arXiv subjects

Sandeep Silwal

Publications and source records attributed to Sandeep Silwal.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Motif Cut Sparsifiers

A motif is a frequently occurring subgraph of a given directed or undirected graph $G$. Motifs capture higher order organizational structure of $G$ beyond edge relationships, and, therefore, have found wide applications such as in graph clustering, community detection, and analysis of biological and physical networks to name a few. In these applications, the cut structure of motifs plays a crucial role as vertices are partitioned into clusters by cuts whose conductance is based on the number of instances of a particular motif, as opposed to just the number of edges, crossing the cuts. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a motif cut sparsifier. We show that one can compute in polynomial time a sparse weighted subgraph $G'$ with only $\widetilde{O}(n/ε^2)$ edges such that for every cut, the weighted number of copies of $M$ crossing the cut in $G'$ is within a $1+ε$ factor of the number of copies of $M$ crossing the cut in $G$, for every constant size motif $M$. Our work carefully combines the viewpoints of both graph sparsification and hypergraph sparsification. We sample edges which requires us to extend and strengthen the concept of cut sparsifiers introduced in the seminal work of to the motif setting. We adapt the importance sampling framework through the viewpoint of hypergraph sparsification by deriving the edge sampling probabilities from the strong connectivity values of a hypergraph whose hyperedges represent motif instances. Finally, an iterative sparsification primitive inspired by both viewpoints is used to reduce the number of edges in $G$ to nearly linear. In addition, we present a strong lower bound ruling out a similar result for sparsification with respect to induced occurrences of motifs.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2022

A Concentration Inequality for the Facility Location Problem

We give a concentration inequality for a stochastic version of the facility location problem. We show the objective $C_n = \min_{F \subseteq [0,1]^2}|F|+\sum_{x\in X}\min_{f\in F}\|x-f\|$ is concentrated in an interval of length $O(n^{1/6})$ and $\E[C_n]=Θ(n^{2/3})$ if the input $X$ consists of i.i.d. uniform points in the unit square. Our main tool is to use a geometric quantity, previously used in the design of approximation algorithms for the facility location problem, to analyze a martingale process. Many of our techniques generalize to other settings.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2022

The White-Box Adversarial Data Stream Model

We study streaming algorithms in the white-box adversarial model, where the stream is chosen adaptively by an adversary who observes the entire internal state of the algorithm at each time step. We show that nontrivial algorithms are still possible. We first give a randomized algorithm for the $L_1$-heavy hitters problem that outperforms the optimal deterministic Misra-Gries algorithm on long streams. If the white-box adversary is computationally bounded, we use cryptographic techniques to reduce the memory of our $L_1$-heavy hitters algorithm even further and to design a number of additional algorithms for graph, string, and linear algebra problems. The existence of such algorithms is surprising, as the streaming algorithm does not even have a secret key in this model, i.e., its state is entirely known to the adversary. One algorithm we design is for estimating the number of distinct elements in a stream with insertions and deletions achieving a multiplicative approximation and sublinear space; such an algorithm is impossible for deterministic algorithms. We also give a general technique that translates any two-player deterministic communication lower bound to a lower bound for {\it randomized} algorithms robust to a white-box adversary. In particular, our results show that for all $p\ge 0$, there exists a constant $C_p>1$ such that any $C_p$-approximation algorithm for $F_p$ moment estimation in insertion-only streams with a white-box adversary requires $Ω(n)$ space for a universe of size $n$. Similarly, there is a constant $C>1$ such that any $C$-approximation algorithm in an insertion-only stream for matrix rank requires $Ω(n)$ space with a white-box adversary. Our algorithmic results based on cryptography thus show a separation between computationally bounded and unbounded adversaries. (Abstract shortened to meet arXiv limits.)

cs.DS↗

arXiv2022

Hardness and Algorithms for Robust and Sparse Optimization

We explore algorithms and limitations for sparse optimization problems such as sparse linear regression and robust linear regression. The goal of the sparse linear regression problem is to identify a small number of key features, while the goal of the robust linear regression problem is to identify a small number of erroneous measurements. Specifically, the sparse linear regression problem seeks a $k$-sparse vector $x\in\mathbb{R}^d$ to minimize $\|Ax-b\|_2$, given an input matrix $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times d}$ and a target vector $b\in\mathbb{R}^n$, while the robust linear regression problem seeks a set $S$ that ignores at most $k$ rows and a vector $x$ to minimize $\|(Ax-b)_S\|_2$. We first show bicriteria, NP-hardness of approximation for robust regression building on the work of [OWZ15] which implies a similar result for sparse regression. We further show fine-grained hardness of robust regression through a reduction from the minimum-weight $k$-clique conjecture. On the positive side, we give an algorithm for robust regression that achieves arbitrarily accurate additive error and uses runtime that closely matches the lower bound from the fine-grained hardness result, as well as an algorithm for sparse regression with similar runtime. Both our upper and lower bounds rely on a general reduction from robust linear regression to sparse regression that we introduce. Our algorithms, inspired by the 3SUM problem, use approximate nearest neighbor data structures and may be of independent interest for solving sparse optimization problems. For instance, we demonstrate that our techniques can also be used for the well-studied sparse PCA problem.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

Faster Fundamental Graph Algorithms via Learned Predictions

We consider the question of speeding up classic graph algorithms with machine-learned predictions. In this model, algorithms are furnished with extra advice learned from past or similar instances. Given the additional information, we aim to improve upon the traditional worst-case run-time guarantees. Our contributions are the following: (i) We give a faster algorithm for minimum-weight bipartite matching via learned duals, improving the recent result by Dinitz, Im, Lavastida, Moseley and Vassilvitskii (NeurIPS, 2021); (ii) We extend the learned dual approach to the single-source shortest path problem (with negative edge lengths), achieving an almost linear runtime given sufficiently accurate predictions which improves upon the classic fastest algorithm due to Goldberg (SIAM J. Comput., 1995); (iii) We provide a general reduction-based framework for learning-based graph algorithms, leading to new algorithms for degree-constrained subgraph and minimum-cost $0$-$1$ flow, based on reductions to bipartite matching and the shortest path problem. Finally, we give a set of general learnability theorems, showing that the predictions required by our algorithms can be efficiently learned in a PAC fashion.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2022

Learning-Augmented $k$-means Clustering

$k$-means clustering is a well-studied problem due to its wide applicability. Unfortunately, there exist strong theoretical limits on the performance of any algorithm for the $k$-means problem on worst-case inputs. To overcome this barrier, we consider a scenario where "advice" is provided to help perform clustering. Specifically, we consider the $k$-means problem augmented with a predictor that, given any point, returns its cluster label in an approximately optimal clustering up to some, possibly adversarial, error. We present an algorithm whose performance improves along with the accuracy of the predictor, even though naïvely following the accurate predictor can still lead to a high clustering cost. Thus if the predictor is sufficiently accurate, we can retrieve a close to optimal clustering with nearly optimal runtime, breaking known computational barriers for algorithms that do not have access to such advice. We evaluate our algorithms on real datasets and show significant improvements in the quality of clustering.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

Triangle and Four Cycle Counting with Predictions in Graph Streams

We propose data-driven one-pass streaming algorithms for estimating the number of triangles and four cycles, two fundamental problems in graph analytics that are widely studied in the graph data stream literature. Recently, (Hsu 2018) and (Jiang 2020) applied machine learning techniques in other data stream problems, using a trained oracle that can predict certain properties of the stream elements to improve on prior "classical" algorithms that did not use oracles. In this paper, we explore the power of a "heavy edge" oracle in multiple graph edge streaming models. In the adjacency list model, we present a one-pass triangle counting algorithm improving upon the previous space upper bounds without such an oracle. In the arbitrary order model, we present algorithms for both triangle and four cycle estimation with fewer passes and the same space complexity as in previous algorithms, and we show several of these bounds are optimal. We analyze our algorithms under several noise models, showing that the algorithms perform well even when the oracle errs. Our methodology expands upon prior work on "classical" streaming algorithms, as previous multi-pass and random order streaming algorithms can be seen as special cases of our algorithms, where the first pass or random order was used to implement the heavy edge oracle. Lastly, our experiments demonstrate advantages of the proposed method compared to state-of-the-art streaming algorithms.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2021

Adversarial Robustness of Streaming Algorithms through Importance Sampling

In this paper, we introduce adversarially robust streaming algorithms for central machine learning and algorithmic tasks, such as regression and clustering, as well as their more general counterparts, subspace embedding, low-rank approximation, and coreset construction. For regression and other numerical linear algebra related tasks, we consider the row arrival streaming model. Our results are based on a simple, but powerful, observation that many importance sampling-based algorithms give rise to adversarial robustness which is in contrast to sketching based algorithms, which are very prevalent in the streaming literature but suffer from adversarial attacks. In addition, we show that the well-known merge and reduce paradigm in streaming is adversarially robust. Since the merge and reduce paradigm allows coreset constructions in the streaming setting, we thus obtain robust algorithms for $k$-means, $k$-median, $k$-center, Bregman clustering, projective clustering, principal component analysis (PCA) and non-negative matrix factorization. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first adversarially robust results for these problems yet require no new algorithmic implementations. Finally, we empirically confirm the robustness of our algorithms on various adversarial attacks and demonstrate that by contrast, some common existing algorithms are not robust. (Abstract shortened to meet arXiv limits)

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Dimensionality Reduction for Wasserstein Barycenter

The Wasserstein barycenter is a geometric construct which captures the notion of centrality among probability distributions, and which has found many applications in machine learning. However, most algorithms for finding even an approximate barycenter suffer an exponential dependence on the dimension $d$ of the underlying space of the distributions. In order to cope with this "curse of dimensionality," we study dimensionality reduction techniques for the Wasserstein barycenter problem. When the barycenter is restricted to support of size $n$, we show that randomized dimensionality reduction can be used to map the problem to a space of dimension $O(\log n)$ independent of both $d$ and $k$, and that \emph{any} solution found in the reduced dimension will have its cost preserved up to arbitrary small error in the original space. We provide matching upper and lower bounds on the size of the reduced dimension, showing that our methods are optimal up to constant factors. We also provide a coreset construction for the Wasserstein barycenter problem that significantly decreases the number of input distributions. The coresets can be used in conjunction with random projections and thus further improve computation time. Lastly, our experimental results validate the speedup provided by dimensionality reduction while maintaining solution quality.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2021

Smoothed analysis of the condition number under low-rank perturbations

Let $M$ be an arbitrary $n$ by $n$ matrix of rank $n-k$. We study the condition number of $M$ plus a \emph{low-rank} perturbation $UV^T$ where $U, V$ are $n$ by $k$ random Gaussian matrices. Under some necessary assumptions, it is shown that $M+UV^T$ is unlikely to have a large condition number. The main advantages of this kind of perturbation over the well-studied dense Gaussian perturbation, where every entry is independently perturbed, is the $O(nk)$ cost to store $U,V$ and the $O(nk)$ increase in time complexity for performing the matrix-vector multiplication $(M+UV^T)x$. This improves the $Ω(n^2)$ space and time complexity increase required by a dense perturbation, which is especially burdensome if $M$ is originally sparse. Our results also extend to the case where $U$ and $V$ have rank larger than $k$ and to symmetric and complex settings. We also give an application to linear systems solving and perform some numerical experiments. Lastly, barriers in applying low-rank noise to other problems studied in the smoothed analysis framework are discussed.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2021

Randomized Dimensionality Reduction for Facility Location and Single-Linkage Clustering

Random dimensionality reduction is a versatile tool for speeding up algorithms for high-dimensional problems. We study its application to two clustering problems: the facility location problem, and the single-linkage hierarchical clustering problem, which is equivalent to computing the minimum spanning tree. We show that if we project the input pointset $X$ onto a random $d = O(d_X)$-dimensional subspace (where $d_X$ is the doubling dimension of $X$), then the optimum facility location cost in the projected space approximates the original cost up to a constant factor. We show an analogous statement for minimum spanning tree, but with the dimension $d$ having an extra $\log \log n$ term and the approximation factor being arbitrarily close to $1$. Furthermore, we extend these results to approximating solutions instead of just their costs. Lastly, we provide experimental results to validate the quality of solutions and the speedup due to the dimensionality reduction. Unlike several previous papers studying this approach in the context of $k$-means and $k$-medians, our dimension bound does not depend on the number of clusters but only on the intrinsic dimensionality of $X$.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2021

Learning-based Support Estimation in Sublinear Time

We consider the problem of estimating the number of distinct elements in a large data set (or, equivalently, the support size of the distribution induced by the data set) from a random sample of its elements. The problem occurs in many applications, including biology, genomics, computer systems and linguistics. A line of research spanning the last decade resulted in algorithms that estimate the support up to $ \pm \varepsilon n$ from a sample of size $O(\log^2(1/\varepsilon) \cdot n/\log n)$, where $n$ is the data set size. Unfortunately, this bound is known to be tight, limiting further improvements to the complexity of this problem. In this paper we consider estimation algorithms augmented with a machine-learning-based predictor that, given any element, returns an estimation of its frequency. We show that if the predictor is correct up to a constant approximation factor, then the sample complexity can be reduced significantly, to \[ \ \log (1/\varepsilon) \cdot n^{1-Θ(1/\log(1/\varepsilon))}. \] We evaluate the proposed algorithms on a collection of data sets, using the neural-network based estimators from {Hsu et al, ICLR'19} as predictors. Our experiments demonstrate substantial (up to 3x) improvements in the estimation accuracy compared to the state of the art algorithm.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

A note on the universality of ESDs of inhomogeneous random matrices

In this short note, we extend the celebrated results of Tao and Vu, and Krishnapur on the universality of empirical spectral distributions to a wide class of inhomogeneous complex random matrices, by showing that a technical and hard-to-verify Fourier domination assumption may be replaced simply by a natural uniform anti-concentration assumption. Along the way, we show that inhomogeneous complex random matrices, whose expected squared Hilbert-Schmidt norm is quadratic in the dimension, and whose entries (after symmetrization) are uniformly anti-concentrated at $0$ and infinity, typically have smallest singular value $Ω(n^{-1/2})$. The rate $n^{-1/2}$ is sharp, and closes a gap in the literature. Our proofs closely follow recent works of Livshyts, and Livshyts, Tikhomirov, and Vershynin on inhomogeneous real random matrices. The new ingredient is a couple of anti-concentration inequalities for sums of independent, but not necessarily identically distributed, complex random variables, which may also be useful in other contexts.

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

Using Dimensionality Reduction to Optimize t-SNE

t-SNE is a popular tool for embedding multi-dimensional datasets into two or three dimensions. However, it has a large computational cost, especially when the input data has many dimensions. Many use t-SNE to embed the output of a neural network, which is generally of much lower dimension than the original data. This limits the use of t-SNE in unsupervised scenarios. We propose using \textit{random} projections to embed high dimensional datasets into relatively few dimensions, and then using t-SNE to obtain a two dimensional embedding. We show that random projections preserve the desirable clustering achieved by t-SNE, while dramatically reducing the runtime of finding the embedding.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2019

Property Testing of LP-Type Problems

Given query access to a set of constraints $S$, we wish to quickly check if some objective function $φ$ subject to these constraints is at most a given value $k$. We approach this problem using the framework of property testing where our goal is to distinguish the case $φ(S) \le k$ from the case that at least an $ε$ fraction of the constraints in $S$ need to be removed for $φ(S) \le k$ to hold. We restrict our attention to the case where $(S, φ)$ are LP-Type problems which is a rich family of combinatorial optimization problems with an inherent geometric structure. By utilizing a simple sampling procedure which has been used previously to study these problems, we are able to create property testers for any LP-Type problem whose query complexities are independent of the number of constraints. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that connects the area of LP-Type problems and property testing in a systematic way. Among our results is a tight upper bound on the query complexity of testing clusterability with one cluster considered by Alon, Dar, Parnas, and Ron (FOCS 2000). We also supply a corresponding tight lower bound for this problem and other LP-Type problems using geometric constructions.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2019

Testing Properties of Multiple Distributions with Few Samples

We propose a new setting for testing properties of distributions while receiving samples from several distributions, but few samples per distribution. Given samples from $s$ distributions, $p_1, p_2, \ldots, p_s$, we design testers for the following problems: (1) Uniformity Testing: Testing whether all the $p_i$'s are uniform or $ε$-far from being uniform in $\ell_1$-distance (2) Identity Testing: Testing whether all the $p_i$'s are equal to an explicitly given distribution $q$ or $ε$-far from $q$ in $\ell_1$-distance, and (3) Closeness Testing: Testing whether all the $p_i$'s are equal to a distribution $q$ which we have sample access to, or $ε$-far from $q$ in $\ell_1$-distance. By assuming an additional natural condition about the source distributions, we provide sample optimal testers for all of these problems.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Infinitely Many Primes Using Generating Functions

In this short paper we present an elementary proof of the infinitude of primes. Our proof is similar in spirit to Euler's proof that the reciprocals of primes diverges and only uses tools from elementary number theory and calculus. In addition, our proof highlights an interesting use of generating functions.

math.HO↗

arXiv2018

Spectral methods for testing cluster structure of graphs

In the framework of graph property testing, we study the problem of determining if a graph admits a cluster structure. We say that a graph is $(k, ϕ)$-clusterable if it can be partitioned into at most $k$ parts such that each part has conductance at least $ϕ$. We present an algorithm that accepts all graphs that are $(2, ϕ)$-clusterable with probability at least $\frac{2}3$ and rejects all graphs that are $ε$-far from $(2, ϕ^*)$-clusterable for $ϕ^* \le μϕ^2 ε^2$ with probability at least $\frac{2}3$ where $μ> 0$ is a parameter that affects the query complexity. This improves upon the work of Czumaj, Peng, and Sohler by removing a $\log n$ factor from the denominator of the bound on $ϕ^*$ for the case of $k=2$. Our work was concurrent with the work of Chiplunkar et al.\@ who achieved the same improvement for all values of $k$. Our approach for the case $k=2$ relies on the geometric structure of the eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian and results in an algorithm with query complexity $O(n^{1/2+O(1)μ} \cdot \text{poly}(1/ε, 1/ϕ,\log n))$.

cs.DS↗