Stochastic dominance is a technique for evaluating the performance of online algorithms that provides an intuitive, yet powerful stochastic order between the compared algorithms. Accordingly this holds for bijective analysis, which can be interpreted as stochastic dominance assuming the uniform distribution over requests. These techniques have been applied to some online problems, and have provided a clear separation between algorithms whose performance varies significantly in practice. However, there are situations in which they are not readily applicable due to the fact that they stipulate a stringent relation between the compared algorithms. In this paper, we propose remedies for these shortcomings. First, we establish sufficient conditions that allow us to prove the bijective optimality of a certain class of algorithms for a wide range of problems; we demonstrate this approach in the context of some well-studied online problems. Second, to account for situations in which two algorithms are incomparable or there is no clear optimum, we introduce the bijective ratio as a natural extension of (exact) bijective analysis. Our definition readily generalizes to stochastic dominance. This renders the concept of bijective analysis (and that of stochastic dominance) applicable to all online problems, and allows for the incorporation of other useful techniques such as amortized analysis. We demonstrate the applicability of the bijective ratio to one of the fundamental online problems, namely the continuous @math -server problem on metrics such as the line, the circle, and the star. Among other results, we show that the greedy algorithm attains bijective ratios of @math consistently across these metrics. These results confirm extensive previous studies that gave evidence of the efficiency of this algorithm on said metrics in practice, which, however, is not reflected in competitive analysis.
We denote by @math a sequence of requests, and by @math the set of all request sequences of size @math . Following @cite_4 , we denote by @math the subsequence @math . We also use sometimes @math to refer to the @math -th request of @math , namely @math . For the @math -server problem, we denote the distance between two points @math by @math . Unless otherwise noted, we assume that both the line and the circle have unit lengths.
@cite_4
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We study the aggregate group nearest neighbor searching for the MAX operator in the plane. For a set @math of @math points and a query set @math of @math points, the query asks for a point of @math whose maximum distance to the points in @math is minimized. We present data structures for answering such queries for both @math and @math distance measures. Previously, only heuristic and approximation algorithms were given for both versions. For the @math version, we build a data structure of O(n) size in @math time, such that each query can be answered in @math time. For the @math version, we build a data structure in @math time and @math space, such that each query can be answered in @math time, and alternatively, we build a data structure in @math time and space for any @math , such that each query can be answered in @math time. Further, we extend our result for the @math version to the top- @math queries where each query asks for the @math points of @math whose maximum distances to @math are the smallest for any @math with @math : We build a data structure of O(n) size in @math time, such that each top- @math query can be answered in @math time. For an unweighted graph @math , @math is a subgraph if @math , and @math is a Steiner graph if @math , and for any pair of vertices @math , the distance between them in @math (denoted @math ) is at least the distance between them in @math (denoted @math ). In this paper we introduce the notion of distance preserver. A subgraph (resp., Steiner graph) @math of a graph @math is a subgraph (resp., Steiner) @math -preserver of @math if for every pair of vertices @math with @math , @math . We show that any graph (resp., digraph) has a subgraph @math -preserver with at most @math edges (resp., arcs), and there are graphs and digraphs for which any undirected Steiner @math -preserver contains @math edges. However, we show that if one allows a directed Steiner (diSteiner) @math -preserver, then these bounds can be improved. Specifically, we show that for any graph or digraph there exists a diSteiner @math -preserver with @math arcs, and that this result is tight up to a constant factor. We also study @math -preserving distance labeling schemes, that are labeling schemes that guarantee precise calculation of distances between pairs of vertices that are at a distance of at least @math one from another. We show that there exists a @math -preserving labeling scheme with labels of size @math , and that labels of size @math are required for any @math -preserving labeling scheme. Let @math be a tree space (or tree network) represented by a weighted tree with @math vertices, and @math be a set of @math stochastic points in @math , each of which has a fixed location with an independent existence probability. We investigate two fundamental problems under such a stochastic setting, the closest-pair problem and the nearest-neighbor search. For the former, we study the computation of the @math -threshold probability and the expectation of the closest-pair distance of a realization of @math . We propose the first algorithm to compute the @math -threshold probability in @math time for any given threshold @math , which immediately results in an @math -time algorithm for computing the expected closest-pair distance. Based on this, we further show that one can compute a @math -approximation for the expected closest-pair distance in @math time, by arguing that the expected closest-pair distance can be approximated via @math threshold probability queries. For the latter, we study the @math most-likely nearest-neighbor search ( @math -LNN) via a notion called @math most-likely Voronoi Diagram ( @math -LVD). We show that the size of the @math -LVD @math of @math on @math is bounded by @math if the existence probabilities of the points in @math are constant-far from 0. Furthermore, we establish an @math average-case upper bound for the size of @math , by regarding the existence probabilities as i.i.d. random variables drawn from some fixed distribution. Our results imply the existence of an LVD data structure which answers @math -LNN queries in @math time using average-case @math space, and worst-case @math space if the existence probabilities are constant-far from 0. Finally, we also give an @math -time algorithm to construct the LVD data structure. We consider a system of @math servers inter-connected by some underlying graph topology @math . Tasks arrive at the various servers as independent Poisson processes of rate @math . Each incoming task is irrevocably assigned to whichever server has the smallest number of tasks among the one where it appears and its neighbors in @math . Tasks have unit-mean exponential service times and leave the system upon service completion. The above model has been extensively investigated in the case @math is a clique. Since the servers are exchangeable in that case, the queue length process is quite tractable, and it has been proved that for any @math , the fraction of servers with two or more tasks vanishes in the limit as @math . For an arbitrary graph @math , the lack of exchangeability severely complicates the analysis, and the queue length process tends to be worse than for a clique. Accordingly, a graph @math is said to be @math -optimal or @math -optimal when the occupancy process on @math is equivalent to that on a clique on an @math -scale or @math -scale, respectively. We prove that if @math is an Erd o s-R 'enyi random graph with average degree @math , then it is with high probability @math -optimal and @math -optimal if @math and @math as @math , respectively. This demonstrates that optimality can be maintained at @math -scale and @math -scale while reducing the number of connections by nearly a factor @math and @math compared to a clique, provided the topology is suitably random. It is further shown that if @math contains @math bounded-degree nodes, then it cannot be @math -optimal. In addition, we establish that an arbitrary graph @math is @math -optimal when its minimum degree is @math , and may not be @math -optimal even when its minimum degree is @math for any @math .