skip to main content


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Vassilvitskii, Sergei"

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. In this article, we present a detailed review of current practices and state-of-the-art methodologies in the field of differential privacy (DP), with a focus of advancing DP’s deployment in real-world applications. Key points and high-level contents of the article were originated from the discussions from “Differential Privacy (DP): Challenges Towards the Next Frontier,” a workshop held in July 2022 with experts from industry, academia, and the public sector seeking answers to broad questions pertaining to privacy and its implications in the design of industry-grade systems.This article aims to provide a reference point for the algorithmic and design decisions within the realm of privacy, highlighting important challenges and potential research directions. Covering a wide spectrum of topics, this article delves into the infrastructure needs for designing private systems, methods for achieving better privacy/utility trade-offs, performing privacy attacks and auditing, as well as communicating privacy with broader audiences and stakeholders. 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available January 31, 2025
  2. Seeking a new approach that goes beyond worst-case analysis. 
    more » « less
  3. The research area of algorithms with predictions has seen recent success showing how to incorporate machine learning into algorithm design to improve performance when the predictions are correct, while retaining worst-case guarantees when they are not. Most previous work has assumed that the algorithm has access to a single predictor. However, in practice, there are many machine learning methods available, often with incomparable generalization guarantees, making it hard to pick a best method a priori. In this work we consider scenarios where multiple predictors are available to the algorithm and the question is how to best utilize them. Ideally, we would like the algorithm's performance to depend on the quality of the {\em best} predictor. However, utilizing more predictions comes with a cost, since we now have to identify which prediction is best. We study the use of multiple predictors for a number of fundamental problems, including matching, load balancing, and non-clairvoyant scheduling, which have been well-studied in the single predictor setting. For each of these problems we introduce new algorithms that take advantage of multiple predictors, and prove bounds on the resulting performance. 
    more » « less
  4. A recent line of research investigates how algorithms can be augmented with machine-learned predictions to overcome worst case lower bounds. This area has revealed interesting algorithmic insights into problems, with particular success in the design of competitive online algorithms. However, the question of improving algorithm running times with predictions has largely been unexplored. We take a first step in this direction by combining the idea of machine-learned predictions with the idea of "warm-starting" primal-dual algorithms. We consider one of the most important primitives in combinatorial optimization: weighted bipartite matching and its generalization to b-matching. We identify three key challenges when using learned dual variables in a primal-dual algorithm. First, predicted duals may be infeasible, so we give an algorithm that efficiently maps predicted infeasible duals to nearby feasible solutions. Second, once the duals are feasible, they may not be optimal, so we show that they can be used to quickly find an optimal solution. Finally, such predictions are useful only if they can be learned, so we show that the problem of learning duals for matching has low sample complexity. We validate our theoretical findings through experiments on both real and synthetic data. As a result we give a rigorous, practical, and empirically effective method to compute bipartite matchings. 
    more » « less
  5. null (Ed.)
  6. We introduce an abstract and strong model of massively parallel computation, where essentially the only restrictions are that the “fan-in” of each machine is limited to s bits, where s is smaller than the input size n, and that computation proceeds in synchronized rounds, with no communication between different machines within a round. Lower bounds on round complexity in this model apply to every computing platform that shares the most basic design principles of MapReduce-type systems. We apply a variant of the “polynomial method” to capture restrictions obeyed by all such massively parallel computations. This connection allows us to translate a lower bound on the (approximate) polynomial degree of a Boolean function to a lower bound on the round complexity of every (randomized) massively parallel computation of that function. These lower bounds apply even in the “unbounded width” version of our model, where the number of machines can be arbitrarily large. As one example of our general results, computing any non-trivial monotone graph property — such as any of the standard connectivity problems — requires a super-constant number of rounds when every machine can accept only a sub-polynomial (in n) number of input bits s. This lower bound constitutes significant progress on a major open question in the area, 
    more » « less