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1. Counting Simplices in Hypergraph Streams

   Chakrabarti, Amit ; Haris, Themistoklis ( October 2022 , Leibniz international proceedings in informatics)

   We consider the problem of space-efficiently estimating the number of simplices in a hypergraph stream. This is the most natural hypergraph generalization of the highly-studied problem of estimating the number of triangles in a graph stream. Our input is a k-uniform hypergraph H with n vertices and m hyperedges, each hyperedge being a k-sized subset of vertices. A k-simplex in H is a subhypergraph on k+1 vertices X such that all k+1 possible hyperedges among X exist in H. The goal is to process the hyperedges of H, which arrive in an arbitrary order as a data stream, and compute a good estimate of T_k(H), the number of k-simplices in H. We design a suite of algorithms for this problem. As with triangle-counting in graphs (which is the special case k = 2), sublinear space is achievable but only under a promise of the form T_k(H) ≥ T. Under such a promise, our algorithms use at most four passes and together imply a space bound of O(ε^{-2} log δ^{-1} polylog n ⋅ min{(m^{1+1/k})/T, m/(T^{2/(k+1)})}) for each fixed k ≥ 3, in order to guarantee an estimate within (1±ε)T_k(H) with probability ≥ 1-δ. We also give a simpler 1-pass algorithm that achieves O(ε^{-2} log δ^{-1} log n⋅ (m/T) (Δ_E + Δ_V^{1-1/k})) space, where Δ_E (respectively, Δ_V) denotes the maximum number of k-simplices that share a hyperedge (respectively, a vertex), which generalizes a previous result for the k = 2 case. We complement these algorithmic results with space lower bounds of the form Ω(ε^{-2}), Ω(m^{1+1/k}/T), Ω(m/T^{1-1/k}) and Ω(mΔ_V^{1/k}/T) for multi-pass algorithms and Ω(mΔ_E/T) for 1-pass algorithms, which show that some of the dependencies on parameters in our upper bounds are nearly tight. Our techniques extend and generalize several different ideas previously developed for triangle counting in graphs, using appropriate innovations to handle the more complicated combinatorics of hypergraphs. 

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2. Improved Algorithms for Maximum Coverage in Dynamic and Random Order Streams

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPICS.ESA.2024.40  

   Chakrabarti, Amit ; McGregor, Andrew ; Wirth, Anthony ( January 2024 , Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik)

   Chan, Timothy ; Fischer, Johannes ; Iacono, John ; Herman, Grzegorz (Ed.)

   The maximum coverage problem is to select k sets, from a collection of m sets, such that the cardinality of their union, in a universe of size n, is maximized. We consider (1-1/e-ε)-approximation algorithms for this NP-hard problem in three standard data stream models. 1) Dynamic Model. The stream consists of a sequence of sets being inserted and deleted. Our multi-pass algorithm uses ε^{-2} k ⋅ polylog(n,m) space. The best previous result (Assadi and Khanna, SODA 2018) used (n +ε^{-4} k) polylog(n,m) space. While both algorithms use O(ε^{-1} log m) passes, our analysis shows that, when ε ≤ 1/log log m, it is possible to reduce the number of passes by a 1/log log m factor without incurring additional space. 2) Random Order Model. In this model, there are no deletions, and the sets forming the instance are uniformly randomly permuted to form the input stream. We show that a single pass and k polylog(n,m) space suffices for arbitrary small constant ε. The best previous result, by Warneke et al. (ESA 2023), used k² polylog(n,m) space. 3) Insert-Only Model. Lastly, our results, along with numerous previous results, use a sub-sampling technique introduced by McGregor and Vu (ICDT 2017) to sparsify the input instance. We explain how this technique and others used in the paper can be implemented such that the amortized update time of our algorithm is polylogarithmic. This also implies an improvement of the state-of-the-art insert only algorithms in terms of the update time: polylog(m,n) update time suffices, whereas the best previous result by Jaud et al. (SEA 2023) required update time that was linear in k. 

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3. Evaluating Stability in Massive Social Networks: Efficient Streaming Algorithms for Structural Balance

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPICS.APPROX/RANDOM.2023.58  

   Ashvinkumar, Vikrant ; Assadi, Sepehr ; Deng, Chengyuan ; Gao, Jie ; Wang, Chen ( January 2023 , APPROX-RANDOM)

   Megow, Nicole ; Smith, Adam (Ed.)

   Structural balance theory studies stability in networks. Given a n-vertex complete graph G = (V,E) whose edges are labeled positive or negative, the graph is considered balanced if every triangle either consists of three positive edges (three mutual "friends"), or one positive edge and two negative edges (two "friends" with a common "enemy"). From a computational perspective, structural balance turns out to be a special case of correlation clustering with the number of clusters at most two. The two main algorithmic problems of interest are: (i) detecting whether a given graph is balanced, or (ii) finding a partition that approximates the frustration index, i.e., the minimum number of edge flips that turn the graph balanced. We study these problems in the streaming model where edges are given one by one and focus on memory efficiency. We provide randomized single-pass algorithms for: (i) determining whether an input graph is balanced with O(log n) memory, and (ii) finding a partition that induces a (1 + ε)-approximation to the frustration index with O(n ⋅ polylog(n)) memory. We further provide several new lower bounds, complementing different aspects of our algorithms such as the need for randomization or approximation. To obtain our main results, we develop a method using pseudorandom generators (PRGs) to sample edges between independently-chosen vertices in graph streaming. Furthermore, our algorithm that approximates the frustration index improves the running time of the state-of-the-art correlation clustering with two clusters (Giotis-Guruswami algorithm [SODA 2006]) from n^O(1/ε²) to O(n²log³n/ε² + n log n ⋅ (1/ε)^O(1/ε⁴)) time for (1+ε)-approximation. These results may be of independent interest. 

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4. Minimum Cuts in Directed Graphs via Partial Sparsification

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FOCS52979.2021.00113  

   Cen, Ruoxu ; Li, Jason ; Nanongkai, Danupon ; Panigrahi, Debmalya ; Saranurak, Thatchaphol ; Quanrud, Kent ( February 2022 , 62nd IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, FOCS 2021, Denver, CO, USA, February 7-10, 2022)

   We give an algorithm to find a minimum cut in an edge-weighted directed graph with n vertices and m edges in O ̃(n · max{m^{2/3}, n}) time. This improves on the 30 year old bound of O ̃(nm) obtained by Hao and Orlin for this problem. Using similar techniques, we also obtain O ̃ (n^2 /ε^2 )-time (1+ε)-approximation algorithms for both the minimum edge and minimum vertex cuts in directed graphs, for any fixed ε. Before our work, no (1+ε)-approximation algorithm better than the exact runtime of O ̃(nm) is known for either problem. Our algorithms follow a two-step template. In the first step, we employ a partial sparsification of the input graph to preserve a critical subset of cut values approximately. In the second step, we design algorithms to find the (edge/vertex) mincut among the preserved cuts from the first step. For edge mincut, we give a new reduction to O ̃ (min{n/m^{1/3} , √n}) calls of any maxflow subroutine, via packing arborescences in the sparsifier. For vertex mincut, we develop new local flow algorithms to identify small unbalanced cuts in the sparsified graph. 

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5. On Sketching Approximations for Symmetric Boolean CSPs

   Boyland, Joanna ; Hwang, Michael ; Prasad, Tarun ; Singer, Noah ; Velusamy, Santhoshini ( September 2022 , Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2022))

   Chakrabarti, Amit ; Swamy, Chaitanya (Ed.)

   A Boolean maximum constraint satisfaction problem, Max-CSP(f), is specified by a predicate f:{-1,1}^k → {0,1}. An n-variable instance of Max-CSP(f) consists of a list of constraints, each of which applies f to k distinct literals drawn from the n variables. For k = 2, Chou, Golovnev, and Velusamy [Chou et al., 2020] obtained explicit ratios characterizing the √ n-space streaming approximability of every predicate. For k ≥ 3, Chou, Golovnev, Sudan, and Velusamy [Chou et al., 2022] proved a general dichotomy theorem for √ n-space sketching algorithms: For every f, there exists α(f) ∈ (0,1] such that for every ε > 0, Max-CSP(f) is (α(f)-ε)-approximable by an O(log n)-space linear sketching algorithm, but (α(f)+ε)-approximation sketching algorithms require Ω(√n) space. In this work, we give closed-form expressions for the sketching approximation ratios of multiple families of symmetric Boolean functions. Letting α'_k = 2^{-(k-1)} (1-k^{-2})^{(k-1)/2}, we show that for odd k ≥ 3, α(kAND) = α'_k, and for even k ≥ 2, α(kAND) = 2α'_{k+1}. Thus, for every k, kAND can be (2-o(1))2^{-k}-approximated by O(log n)-space sketching algorithms; we contrast this with a lower bound of Chou, Golovnev, Sudan, Velingker, and Velusamy [Chou et al., 2022] implying that streaming (2+ε)2^{-k}-approximations require Ω(n) space! We also resolve the ratio for the "at-least-(k-1)-1’s" function for all even k; the "exactly-(k+1)/2-1’s" function for odd k ∈ {3,…,51}; and fifteen other functions. We stress here that for general f, the dichotomy theorem in [Chou et al., 2022] only implies that α(f) can be computed to arbitrary precision in PSPACE, and thus closed-form expressions need not have existed a priori. Our analyses involve identifying and exploiting structural "saddle-point" properties of this dichotomy. Separately, for all threshold functions, we give optimal "bias-based" approximation algorithms generalizing [Chou et al., 2020] while simplifying [Chou et al., 2022]. Finally, we investigate the √ n-space streaming lower bounds in [Chou et al., 2022], and show that they are incomplete for 3AND, i.e., they fail to rule out (α(3AND})-ε)-approximations in o(√ n) space. 

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