log n)$ and $O(m+n \log^3 n)$. These improve on a long line of developments including a celebrated $O(m \log^3 n)$ algorithm of Karger [STOC'96] and the state of the art $O(m \log^2 n (\log\log n)^2)$ algorithm of Henzinger et al. [SODA'17]. Moreover, our $O(m+n \log^3 n)$ algorithm is optimal whenever $m = Ω(n \log^3 n)$. Within our new time bounds, whp, we can also construct the cactus representation of all minimal cuts. -- An $Õ(n^{0.8} D^{0.2} + n^{0.9})$ round distributed algorithm, where D denotes the graph diameter. This improves substantially on a recent breakthrough of Daga et al. [STOC'19], which achieved a round complexity of $Õ(n^{1-1/353}D^{1/353} + n^{1-1/706})$, hence providing the first sublinear distributed algorithm for exactly computing the edge connectivity. -- The first $O(1)$ round algorithm for the massively parallel computation setting with linear memory per machine.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2019

Disks in Curves of Bounded Convex Curvature

We say that a simple, closed curve $γ$ in the plane has bounded convex curvature if for every point $x$ on $γ$, there is an open unit disk $U_x$ and $\varepsilon_x>0$ such that $x\in\partial U_x$ and $B_{\varepsilon_x}(x)\cap U_x\subset\text{Int}\;γ$. We prove that the interior of every curve of bounded convex curvature contains an open unit disk.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2019

Hardness of Bichromatic Closest Pair with Jaccard Similarity

Consider collections $\mathcal{A}$ and $\mathcal{B}$ of red and blue sets, respectively. Bichromatic Closest Pair is the problem of finding a pair from $\mathcal{A}\times \mathcal{B}$ that has similarity higher than a given threshold according to some similarity measure. Our focus here is the classic Jaccard similarity $|\textbf{a}\cap \textbf{b}|/|\textbf{a}\cup \textbf{b}|$ for $(\textbf{a},\textbf{b})\in \mathcal{A}\times \mathcal{B}$. We consider the approximate version of the problem where we are given thresholds $j_1>j_2$ and wish to return a pair from $\mathcal{A}\times \mathcal{B}$ that has Jaccard similarity higher than $j_2$ if there exists a pair in $\mathcal{A}\times \mathcal{B}$ with Jaccard similarity at least $j_1$. The classic locality sensitive hashing (LSH) algorithm of Indyk and Motwani (STOC '98), instantiated with the MinHash LSH function of Broder et al., solves this problem in $\tilde O(n^{2-δ})$ time if $j_1\ge j_2^{1-δ}$. In particular, for $δ=Ω(1)$, the approximation ratio $j_1/j_2=1/j_2^δ$ increases polynomially in $1/j_2$. In this paper we give a corresponding hardness result. Assuming the Orthogonal Vectors Conjecture (OVC), we show that there cannot be a general solution that solves the Bichromatic Closest Pair problem in $O(n^{2-Ω(1)})$ time for $j_1/j_2=1/j_2^{o(1)}$. Specifically, assuming OVC, we prove that for any $δ>0$ there exists an $\varepsilon>0$ such that Bichromatic Closest Pair with Jaccard similarity requires time $Ω(n^{2-δ})$ for any choice of thresholds $j_2<j_1<1-δ$, that satisfy $j_1\le j_2^{1-\varepsilon}$.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2018

Confirmation Sampling for Exact Nearest Neighbor Search

Locality-sensitive hashing (LSH), introduced by Indyk and Motwani in STOC '98, has been an extremely influential framework for nearest neighbor search in high-dimensional data sets. While theoretical work has focused on the approximate nearest neighbor problems, in practice LSH data structures with suitably chosen parameters are used to solve the exact nearest neighbor problem (with some error probability). Sublinear query time is often possible in practice even for exact nearest neighbor search, intuitively because the nearest neighbor tends to be significantly closer than other data points. However, theory offers little advice on how to choose LSH parameters outside of pre-specified worst-case settings. We introduce the technique of confirmation sampling for solving the exact nearest neighbor problem using LSH. First, we give a general reduction that transforms a sequence of data structures that each find the nearest neighbor with a small, unknown probability, into a data structure that returns the nearest neighbor with probability $1-δ$, using as few queries as possible. Second, we present a new query algorithm for the LSH Forest data structure with $L$ trees that is able to return the exact nearest neighbor of a query point within the same time bound as an LSH Forest of $Ω(L)$ trees with internal parameters specifically tuned to the query and data.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Non-Empty Bins with Simple Tabulation Hashing

We consider the hashing of a set $X\subseteq U$ with $|X|=m$ using a simple tabulation hash function $h:U\to [n]=\{0,\dots,n-1\}$ and analyse the number of non-empty bins, that is, the size of $h(X)$. We show that the expected size of $h(X)$ matches that with fully random hashing to within low-order terms. We also provide concentration bounds. The number of non-empty bins is a fundamental measure in the balls and bins paradigm, and it is critical in applications such as Bloom filters and Filter hashing. For example, normally Bloom filters are proportioned for a desired low false-positive probability assuming fully random hashing (see \url{en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter}). Our results imply that if we implement the hashing with simple tabulation, we obtain the same low false-positive probability for any possible input.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Deterministic Edge Connectivity in Near-Linear Time

We present a deterministic near-linear time algorithm that computes the edge-connectivity and finds a minimum cut for a simple undirected unweighted graph G with n vertices and m edges. This is the first o(mn) time deterministic algorithm for the problem. In near-linear time we can also construct the classic cactus representation of all minimum cuts. The previous fastest deterministic algorithm by Gabow from STOC'91 took ~O(m+k^2 n), where k is the edge connectivity, but k could be Omega(n). At STOC'96 Karger presented a randomized near linear time Monte Carlo algorithm for the minimum cut problem. As he points out, there is no better way of certifying the minimality of the returned cut than to use Gabow's slower deterministic algorithm and compare sizes. Our main technical contribution is a near-linear time algorithm that contract vertex sets of a simple input graph G with minimum degree d, producing a multigraph with ~O(m/d) edges which preserves all minimum cuts of G with at least 2 vertices on each side. In our deterministic near-linear time algorithm, we will decompose the problem via low-conductance cuts found using PageRank a la Brin and Page (1998), as analyzed by Andersson, Chung, and Lang at FOCS'06. Normally such algorithms for low-conductance cuts are randomized Monte Carlo algorithms, because they rely on guessing a good start vertex. However, in our case, we have so much structure that no guessing is needed.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Dynamic Bridge-Finding in $\tilde{O}(\log ^2 n)$ Amortized Time

We present a deterministic fully-dynamic data structure for maintaining information about the bridges in a graph. We support updates in $\tilde{O}((\log n)^2)$ amortized time, and can find a bridge in the component of any given vertex, or a bridge separating any two given vertices, in $O(\log n / \log \log n)$ worst case time. Our bounds match the current best for bounds for deterministic fully-dynamic connectivity up to $\log\log n$ factors. The previous best dynamic bridge finding was an $\tilde{O}((\log n)^3)$ amortized time algorithm by Thorup [STOC2000], which was a bittrick-based improvement on the $O((\log n)^4)$ amortized time algorithm by Holm et al.[STOC98, JACM2001]. Our approach is based on a different and purely combinatorial improvement of the algorithm of Holm et al., which by itself gives a new combinatorial $\tilde{O}((\log n)^3)$ amortized time algorithm. Combining it with Thorup's bittrick, we get down to the claimed $\tilde{O}((\log n)^2)$ amortized time. Essentially the same new trick can be applied to the biconnectivity data structure from [STOC98, JACM2001], improving the amortized update time to $\tilde{O}((\log n)^3)$. We also offer improvements in space. We describe a general trick which applies to both of our new algorithms, and to the old ones, to get down to linear space, where the previous best use $O(m + n\log n\log\log n)$. Finally, we show how to obtain $O(\log n/\log \log n)$ query time, matching the optimal trade-off between update and query time. Our result yields an improved running time for deciding whether a unique perfect matching exists in a static graph.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Wireless coverage prediction via parametric shortest paths

When deciding where to place access points in a wireless network, it is useful to model the signal propagation loss between a proposed antenna location and the areas it may cover. The indoor dominant path (IDP) model, introduced by Wölfle et al., is shown in the literature to have good validation and generalization error, is faster to compute than competing methods, and is used in commercial software such as WinProp, iBwave Design, and CellTrace. Previously, the algorithms known for computing it involved a worst-case exponential-time tree search, with pruning heuristics to speed it up. We prove that the IDP model can be reduced to a parametric shortest path computation on a graph derived from the walls in the floorplan. It therefore admits a quasipolynomial-time (i.e., $n^{O(\log n)}$) algorithm. We also give a practical approximation algorithm based on running a small constant number of shortest path computations. Its provable worst-case additive error (in dB) can be made arbitrarily small via appropriate choices of parameters, and is well below 1dB for reasonable choices. We evaluate our approximation algorithm empirically against the exact IDP model, and show that it consistently beats its theoretical worst-case bounds, solving the model exactly (i.e., no error) in the vast majority of cases.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Power of $d$ Choices with Simple Tabulation

Suppose that we are to place $m$ balls into $n$ bins sequentially using the $d$-choice paradigm: For each ball we are given a choice of $d$ bins, according to $d$ hash functions $h_1,\dots,h_d$ and we place the ball in the least loaded of these bins breaking ties arbitrarily. Our interest is in the number of balls in the fullest bin after all $m$ balls have been placed. Azar et al. [STOC'94] proved that when $m=O(n)$ and when the hash functions are fully random the maximum load is at most $\frac{\lg \lg n }{\lg d}+O(1)$ whp (i.e. with probability $1-O(n^{-γ})$ for any choice of $γ$). In this paper we suppose that the $h_1,\dots,h_d$ are simple tabulation hash functions. Generalising a result by Dahlgaard et al [SODA'16] we show that for an arbitrary constant $d\geq 2$ the maximum load is $O(\lg \lg n)$ whp, and that expected maximum load is at most $\frac{\lg \lg n}{\lg d}+O(1)$. We further show that by using a simple tie-breaking algorithm introduced by Vöcking [J.ACM'03] the expected maximum load drops to $\frac{\lg \lg n}{d\lg φ_d}+O(1)$ where $φ_d$ is the rate of growth of the $d$-ary Fibonacci numbers. Both of these expected bounds match those of the fully random setting. The analysis by Dahlgaard et al. relies on a proof by Pătraşcu and Thorup [J.ACM'11] concerning the use of simple tabulation for cuckoo hashing. We need here a generalisation to $d>2$ hash functions, but the original proof is an 8-page tour de force of ad-hoc arguments that do not appear to generalise. Our main technical contribution is a shorter, simpler and more accessible proof of the result by Pătraşcu and Thorup, where the relevant parts generalise nicely to the analysis of $d$ choices.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Fast Fencing

We consider very natural "fence enclosure" problems studied by Capoyleas, Rote, and Woeginger and Arkin, Khuller, and Mitchell in the early 90s. Given a set $S$ of $n$ points in the plane, we aim at finding a set of closed curves such that (1) each point is enclosed by a curve and (2) the total length of the curves is minimized. We consider two main variants. In the first variant, we pay a unit cost per curve in addition to the total length of the curves. An equivalent formulation of this version is that we have to enclose $n$ unit disks, paying only the total length of the enclosing curves. In the other variant, we are allowed to use at most $k$ closed curves and pay no cost per curve. For the variant with at most $k$ closed curves, we present an algorithm that is polynomial in both $n$ and $k$. For the variant with unit cost per curve, or unit disks, we present a near-linear time algorithm. Capoyleas, Rote, and Woeginger solved the problem with at most $k$ curves in $n^{O(k)}$ time. Arkin, Khuller, and Mitchell used this to solve the unit cost per curve version in exponential time. At the time, they conjectured that the problem with $k$ curves is NP-hard for general $k$. Our polynomial time algorithm refutes this unless P equals NP.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2017

Practical Hash Functions for Similarity Estimation and Dimensionality Reduction

Hashing is a basic tool for dimensionality reduction employed in several aspects of machine learning. However, the perfomance analysis is often carried out under the abstract assumption that a truly random unit cost hash function is used, without concern for which concrete hash function is employed. The concrete hash function may work fine on sufficiently random input. The question is if it can be trusted in the real world when faced with more structured input. In this paper we focus on two prominent applications of hashing, namely similarity estimation with the one permutation hashing (OPH) scheme of Li et al. [NIPS'12] and feature hashing (FH) of Weinberger et al. [ICML'09], both of which have found numerous applications, i.e. in approximate near-neighbour search with LSH and large-scale classification with SVM. We consider mixed tabulation hashing of Dahlgaard et al.[FOCS'15] which was proved to perform like a truly random hash function in many applications, including OPH. Here we first show improved concentration bounds for FH with truly random hashing and then argue that mixed tabulation performs similar for sparse input. Our main contribution, however, is an experimental comparison of different hashing schemes when used inside FH, OPH, and LSH. We find that mixed tabulation hashing is almost as fast as the multiply-mod-prime scheme ax+b mod p. Mutiply-mod-prime is guaranteed to work well on sufficiently random data, but we demonstrate that in the above applications, it can lead to bias and poor concentration on both real-world and synthetic data. We also compare with the popular MurmurHash3, which has no proven guarantees. Mixed tabulation and MurmurHash3 both perform similar to truly random hashing in our experiments. However, mixed tabulation is 40% faster than MurmurHash3, and it has the proven guarantee of good performance on all possible input.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2017

Consistent Hashing with Bounded Loads

Designing algorithms for balanced allocation of clients to servers in dynamic settings is a challenging problem for a variety of reasons. Both servers and clients may be added and/or removed from the system periodically, and the main objectives of allocation algorithms are: the uniformity of the allocation, and the number of moves after adding or removing a server or a client. The most popular solution for our dynamic settings is Consistent Hashing. However, the load balancing of consistent hashing is no better than a random assignment of clients to servers, so with $n$ of each, we expect many servers to be overloaded with $Θ(\log n/ \log\log n)$ clients. In this paper, with $n$ clients and $n$ servers, we get a guaranteed max-load of 2 while only moving an expected constant number of clients for each update. We take an arbitrary user specified balancing parameter $c=1+ε>1$. With $m$ balls and $n$ bins in the system, we want no load above $\lceil cm/n\rceil$. Meanwhile we want to bound the expected number of balls that have to be moved when a ball or server is added or removed. Compared with general lower bounds without capacity constraints, we show that in our algorithm when a ball or bin is inserted or deleted, the expected number of balls that have to be moved is increased only by a multiplicative factor $O({1\over ε^2})$ for $ε\le 1$ (Theorem 4) and by a factor $1+O(\frac{\log c}c)$ for $ε\ge 1$ (Theorem 3). Technically, the latter bound is the most challenging to prove. It implies that we for superconstant $c$ only pay a negligible cost in extra moves. We also get the same bounds for the simpler problem where we instead of a user specified balancing parameter have a fixed bin capacity $C$ for all bins.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2017

Linear Probing with 5-Independent Hashing

These lecture notes show that linear probing takes expected constant time if the hash function is 5-independent. This result was first proved by Pagh et al. [STOC'07,SICOMP'09]. The simple proof here is essentially taken from [Patrascu and Thorup ICALP'10]. We will also consider a smaller space version of linear probing that may have false positives like Bloom filters. These lecture notes illustrate the use of higher moments in data structures, and could be used in a course on randomized algorithms.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2017

The Entropy of Backwards Analysis

Backwards analysis, first popularized by Seidel, is often the simplest most elegant way of analyzing a randomized algorithm. It applies to incremental algorithms where elements are added incrementally, following some random permutation, e.g., incremental Delauney triangulation of a pointset, where points are added one by one, and where we always maintain the Delauney triangulation of the points added thus far. For backwards analysis, we think of the permutation as generated backwards, implying that the $i$th point in the permutation is picked uniformly at random from the $i$ points not picked yet in the backwards direction. Backwards analysis has also been applied elegantly by Chan to the randomized linear time minimum spanning tree algorithm of Karger, Klein, and Tarjan. The question considered in this paper is how much randomness we need in order to trust the expected bounds obtained using backwards analysis, exactly and approximately. For the exact case, it turns out that a random permutation works if and only if it is minwise, that is, for any given subset, each element has the same chance of being first. Minwise permutations are known to have $Θ(n)$ entropy, and this is then also what we need for exact backwards analysis. However, when it comes to approximation, the two concepts diverge dramatically. To get backwards analysis to hold within a factor $α$, the random permutation needs entropy $Ω(n/α)$. This contrasts with minwise permutations, where it is known that a $1+\varepsilon$ approximation only needs $Θ(\log (n/\varepsilon))$ entropy. Our negative result for backwards analysis essentially shows that it is as abstract as any analysis based on full randomness.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2017

Fast and Powerful Hashing using Tabulation

Randomized algorithms are often enjoyed for their simplicity, but the hash functions employed to yield the desired probabilistic guarantees are often too complicated to be practical. Here we survey recent results on how simple hashing schemes based on tabulation provide unexpectedly strong guarantees. Simple tabulation hashing dates back to Zobrist [1970]. Keys are viewed as consisting of $c$ characters and we have precomputed character tables $h_1,...,h_c$ mapping characters to random hash values. A key $x=(x_1,...,x_c)$ is hashed to $h_1[x_1] \oplus h_2[x_2].....\oplus h_c[x_c]$. This schemes is very fast with character tables in cache. While simple tabulation is not even 4-independent, it does provide many of the guarantees that are normally obtained via higher independence, e.g., linear probing and Cuckoo hashing. Next we consider twisted tabulation where one input character is "twisted" in a simple way. The resulting hash function has powerful distributional properties: Chernoff-Hoeffding type tail bounds and a very small bias for min-wise hashing. This also yields an extremely fast pseudo-random number generator that is provably good for many classic randomized algorithms and data-structures. Finally, we consider double tabulation where we compose two simple tabulation functions, applying one to the output of the other, and show that this yields very high independence in the classic framework of Carter and Wegman [1977]. In fact, w.h.p., for a given set of size proportional to that of the space consumed, double tabulation gives fully-random hashing. We also mention some more elaborate tabulation schemes getting near-optimal independence for given time and space. While these tabulation schemes are all easy to implement and use, their analysis is not.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2016

Incremental Exact Min-Cut in Poly-logarithmic Amortized Update Time

We present a deterministic incremental algorithm for \textit{exactly} maintaining the size of a minimum cut with $\widetilde{O}(1)$ amortized time per edge insertion and $O(1)$ query time. This result partially answers an open question posed by Thorup [Combinatorica 2007]. It also stays in sharp contrast to a polynomial conditional lower-bound for the fully-dynamic weighted minimum cut problem. Our algorithm is obtained by combining a recent sparsification technique of Kawarabayashi and Thorup [STOC 2015] and an exact incremental algorithm of Henzinger [J. of Algorithm 1997]. We also study space-efficient incremental algorithms for the minimum cut problem. Concretely, we show that there exists an ${O}(n\log n/\varepsilon^2)$ space Monte-Carlo algorithm that can process a stream of edge insertions starting from an empty graph, and with high probability, the algorithm maintains a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation to the minimum cut. The algorithm has $\widetilde{O}(1)$ amortized update-time and constant query-time.

cs.DS↗