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1. Towards a Decomposition-Optimal Algorithm for Counting and Sampling Arbitrary Motifs in Sublinear Time

   Biswas, A.S.; Eden, T.; Rubinfeld, R. (January 2021, RANDOM 2021)

   We consider the problem of sampling and approximately counting an arbitrary given motif H in a graph G, where access to G is given via queries: degree, neighbor, and pair, as well as uniform edge sample queries. Previous algorithms for these tasks were based on a decomposition of H into a collection of odd cycles and stars, denoted D^*(H) = {O_{k₁},...,O_{k_q}, S_{p₁},...,S_{p_𝓁}}. These algorithms were shown to be optimal for the case where H is a clique or an odd-length cycle, but no other lower bounds were known. We present a new algorithm for sampling arbitrary motifs which, up to poly(log n) factors, is always at least as good, and for most graphs G is strictly better. The main ingredient leading to this improvement is an improved uniform algorithm for sampling stars, which might be of independent interest, as it allows to sample vertices according to the p-th moment of the degree distribution. Finally, we prove that this algorithm is decomposition-optimal for decompositions that contain at least one odd cycle. These are the first lower bounds for motifs H with a nontrivial decomposition, i.e., motifs that have more than a single component in their decomposition. 

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2. Near-Linear Time Homomorphism Counting in Bounded Degeneracy Graphs: The Barrier of Long Induced Cycles

   Suman K. Bera, Noujan Pashanasangi (January 2021, Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA))

   null (Ed.)

   Counting homomorphisms of a constant sized pattern graph H in an input graph G is a fundamental computational problem. There is a rich history of studying the complexity of this problem, under various constraints on the input G and the pattern H. Given the significance of this problem and the large sizes of modern inputs, we investigate when near-linear time algorithms are possible. We focus on the case when the input graph has bounded degeneracy, a commonly studied and practically relevant class for homomorphism counting. It is known from previous work that for certain classes of H, H-homomorphisms can be counted exactly in near-linear time in bounded degeneracy graphs. Can we precisely characterize the patterns H for which near-linear time algorithms are possible? We completely resolve this problem, discovering a clean dichotomy using fine-grained complexity. Let m denote the number of edges in G. We prove the following: if the largest induced cycle in H has length at most 5, then there is an O(mlogm) algorithm for counting H-homomorphisms in bounded degeneracy graphs. If the largest induced cycle in H has length at least 6, then (assuming standard fine-grained complexity conjectures) there is a constant γ>0, such that there is no o(m1+γ) time algorithm for counting H-homomorphisms. 

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3. Near-Linear Time Homomorphism Counting in Bounded Degeneracy Graphs: The Barrier of Long Induced Cycles

   https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611976465.138  

   Bera, Suman K.; Pashanasangi, Noujan; Seshadhri, C. (January 2021, Proceedings of the Annual ACMSIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms)

   null (Ed.)

   Counting homomorphisms of a constant sized pattern graph H in an input graph G is a fundamental computational problem. There is a rich history of studying the complexity of this problem, under various constraints on the input G and the pattern H. Given the significance of this problem and the large sizes of modern inputs, we investigate when near-linear time algorithms are possible. We focus on the case when the input graph has bounded degeneracy, a commonly studied and practically relevant class for homomorphism counting. It is known from previous work that for certain classes of H, H-homomorphisms can be counted exactly in near-linear time in bounded degeneracy graphs. Can we precisely characterize the patterns H for which near-linear time algorithms are possible? We completely resolve this problem, discovering a clean dichotomy using fine-grained complexity. Let m denote the number of edges in G. We prove the following: if the largest induced cycle in H has length at most 5, then there is an O(m log m) algorithm for counting H-homomorphisms in bounded degeneracy graphs. If the largest induced cycle in H has length at least 6, then (assuming standard fine-grained complexity conjectures) there is a constant γ > 0, such that there is no o(m1+γ) time algorithm for counting H-homomorphisms. 

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4. Tiered Sampling: An Efficient Method for Counting Sparse Motifs in Massive Graph Streams

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3441299  

   Stefani, Lorenzo De; Terolli, Erisa; Upfal, Eli (June 2021, ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data)

   null (Ed.)

   We introduce Tiered Sampling , a novel technique for estimating the count of sparse motifs in massive graphs whose edges are observed in a stream. Our technique requires only a single pass on the data and uses a memory of fixed size M , which can be magnitudes smaller than the number of edges. Our methods address the challenging task of counting sparse motifs—sub-graph patterns—that have a low probability of appearing in a sample of M edges in the graph, which is the maximum amount of data available to the algorithms in each step. To obtain an unbiased and low variance estimate of the count, we partition the available memory into tiers (layers) of reservoir samples. While the base layer is a standard reservoir sample of edges, other layers are reservoir samples of sub-structures of the desired motif. By storing more frequent sub-structures of the motif, we increase the probability of detecting an occurrence of the sparse motif we are counting, thus decreasing the variance and error of the estimate. While we focus on the designing and analysis of algorithms for counting 4-cliques, we present a method which allows generalizing Tiered Sampling to obtain high-quality estimates for the number of occurrence of any sub-graph of interest, while reducing the analysis effort due to specific properties of the pattern of interest. We present a complete analytical analysis and extensive experimental evaluation of our proposed method using both synthetic and real-world data. Our results demonstrate the advantage of our method in obtaining high-quality approximations for the number of 4 and 5-cliques for large graphs using a very limited amount of memory, significantly outperforming the single edge sample approach for counting sparse motifs in large scale graphs. 

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5. Counting and Sampling Orientations on Chordal Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96731-4_29  

   Bezakova, Ivona; Sun, Wenbo (January 2022, International Conference and Workshops on Algorithms and Computation (WALCOM))

   We study counting problems for several types of orientations of chordal graphs: source-sink-free orientations, sink-free orientations, acyclic orientations, and bipolar orientations, and, for the latter two, we also present linear-time uniform samplers. Counting sink-free, acyclic, or bipolar orientations are known to be #P-complete for general graphs, motivating our study on a restricted, yet well-studied, graph class. Our main focus is source-sink-free orientations, a natural restricted version of sink-free orientations related to strong orientations, which we introduce in this work. These orientations are intriguing, since despite their similarity, currently known FPRAS and sampling techniques (such as Markov chains or sink-popping) that apply to sink-free orientations do not seem to apply to source-sink-free orientations. We present fast polynomialtime algorithms counting these orientations on chordal graphs. Our approach combines dynamic programming with inclusion-exclusion (going two levels deep for source-sink-free orientations and one level for sinkfree orientations) throughout the computation. Dynamic programming counting algorithms can be typically used to produce a uniformly random sample. However, due to the negative terms of the inclusion-exclusion, the typical approach to obtain a polynomial-time sampling algorithm does not apply in our case. Obtaining such an almost uniform sampling algorithm for source-sink-free orientations in chordal graphs remains an open problem. Little is known about counting or sampling of acyclic or bipolar orientations, even on restricted graph classes. We design efficient (linear-time) exact uniform sampling algorithms for these orientations on chordal graphs. These algorithms are a byproduct of our counting algorithms, but unlike in other works that provide dynamic-programming-based samplers, we produce a random orientation without computing the corresponding count, which leads to a faster running time than the counting algorithm (since it avoids manipulation of large integers). 

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