A major open problem in the field of metric embedding is the existence of dimension reduction for @math -point subsets of Euclidean space, such that both distortion and dimension depend only on the doubling constant of the pointset, and not on its cardinality. In this paper, we negate this possibility for @math spaces with @math . In particular, we introduce an @math -point subset of @math with doubling constant O(1), and demonstrate that any embedding of the set into @math with distortion @math must have @math .
There are several results on embedding metric spaces with low intrinsic dimension into low dimensional normed space with low distortion: Assouad @cite_12 showed that the snowflakes of doubling metrics For @math , an @math -snowflake of a metric @math is the metric @math , that is, all distances are taken to power @math . embed with constant distortion into constant dimensional Euclidean space. In particular, this is a positive answer to question:d for this special case.
@cite_12
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We consider the problem of computing the smallest possible distortion for embedding of a given n-point metric space into ℝ d , where d is fixed (and small). For d = 1, it was known that approximating the minimum distortion with a factor better than roughly n 1 12 is NP-hard. From this result we derive inapproximability with a factor roughly n 1 (22d-10) for every fixed d ≥ 2, by a conceptually very simple reduction. However, the proof of correctness involves a nontrivial result in geometric topology (whose current proof is based on ideas due to Jussi Vaisala), For d > 3, we obtain a stronger inapproximability result by a different reduction: assuming P≠NP, no polynomial-time algorithm can distinguish between spaces embeddable in ℝ d with constant distortion from spaces requiring distortion at least n c d , for a constant c > 0. The exponent c d has the correct order of magnitude, since every n-point metric space can be embedded in ℝ d with distortion O(n 2 d log 3 2 n) and such an embedding can be constructed in polynomial time by random projection. For d = 2, we give an example of a metric space that requires a large distortion for embedding in ℝ 2 , while all not too large subspaces of it embed almost isometrically. We devise a new embedding technique, which we call measured descent, based on decomposing a metric space locally, at varying speeds, according to the density of some probability measure. This provides a refined and unified framework for the two primary methods of constructing Frechet embeddings for finite metrics, due to Bourgain (1985) and Rao (1999). We prove that any n-point metric space (X, d) embeds in Hilbert space with distortion (O ( _ X n ) , ) where α X is a geometric estimate on the decomposability of X. As an immediate corollary, we obtain an (O ( ( _ X ) n ) ) distortion embedding, where λ X is the doubling constant of X. Since λ X ≤ n, this result recovers Bourgain’s theorem, but when the metric X is, in a sense, “low-dimensional,” improved bounds are achieved. The doubling dimension of a metric is the smallest k such that any ball of radius 2r can be covered using 2k balls of radius r. This concept for abstract metrics has been proposed as a natural analog to the dimension of a Euclidean space. If we could embed metrics with low doubling dimension into low dimensional Euclidean spaces, they would inherit several algorithmic and structural properties of the Euclidean spaces. Unfortunately however, such a restriction on dimension does not suffice to guarantee embeddibility in a normed space.In this paper we explore the option of bypassing the embedding. In particular we show the following for low dimensional metrics: Quasi-polynomial time (1+e)-approximation algorithm for various optimization problems such as TSP, k-median and facility location. (1+e)-approximate distance labeling scheme with optimal label length. (1+e)-stretch polylogarithmic storage routing scheme. We study the metric properties of finite subsets of L1. The analysis of such metrics is central to a number of important algorithmic problems involving the cut structure of weighted graphs, including the Sparsest Cut Problem, one of the most compelling open problems in the field of approximation algorithms. Additionally, many open questions in geometric non-linear functional analysis involve the properties of finite subsets of L1.We present some new observations concerning the relation of L1 to dimension, topology, and Euclidean distortion. We show that every n-point subset of L1 embeds into L2 with average distortion O(√log n), yielding the first evidence that the conjectured worst-case bound of O(√log n) is valid. We also address the issue of dimension reduction in Lp for p ∈ (1, 2). We resolve a question left open by M. Charikar and A. Sahai [Dimension reduction in the l1 norm, in: Proceedings of the 43rd Annual IEEE Conference on Foundations of Computer Science, ACM, 2002, pp. 251-260] concerning the impossibility of dimension reduction with a linear map in the above cases, and we show that a natural variant of the recent example of Brinkman and Charikar [On the impossibility of dimension reduction in l1, in: Proceedings of the 44th Annual IEEE Conference on Foundations of Computer Science, ACM, 2003, pp. 514-523], cannot be used to prove a lower bound for the non-linear case. This is acomplished by exhibiting constant-distortion embeddings of snowflaked planar metrics into Euclidean space. We investigate the possibility of embedding an n-point metric space into a constant dimensional vector space with the maximum norm, such that the embedding is almost isometric, that is, the distortion of distances is kept arbitrarily close to 1. When the source metric is generated by any fixed norm on a finite dimensional vector space, we prove that this embedding is always possible, such that the dimension of the target space remains constant, independent of n. While this possibility has been known in the folklore, we present the first fully detailed proof, which, in addition, is significantly simpler and more transparent, then what was available before. Furthermore, our embedding can be computed in deterministic linear time in n, given oracle access to the norm. We introduce a novel measure called e-four-pointscondition (e-4PC), which assigns a value e ∈ [0,1] to every metric space quantifying how close the metric is to a tree metric. Data-sets taken from real Internet measurements indicate remarkable closeness of Internet latencies to tree metrics based on this condition. We study embeddings of e-4PC metric spaces into trees and prove tight upper and lower bounds. Specifically, we show that there are constants c1 and c2 such that, (1) every metric (X,d) which satisfies the e-4PC can be embedded into a tree with distortion (1+e)c1log|X|, and (2) for every e ∈: [0,1] and any number of nodes, there is a metric space (X,d) satisfying the e-4PC that does not embed into a tree with distortion less than (1+e)c2log|X|. In addition, we prove a lower bound on approximate distance labelings of e-4PC metrics, and give tight bounds for tree embeddings with additive error guarantees. The doubling constant of a metric space (X, d) is the smallest value spl lambda such that every ball in X can be covered by spl lambda balls of half the radius. The doubling dimension of X is then defined as dim (X) = log sub 2 spl lambda . A metric (or sequence of metrics) is called doubling precisely when its doubling dimension is bounded. This is a robust class of metric spaces which contains many families of metrics that occur in applied settings. We give tight bounds for embedding doubling metrics into (low-dimensional) normed spaces. We consider both general doubling metrics, as well as more restricted families such as those arising from trees, from graphs excluding a fixed minor, and from snowflaked metrics. Our techniques include decomposition theorems for doubling metrics, and an analysis of a fractal in the plane according to T. J. Laakso (2002). Finally, we discuss some applications and point out a central open question regarding dimensionality reduction in L sub 2 . The author surveys algorithmic results obtained using low-distortion embeddings of metric spaces into (mostly) normed spaces. He shows that low-distortion embeddings provide a powerful and versatile toolkit for solving algorithmic problems. Their fundamental nature makes them applicable in a variety of diverse settings, while their relation to rich mathematical fields (e.g., functional analysis) ensures availability of tools for their construction. We consider monotone embeddings of a finite metric space into low-dimensional normed space. That is, embeddings that respect the order among the distances in the original space. Our main interest is in embeddings into Euclidean spaces. We observe that any metric on n points can be embedded into l2n, while (in a sense to be made precise later), for almost every n-point metric space, every monotone map must be into a space of dimension Ω(n) (Lemma 3).It becomes natural, then, to seek explicit constructions of metric spaces that cannot be monotonically embedded into spaces of sublinear dimension. To this end, we employ known results on sphericity of graphs, which suggest one example of such a metric space--that is defined by a complete bipartite graph. We prove that an δn-regular graph of order n, with bounded diameter has sphericity Ω(n (λ2+1)), where λ2 is the second largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the graph, and 0<δ≤½ is constant (Theorem 4). We also show that while random graphs have linear sphericity, there are quais-random graphs of logarithmic sphericity (Lemma 7).For the above bound to be linear, λ2 must be constant. We show that if the second eigenvalue of an n 2-regular graph is bounded by a constant, then the graph is close to being complete bipartite. Namely, its adjacency matrix differs from that of a complete bipartite graph in only o(n2) entries (Theorem 5). Furthermore, for any 0<δ<½, and λ2, there are only finitely many δn-regular graphs with second eigenvalue at most λ2 (Corollary 4). The Johnson--Lindenstrauss lemma shows that any n points in Euclidean space (i.e., ℝn with distances measured under the e 2 norm) may be mapped down to O((log n) e2) dimensions such that no pairwise distance is distorted by more than a (1 p e) factor. Determining whether such dimension reduction is possible in e 1 has been an intriguing open question. We show strong lower bounds for general dimension reduction in e 1 . We give an explicit family of n points in e 1 such that any embedding with constant distortion D requires nΩ(1 D2) dimensions. This proves that there is no analog of the Johnson--Lindenstrauss lemma for e 1 ; in fact, embedding with any constant distortion requires nΩ(1) dimensions. Further, embedding the points into e 1 with (1pe) distortion requires nh−O(e log(1 e)) dimensions. Our proof establishes this lower bound for shortest path metrics of series-parallel graphs. We make extensive use of linear programming and duality in devising our bounds. We expect that the tools and techniques we develop will be useful for future investigations of embeddings into e 1 . We introduce and study the notion of the average distortion of a nonexpanding embedding of one metric space into another. Less sensitive than the multiplicative metric distortion, the average distortion captures well the global picture, and, overall, is a quite interesting new measure of metric proximity, related to the concentration of measure phenomenon. We establish close mutual relations between the MinCut- MaxFlow gap in a uniform-demand multicommodity flow, and the average distortion of embedding the suitable (dual) metric into l1. These relations are exploited to show that the shortest-path metrics of special (e.g., planar, bounded treewidth, etc.) graphs embed into l1 with constant average distortion. The main result of the paper claims that this remains true even if l1 is replaced with the line. This result is further sharpened for graphs of a bounded treewidth. This paper addresses the basic question of how well a tree can approximate distances of a metric space or a graph. Given a graph, the problem of constructing a spanning tree in a graph which strongly preserves distances in the graph is a fundamental problem in network design. We present scaling distortion embeddings where the distortion scales as a function of @math , with the guarantee that for each @math simultaneously, the distortion of a fraction @math of all pairs is bounded accordingly. Quantitatively, we prove that any finite metric space embeds into an ultrametric with scaling distortion @math . For the graph setting, we prove that any weighted graph contains a spanning tree with scaling distortion @math . These bounds are tight even for embedding into arbitrary trees. These results imply that the average distortion of the embedding is constant and that the @math distortion is @math . For probabilistic embedding into spanning trees we prove a scaling distortion of @math , which implies constant @math -distortion for every fixed @math . A probabilistic C-embedding of a (guest) metric M into a collection of(host) metrics M'1, ..., M'k is a randomized mapping F of M intoone of the M'1, ..., M'k such that, for any two points p,q in theguest metric: The distance between F(p) and F(q) in any M'i is not smaller thanthe original distance between p and q. The expected distance between F(p) and F(q) in (random) M'i is notgreater than some constant C times the original distance, for C≥ 1. The constant C is called the distortion of the embedding. Low-distortion probabilistic embeddings enable reducing algorithmicproblems over "hard" guest metrics into "easy" host metrics.We show that every metric induced by a graph of bounded genus can beprobabilistically embedded into planar graphs, with constant distortion. The embedding can be computed efficiently, given a drawing of the graphon a genus-g surface. In this paper, we show that any n point metric space can be embedded into a distribution over dominating tree metrics such that the expected stretch of any edge is O(log n). This improves upon the result of Bartal who gave a bound of O(log n log log n). Moreover, our result is existentially tight; there exist metric spaces where any tree embedding must have distortion Ω(log n)-distortion. This problem lies at the heart of numerous approximation and online algorithms including ones for group Steiner tree, metric labeling, buy-at-bulk network design and metrical task system. Our result improves the performance guarantees for all of these problems. Low-dimensional embedding based on non-metric data (e.g., non-metric multidimensional scaling) is a problem that arises in many applications, especially those involving human subjects. This paper investigates the problem of learning an embedding of n objects into d-dimensional Euclidean space that is consistent with pairwise comparisons of the type “object a is closer to object b than c.” While there are O(n3) such comparisons, experimental studies suggest that relatively few are necessary to uniquely determine the embedding up to the constraints imposed by all possible pairwise comparisons (i.e., the problem is typically over-constrained). This paper is concerned with quantifying the minimum number of pairwise comparisons necessary to uniquely determine an embedding up to all possible comparisons. The comparison constraints stipulate that, with respect to each object, the other objects are ranked relative to their proximity. We prove that at least Q(dn log n) pairwise comparisons are needed to determine the embedding of all n objects. The lower bounds cannot be achieved by using randomly chosen pairwise comparisons. We propose an algorithm that exploits the low-dimensional geometry in order to accurately embed objects based on relatively small number of sequentially selected pairwise comparisons and demonstrate its performance with experiments. This paper addresses two problems lying at the intersection of geometric analysis and theoretical computer science: The non-linear isomorphic Dvoretzky theorem and the design of good approximate distance oracles for large distortion. We introduce the notion of Ramsey partitions of a finite metric space, and show that the existence of good Ramsey partitions implies a solution to the metric Ramsey problem for large distortion (a.k.a. the non-linear version of the isomorphic Dvoretzky theorem, as introduced by Bourgain, Figiel, and Milman in BFM86 ). We then proceed to construct optimal Ramsey partitions, and use them to show that for every @math , every @math -point metric space has a subset of size @math which embeds into Hilbert space with distortion @math . This result is best possible and improves part of the metric Ramsey theorem of Bartal, Linial, Mendel and Naor BLMN05 , in addition to considerably simplifying its proof. We use our new Ramsey partitions to design approximate distance oracles with a universal constant query time, closing a gap left open by Thorup and Zwick in TZ05 . Namely, we show that for every @math point metric space @math , and @math , there exists an @math -approximate distance oracle whose storage requirement is @math , and whose query time is a universal constant. We also discuss applications of Ramsey partitions to various other geometric data structure problems, such as the design of efficient data structures for approximate ranking. We describe algorithms for the problem of minimum distortion embeddings of finite metric spaces into the real line (or a finite subset of the line). The time complexities of our algorithms are parametrized by the values of the minimum distortion, a#x03B4;, and the spread, a#x0394;, of the point set we are embedding. We consider the problem of finding the minimum distortion bijection between two finite subsets of the Euclidean line. This problem was known to have an exact polynomial time solution when a#x03B4; is below a specific small constant, and hard to approximate within a factor of a#x03B4;1 -- a#x03B5;, when a#x03B4; is polynomially large. Let D be the largest adjacent pair distance, a value potentially much smaller than a#x0394;. Then we provide a a#x03B4;O(a#x03B4;2 log2 D) n O(1) time exact algorithm for this problem, which in particular yields a quasipolynomial running time for constant a#x03B4;, and polynomial D. For the more general problem of embedding any finite metric space (X, dX) into a finite subset of the line, Y, we provide a a#x03B4;O(a#x03B4;2) (mn)O(1) time O(1)-approximation algorithm (where |X|=n and |Y|=m), which runs in polynomial time provided a#x03B4; is a constant and a#x03B4; is polynomial. This in turn allows us to get a a#x03B4;O(a#x03B4;2) (n)O(1) time O(1)-approximation algorithm for embedding (X, dX) into the continuous real line. Metric graphs are ubiquitous in science and engineering. For example, many data are drawn from hidden spaces that are graph-like, such as the cosmic web. A metric graph offers one of the simplest yet still meaningful ways to represent the non-linear structure hidden behind the data. In this paper, we propose a new distance between two finite metric graphs, called the persistence-distortion distance, which draws upon a topological idea. This topological perspective along with the metric space viewpoint provide a new angle to the graph matching problem. Our persistence-distortion distance has two properties not shared by previous methods: First, it is stable against the perturbations of the input graph metrics. Second, it is a continuous distance measure, in the sense that it is defined on an alignment of the underlying spaces of input graphs, instead of merely their nodes. This makes our persistence-distortion distance robust against, for example, different discretizations of the same underlying graph. Despite considering the input graphs as continuous spaces, that is, taking all points into account, we show that we can compute the persistence-distortion distance in polynomial time. The time complexity for the discrete case where only graph nodes are considered is much faster. In recent years, the effect of the curse of high dimensionality has been studied in great detail on several problems such as clustering, nearest neighbor search, and indexing. In high dimensional space the data becomes sparse, and traditional indexing and algorithmic techniques fail from a efficiency and or effectiveness perspective. Recent research results show that in high dimensional space, the concept of proximity, distance or nearest neighbor may not even be qualitatively meaningful. In this paper, we view the dimensionality curse from the point of view of the distance metrics which are used to measure the similarity between objects. We specifically examine the behavior of the commonly used Lk norm and show that the problem of meaningfulness in high dimensionality is sensitive to the value of k. For example, this means that the Manhattan distance metric (L1 norm) is consistently more preferable than the Euclidean distance metric (L2 norm) for high dimensional data mining applications. Using the intuition derived from our analysis, we introduce and examine a natural extension of the Lk norm to fractional distance metrics. We show that the fractional distance metric provides more meaningful results both from the theoretical and empirical perspective. The results show that fractional distance metrics can significantly improve the effectiveness of standard clustering algorithms such as the k-means algorithm. A standard result in metric geometry is that every compact geodesic metric space can be approximated arbitrarily well by finite metric graphs in the Gromov-Hausdorff sense. It is well known that the first Betti number of the approximating graphs may blow up as the approximation gets finer. In our work, given a compact geodesic metric space @math , we define a sequence @math of non-negative real numbers by @math By construction, and the above result, this is a non-increasing sequence with limit @math . We study this sequence and its rates of decay with @math . We also identify a precise relationship between the sequence and the first Vietoris-Rips persistence barcode of @math . Furthermore, we specifically analyze @math and find upper and lower bounds based on hyperbolicity and other metric invariants. As a consequence of the tools we develop, our work also provides a Gromov-Hausdorff stability result for the Reeb construction on geodesic metric spaces with respect to the function given by distance to a reference point.