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Vasileios Nakos

Publications and source records attributed to Vasileios Nakos.

31 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

A Fine-Grained Perspective on Approximating Subset Sum and Partition

Approximating Subset Sum is a classic and fundamental problem in computer science and mathematical optimization. The state-of-the-art approximation scheme for Subset Sum computes a $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation in time $\tilde{O}(\min\{n/\varepsilon, n+1/\varepsilon^2\})$ [Gens, Levner'78, Kellerer et al.'97]. In particular, a $(1-1/n)$-approximation can be computed in time $O(n^2)$. We establish a connection to Min-Plus-Convolution, a problem that is of particular interest in fine-grained complexity theory and can be solved naively in time $O(n^2)$. Our main result is that computing a $(1-1/n)$-approximation for Subset Sum is subquadratically equivalent to Min-Plus-Convolution. Thus, assuming the Min-Plus-Convolution conjecture from fine-grained complexity theory, there is no approximation scheme for Subset Sum with strongly subquadratic dependence on $n$ and $1/\varepsilon$. In the other direction, our reduction allows us to transfer known lower order improvements from Min-Plus-Convolution to Subset Sum, which yields a mildly subquadratic randomized approximation scheme. This adds the first approximation problem to the list of problems that are equivalent to Min-Plus-Convolution. For the related Partition problem, an important special case of Subset Sum, the state of the art is a randomized approximation scheme running in time $\tilde{O}(n+1/\varepsilon^{5/3})$ [Mucha~et~al.'19]. We adapt our reduction from Subset Sum to Min-Plus-Convolution to obtain a related reduction from Partition to Min-Plus-Convolution. This yields an improved approximation scheme for Partition running in time $\tilde{O}(n + 1/\varepsilon^{3/2})$. Our algorithm is the first deterministic approximation scheme for Partition that breaks the quadratic barrier.

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Combinatorial Group Testing and Sparse Recovery Schemes with Near-Optimal Decoding Time

In the long-studied problem of combinatorial group testing, one is asked to detect a set of $k$ defective items out of a population of size $n$, using $m \ll n$ disjunctive measurements. In the non-adaptive setting, the most widely used combinatorial objects are disjunct and list-disjunct matrices, which define incidence matrices of test schemes. Disjunct matrices allow the identification of the exact set of defectives, whereas list disjunct matrices identify a small superset of the defectives. Apart from the combinatorial guarantees, it is often of key interest to equip measurement designs with efficient decoding algorithms. The most efficient decoders should run in sublinear time in $n$, and ideally near-linear in the number of measurements $m$. In this work, we give several constructions with an optimal number of measurements and near-optimal decoding time for the most fundamental group testing tasks, as well as for central tasks in the compressed sensing and heavy hitters literature. For many of those tasks, the previous measurement-optimal constructions needed time either quadratic in the number of measurements or linear in the universe size. Most of our results are obtained via a clean and novel approach which avoids list-recoverable codes or related complex techniques which were present in almost every state-of-the-art work on efficiently decodable constructions of such objects.

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Deterministic Sparse Fourier Transform with an ell_infty Guarantee

In this paper we revisit the deterministic version of the Sparse Fourier Transform problem, which asks to read only a few entries of $x \in \mathbb{C}^n$ and design a recovery algorithm such that the output of the algorithm approximates $\hat x$, the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of $x$. The randomized case has been well-understood, while the main work in the deterministic case is that of Merhi et al.\@ (J Fourier Anal Appl 2018), which obtains $O(k^2 \log^{-1}k \cdot \log^{5.5}n)$ samples and a similar runtime with the $\ell_2/\ell_1$ guarantee. We focus on the stronger $\ell_{\infty}/\ell_1$ guarantee and the closely related problem of incoherent matrices. We list our contributions as follows. 1. We find a deterministic collection of $O(k^2 \log n)$ samples for the $\ell_\infty/\ell_1$ recovery in time $O(nk \log^2 n)$, and a deterministic collection of $O(k^2 \log^2 n)$ samples for the $\ell_\infty/\ell_1$ sparse recovery in time $O(k^2 \log^3n)$. 2. We give new deterministic constructions of incoherent matrices that are row-sampled submatrices of the DFT matrix, via a derandomization of Bernstein's inequality and bounds on exponential sums considered in analytic number theory. Our first construction matches a previous randomized construction of Nelson, Nguyen and Woodruff (RANDOM'12), where there was no constraint on the form of the incoherent matrix. Our algorithms are nearly sample-optimal, since a lower bound of $Ω(k^2 + k \log n)$ is known, even for the case where the sensing matrix can be arbitrarily designed. A similar lower bound of $Ω(k^2 \log n/ \log k)$ is known for incoherent matrices.

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Nearly Optimal Sparse Polynomial Multiplication

In the sparse polynomial multiplication problem, one is asked to multiply two sparse polynomials f and g in time that is proportional to the size of the input plus the size of the output. The polynomials are given via lists of their coefficients F and G, respectively. Cole and Hariharan (STOC 02) have given a nearly optimal algorithm when the coefficients are positive, and Arnold and Roche (ISSAC 15) devised an algorithm running in time proportional to the "structural sparsity" of the product, i.e. the set supp(F)+supp(G). The latter algorithm is particularly efficient when there not "too many cancellations" of coefficients in the product. In this work we give a clean, nearly optimal algorithm for the sparse polynomial multiplication problem.

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Sublinear-Time Algorithms for Compressive Phase Retrieval

In the compressive phase retrieval problem, or phaseless compressed sensing, or compressed sensing from intensity only measurements, the goal is to reconstruct a sparse or approximately $k$-sparse vector $x \in \mathbb{R}^n$ given access to $y= |Φx|$, where $|v|$ denotes the vector obtained from taking the absolute value of $v\in\mathbb{R}^n$ coordinate-wise. In this paper we present sublinear-time algorithms for different variants of the compressive phase retrieval problem which are akin to the variants considered for the classical compressive sensing problem in theoretical computer science. Our algorithms use pure combinatorial techniques and near-optimal number of measurements.

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Almost Optimal Phaseless Compressed Sensing with Sublinear Decoding Time

In the problem of compressive phase retrieval, one wants to recover an approximately $k$-sparse signal $x \in \mathbb{C}^n$, given the magnitudes of the entries of $Φx$, where $Φ\in \mathbb{C}^{m \times n}$. This problem has received a fair amount of attention, with sublinear time algorithms appearing in \cite{cai2014super,pedarsani2014phasecode,yin2015fast}. In this paper we further investigate the direction of sublinear decoding for real signals by giving a recovery scheme under the $\ell_2 / \ell_2$ guarantee, with almost optimal, $\Oh(k \log n )$, number of measurements. Our result outperforms all previous sublinear-time algorithms in the case of real signals. Moreover, we give a very simple deterministic scheme that recovers all $k$-sparse vectors in $\Oh(k^3)$ time, using $4k-1$ measurements.

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On Low-Risk Heavy Hitters and Sparse Recovery Schemes

We study the heavy hitters and related sparse recovery problems in the low-failure probability regime. This regime is not well-understood, and has only been studied for non-adaptive schemes. The main previous work is one on sparse recovery by Gilbert et al.(ICALP'13). We recognize an error in their analysis, improve their results, and contribute new non-adaptive and adaptive sparse recovery algorithms, as well as provide upper and lower bounds for the heavy hitters problem with low failure probability.

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(Nearly) Sample-Optimal Sparse Fourier Transform in Any Dimension; RIPless and Filterless

In this paper, we consider the extensively studied problem of computing a $k$-sparse approximation to the $d$-dimensional Fourier transform of a length $n$ signal. Our algorithm uses $O(k \log k \log n)$ samples, is dimension-free, operates for any universe size, and achieves the strongest $\ell_\infty/\ell_2$ guarantee, while running in a time comparable to the Fast Fourier Transform. In contrast to previous algorithms which proceed either via the Restricted Isometry Property or via filter functions, our approach offers a fresh perspective to the sparse Fourier Transform problem.

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Stronger L2/L2 Compressed Sensing; Without Iterating

We consider the extensively studied problem of $\ell_2/\ell_2$ compressed sensing. The main contribution of our work is an improvement over [Gilbert, Li, Porat and Strauss, STOC 2010] with faster decoding time and significantly smaller column sparsity, answering two open questions of the aforementioned work. Previous work on sublinear-time compressed sensing employed an iterative procedure, recovering the heavy coordinates in phases. We completely depart from that framework, and give the first sublinear-time $\ell_2/\ell_2$ scheme which achieves the optimal number of measurements without iterating; this new approach is the key step to our progress. Towards that, we satisfy the $\ell_2/\ell_2$ guarantee by exploiting the heaviness of coordinates in a way that was not exploited in previous work. Via our techniques we obtain improved results for various sparse recovery tasks, and indicate possible further applications to problems in the field, to which the aforementioned iterative procedure creates significant obstructions.

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One-Bit ExpanderSketch for One-Bit Compressed Sensing

Is it possible to obliviously construct a set of hyperplanes H such that you can approximate a unit vector x when you are given the side on which the vector lies with respect to every h in H? In the sparse recovery literature, where x is approximately k-sparse, this problem is called one-bit compressed sensing and has received a fair amount of attention the last decade. In this paper we obtain the first scheme that achieves almost optimal measurements and sublinear decoding time for one-bit compressed sensing in the non-uniform case. For a large range of parameters, we improve the state of the art in both the number of measurements and the decoding time.

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Deterministic Heavy Hitters with Sublinear Query Time

This paper studies the classic problem of finding heavy hitters in the turnstile streaming model. We give the first deterministic linear sketch that has $O(ε^{-2} \log n \cdot \log^*(ε^{-1}))$ rows and answers queries in sublinear time. The number of rows is only a factor of $\log^*(ε^{-1})$ more than that used by the state-of-the-art algorithm prior to our paper due to Nelson, Nguyen and Woodruff (RANDOM'12). Their algorithm runs in time at least linear in the universe size $n$, which is highly undesirable in streaming applications. Our approach is based on an iterative procedure, where most unrecovered heavy hitters are identified in each iteration. Although this technique has been extensively employed in the related problem of sparse recovery, this is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that it has been used in the context of $\ell_1$ heavy hitters. Along the way, we also give sublinear time algorithms for the closely related problems of combinatorial group testing and $\ell_1/\ell_1$ compressed sensing, matching the space usage of previous (super-)linear time algorithms.

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Improved Algorithms for Adaptive Compressed Sensing

In the problem of adaptive compressed sensing, one wants to estimate an approximately $k$-sparse vector $x\in\mathbb{R}^n$ from $m$ linear measurements $A_1 x, A_2 x,\ldots, A_m x$, where $A_i$ can be chosen based on the outcomes $A_1 x,\ldots, A_{i-1} x$ of previous measurements. The goal is to output a vector $\hat{x}$ for which $$\|x-\hat{x}\|_p \le C \cdot \min_{k\text{-sparse } x'} \|x-x'\|_q\,$$ with probability at least $2/3$, where $C > 0$ is an approximation factor. Indyk, Price and Woodruff (FOCS'11) gave an algorithm for $p=q=2$ for $C = 1+ε$ with $\Oh((k/ε) \loglog (n/k))$ measurements and $\Oh(\log^*(k) \loglog (n))$ rounds of adaptivity. We first improve their bounds, obtaining a scheme with $\Oh(k \cdot \loglog (n/k) +(k/ε) \cdot \loglog(1/ε))$ measurements and $\Oh(\log^*(k) \loglog (n))$ rounds, as well as a scheme with $\Oh((k/ε) \cdot \loglog (n\log (n/k)))$ measurements and an optimal $\Oh(\loglog (n))$ rounds. We then provide novel adaptive compressed sensing schemes with improved bounds for $(p,p)$ for every $0 < p < 2$. We show that the improvement from $O(k \log(n/k))$ measurements to $O(k \log \log (n/k))$ measurements in the adaptive setting can persist with a better $ε$-dependence for other values of $p$ and $q$. For example, when $(p,q) = (1,1)$, we obtain $O(\frac{k}{\sqrtε} \cdot \log \log n \log^3 (\frac{1}ε))$ measurements.

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On Fast Decoding of High Dimensional Signals from One-Bit Measurements

In the problem of one-bit compressed sensing, the goal is to find a $δ$-close estimation of a $k$-sparse vector $x \in \mathbb{R}^n$ given the signs of the entries of $y = Φx$, where $Φ$ is called the measurement matrix. For the one-bit compressed sensing problem, previous work \cite{Plan-robust,support} achieved $Θ(δ^{-2} k \log(n/k))$ and $\tilde{ \Oh} ( \frac{1}{ δ} k \log (n/k))$ measurements, respectively, but the decoding time was $Ω( n k \log (n / k ))$. \ In this paper, using tools and techniques developed in the context of two-stage group testing and streaming algorithms, we contribute towards the direction of very fast decoding time. We give a variety of schemes for the different versions of one-bit compressed sensing, such as the for-each and for-all version, support recovery; all these have $poly(k, \log n)$ decoding time, which is an exponential improvement over previous work, in terms of the dependence of $n$.

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