We prove the existence conjecture for combinatorial designs, answering a question of Steiner from 1853. More generally, we show that the natural divisibility conditions are sufficient for clique decompositions of simplicial complexes that satisfy a certain pseudorandomness condition. As a further generalisation, we obtain the same conclusion only assuming an extendability property and the existence of a robust fractional clique decomposition.
Another relaxation of the conjecture, which will play an important role in this paper, is obtained by considering integral designs', in which one assigns integers to the copies of @math in @math such that for every edge @math the sum of the integers assigned to the copies of @math containing @math is a constant independent of @math . Graver and Jurkat @cite_40 and Wilson @cite_29 showed that the divisibility conditions suffice for the existence of integral designs (this is used in @cite_29 to show the existence for large @math of integral designs with non-negative coefficients). Wilson @cite_7 also characterised the existence of integral @math -decompositions for any @math -graph @math .
@cite_40 @cite_29 @cite_7
1999506309 1588675120
Let @math be a partially ordered set. If the Boolean lattice @math can be partitioned into copies of @math for some positive integer @math , then @math must satisfy the following two trivial conditions: (1) the size of @math is a power of @math , (2) @math has a unique maximal and minimal element. Resolving a conjecture of Lonc, it was shown by Gruslys, Leader and Tomon that these conditions are sufficient as well. In this paper, we show that if @math only satisfies condition (2), we can still almost partition @math into copies of @math . We prove that if @math has a unique maximal and minimal element, then there exists a constant @math such that all but at most @math elements of @math can be covered by disjoint copies of @math . Let @math be an induced subgraph of the torus @math . We show that when @math is even and @math divides some power of @math , then for sufficiently large @math the torus @math has a perfect vertex-packing with induced copies of @math . On the other hand, disproving a conjecture of Gruslys, we show that when @math is odd and not a prime power, then there exists @math such that @math divides some power of @math , but there is no @math such that @math has a perfect vertex-packing with copies of @math . We also disprove a conjecture of Gruslys, Leader and Tan by exhibiting a subgraph @math of the @math -dimensional hypercube @math , such that there is no @math for which @math has a perfect edge-packing with copies of @math . We investigate the minimization of Newton's functional for the problem of the body of minimal resistance with maximal height @math cite butt in the class of convex developable functions defined in a disc. This class is a natural candidate to find a (non-radial) minimizer in accordance with the results of cite lrp2. We prove that the minimizer in this class has a minimal set in the form of a regular polygon with @math sides centered in the disc, and numerical experiments indicate that the natural number @math is a non-decreasing function of @math . The corresponding functions all achieve a lower value of the functional than the optimal radially symmetric function with the same height @math . For a pattern graph @math on @math nodes, we consider the problems of finding and counting the number of (not necessarily induced) copies of @math in a given large graph @math on @math nodes, as well as finding minimum weight copies in both node-weighted and edge-weighted graphs. Our results include the following: 1. The number of copies of an @math with an independent set of size @math can be computed exactly in @math time and @math space, or in @math time and @math space. (The @math notation omits @math factors.) To obtain these algorithms we provide fast algorithms for computing the permanent of a @math matrix over rings and semirings. 2. The number of copies of any @math having minimum (or maximum) node-weight (with arbitrary real weights on nodes) can be found in @math time, where @math is the matrix multiplication exponent and @math is divisible by @math . Similar results hold for other values of @math . Also, the number... Given an undirected graph @math with @math edges, @math vertices, and non-negative edge weights, and given an integer @math , we show that for some universal constant @math , a @math -approximate distance oracle for @math of size @math can be constructed in @math time and can answer queries in @math time. We also give an oracle which is faster for smaller @math . Our results break the quadratic preprocessing time bound of Baswana and Kavitha for all @math and improve the @math time bound of Thorup and Zwick except for very sparse graphs and small @math . When @math and @math , our oracle is optimal w.r.t. both stretch, size, preprocessing time, and query time, assuming a widely believed girth conjecture by Erd o s. Consider the following probabilistic one-player game: The board is a graph with @math vertices, which initially contains no edges. In each step, a new edge is drawn uniformly at random from all nonedges and is presented to the player, henceforth called Painter. Painter must assign one of @math available colors to each edge immediately, where @math is a fixed integer. The game is over as soon as a monochromatic copy of some fixed graph @math has been created, and Painter's goal is to “survive” for as many steps as possible before this happens. We present a new technique for deriving upper bounds on the threshold of this game, i.e., on the typical number of steps Painter will survive with an optimal strategy. More specifically, we consider a deterministic two-player variant of the game where the edges are chosen not randomly, but by a second player Builder. However, Builder has to adhere to the restriction that, for some real number @math , the ratio of edges to vertices in all subgraphs of the evolving board ne... We consider the problem of estimating the discrete clustering structures under Sub-Gaussian Mixture Models. Our main results establish a hidden integrality property of a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation for this problem: while the optimal solutions to the SDP are not integer-valued in general, their estimation errors can be upper bounded in terms of the error of an idealized integer program. The error of the integer program, and hence that of the SDP, are further shown to decay exponentially in the signal-to-noise ratio. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first exponentially decaying error bound for convex relaxations of mixture models, and our results reveal the "global-to-local" mechanism that drives the performance of the SDP relaxation. A corollary of our results shows that in certain regimes the SDP solutions are in fact integral and exact, improving on existing exact recovery results for convex relaxations. More generally, our results establish sufficient conditions for the SDP to correctly recover the cluster memberships of @math fraction of the points for any @math . As a special case, we show that under the @math -dimensional Stochastic Ball Model, SDP achieves non-trivial (sometimes exact) recovery when the center separation is as small as @math , which complements previous exact recovery results that require constant separation. This paper investigates a zero-sum game played on a weighted connected graph @math between two players, the tree player and the edge player. At each play, the tree player chooses a spanning tree @math and the edge player chooses an edge @math . The payoff to the edge player is @math , defined as follows: If @math lies in the tree @math then @math ; if @math does not lie in the tree then @math , where @math is the weight of edge @math and @math is the weight of the unique cycle formed when edge @math is added to the tree @math . The main result is that the value of the game on any @math -vertex graph is bounded above by @math . It is conjectured that the value of the game is @math . The game arises in connection with the @math -server problem on a road network; i.e., a metric space that can be represented as a multigraph @math in which each edge @math represents a road of length @math . It is shown that, if the value of the game on @math is @math , then there is a randomized strategy that achieves a competitive ratio of @math against any oblivious adversary. Thus, on any @math -vertex road network, there is a randomized algorithm for the @math -server problem that is @math competitive against oblivious adversaries. At the heart of the analysis of the game is an algorithm that provides an approximate solution for the simple network design problem. Specifically, for any @math -vertex weighted, connected multigraph, the algorithm constructs a spanning tree @math such that the average, over all edges @math , of @math is less than or equal to @math . This result has potential application to the design of communication networks. It also improves substantially known estimates concerning the existence of a sparse basis for the cycle space of a graph. Understanding the local behaviour of structured multi-dimensional data is a fundamental problem in various areas of computer science. As the amount of data is often huge, it is desirable to obtain sublinear time algorithms, and specifically property testers, to understand local properties of the data. We focus on the natural local problem of testing pattern freeness: given a large @math -dimensional array @math and a fixed @math -dimensional pattern @math over a finite alphabet, we say that @math is @math -free if it does not contain a copy of the forbidden pattern @math as a consecutive subarray. The distance of @math to @math -freeness is the fraction of entries of @math that need to be modified to make it @math -free. For any @math and any large enough pattern @math over any alphabet, other than a very small set of exceptional patterns, we design a tolerant tester that distinguishes between the case that the distance is at least @math and the case that it is at most @math , with query complexity and running time @math , where @math and @math depend only on @math . To analyze the testers we establish several combinatorial results, including the following @math -dimensional modification lemma, which might be of independent interest: for any large enough pattern @math over any alphabet (excluding a small set of exceptional patterns for the binary case), and any array @math containing a copy of @math , one can delete this copy by modifying one of its locations without creating new @math -copies in @math . Our results address an open question of Fischer and Newman, who asked whether there exist efficient testers for properties related to tight substructures in multi-dimensional structured data. They serve as a first step towards a general understanding of local properties of multi-dimensional arrays, as any such property can be characterized by a fixed family of forbidden patterns. In this paper we consider the Stochastic Matching problem, which is motivated by applications in kidney exchange and online dating. We are given an undirected graph in which every edge is assigned a probability of existence and a positive profit, and each node is assigned a positive integer called timeout. We know whether an edge exists or not only after probing it. On this random graph we are executing a process, which one-by-one probes the edges and gradually constructs a matching. The process is constrained in two ways: once an edge is taken it cannot be removed from the matching, and the timeout of node @math upper-bounds the number of edges incident to @math that can be probed. The goal is to maximize the expected profit of the constructed matching. For this problem (Algorithmica 2012) provided a @math -approximation algorithm for bipartite graphs, and a @math -approximation for general graphs. In this work we improve the approximation factors to @math and @math , respectively. We also consider an online version of the bipartite case, where one side of the partition arrives node by node, and each time a node @math arrives we have to decide which edges incident to @math we want to probe, and in which order. Here we present a @math -approximation, improving on the @math -approximation of The main technical ingredient in our result is a novel way of probing edges according to a random but non-uniform permutation. Patching this method with an algorithm that works best for large probability edges (plus some additional ideas) leads to our improved approximation factors. We consider the maximum independent set problem on graphs with maximum degree @math . We show that the integrality gap of the Lov 'asz @math -function based SDP is @math . This improves on the previous best result of @math , and almost matches the integrality gap of @math recently shown for stronger SDPs, namely those obtained using poly- @math levels of the @math semidefinite hierarchy. The improvement comes from an improved Ramsey-theoretic bound on the independence number of @math -free graphs for large values of @math . We also show how to obtain an algorithmic version of the above-mentioned @math -based integrality gap result, via a coloring algorithm of Johansson. The resulting approximation guarantee of @math matches the best unique-games-based hardness result up to lower-order poly- @math factors. Consider a convex relaxation @math of a pseudo-boolean function @math . We say that the relaxation is totally half-integral if @math is a polyhedral function with half-integral extreme points @math , and this property is preserved after adding an arbitrary combination of constraints of the form @math , @math , and @math where @math is a constant. A well-known example is the roof duality relaxation for quadratic pseudo-boolean functions @math . We argue that total half-integrality is a natural requirement for generalizations of roof duality to arbitrary pseudo-boolean functions. Our contributions are as follows. First, we provide a complete characterization of totally half-integral relaxations @math by establishing a one-to-one correspondence with bisubmodular functions . Second, we give a new characterization of bisubmodular functions. Finally, we show some relationships between general totally half-integral relaxations and relaxations based on the roof duality. The edge isoperimetric inequality in the discrete cube specifies, for each pair of integers @math and @math , the minimum size @math of the edge boundary of an @math -element subset of @math ; the extremal families (up to automorphisms of the discrete cube) are initial segments of the lexicographic ordering on @math . We show that for any @math -element subset @math and any integer @math , if the edge boundary of @math has size at most @math , then there exists an extremal family @math such that @math , where @math is an absolute constant. This is best-possible, up to the value of @math . Our result can be seen as a stability' version of the edge isoperimetric inequality in the discrete cube, and as a discrete analogue of the seminal stability result of Fusco, Maggi and Pratelli concerning the isoperimetric inequality in Euclidean space. It is a fundamental problem to decide how many copies of an unknown mixed quantum state are necessary and sufficient to determine the state. Previously, it was known only that estimating states to error @math in trace distance required @math copies for a @math -dimensional density matrix of rank @math . Here, we give a theoretical measurement scheme (POVM) that requires @math copies to estimate @math to error @math in infidelity, and a matching lower bound up to logarithmic factors. This implies @math copies suffice to achieve error @math in trace distance. We also prove that for independent (product) measurements, @math copies are necessary in order to achieve error @math in infidelity. For fixed @math , our measurement can be implemented on a quantum computer in time polynomial in @math . Consider a system of diagonal equations satisfying the property that the (fixed) integral coefficient matrix @math contains no singular @math submatrix. A recent paper of the authors [ 3 ] establishes that whenever @math and @math , then the expected asymptotic formula holds for the number @math of integral solutions @math of ( @math ) with @math @math . The subspace approximation problem Subspace( @math , @math ) asks for a @math -dimensional linear subspace that fits a given set of points optimally, where the error for fitting is a generalization of the least squares fit and uses the @math norm instead. Most of the previous work on subspace approximation has focused on small or constant @math and @math , using coresets and sampling techniques from computational geometry. In this paper, extending another line of work based on convex relaxation and rounding, we give a polynomial time algorithm, , with the approximation guarantee roughly @math , where @math is the @math -th moment of a standard normal random variable N(0,1). We show that the convex relaxation we use has an integrality gap (or "rank gap") of @math , for any constant @math . Finally, we show that assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, the subspace approximation problem is hard to approximate within a factor better than @math , for any constant @math . We revisit the classic problem of estimating the degree distribution moments of an undirected graph. Consider an undirected graph @math with @math vertices, and define (for @math ) @math . Our aim is to estimate @math within a multiplicative error of @math (for a given approximation parameter @math ) in sublinear time. We consider the sparse graph model that allows access to: uniform random vertices, queries for the degree of any vertex, and queries for a neighbor of any vertex. For the case of @math (the average degree), @math queries suffice for any constant @math (Feige, SICOMP 06 and Goldreich-Ron, RSA 08). Gonen-Ron-Shavitt (SIDMA 11) extended this result to all integral @math , by designing an algorithms that performs @math queries. We design a new, significantly simpler algorithm for this problem. In the worst-case, it exactly matches the bounds of Gonen-Ron-Shavitt, and has a much simpler proof. More importantly, the running time of this algorithm is connected to the degeneracy of @math . This is (essentially) the maximum density of an induced subgraph. For the family of graphs with degeneracy at most @math , it has a query complexity of @math . Thus, for the class of bounded degeneracy graphs (which includes all minor closed families and preferential attachment graphs), we can estimate the average degree in @math queries, and can estimate the variance of the degree distribution in @math queries. This is a major improvement over the previous worst-case bounds. Our key insight is in designing an estimator for @math that has low variance when @math does not have large dense subgraphs. We consider properties of edge-colored vertex-ordered graphs, i.e., graphs with a totally ordered vertex set and a finite set of possible edge colors. We show that any hereditary property of such graphs is strongly testable, i.e., testable with a constant number of queries. We also explain how the proof can be adapted to show that any hereditary property of @math -dimensional matrices over a finite alphabet (where row and column order is not ignored) is strongly testable. The first result generalizes the result of Alon and Shapira [FOCS'05, SICOMP'08], who showed that any hereditary graph property (without vertex order) is strongly testable. The second result answers and generalizes a conjecture of Alon, Fischer and Newman [SICOMP'07] concerning testing of matrix properties. The testability is proved by establishing a removal lemma for vertex-ordered graphs. It states that for any finite or infinite family @math of forbidden vertex-ordered graphs, and any @math , there exist @math and @math so that any vertex-ordered graph which is @math -far from being @math -free contains at least @math copies of some @math (with the correct vertex order) where @math . The proof bridges the gap between techniques related to the regularity lemma, used in the long chain of papers investigating graph testing, and string testing techniques. Along the way we develop a Ramsey-type lemma for @math -partite graphs with "undesirable" edges, stating that one can find a Ramsey-type structure in such a graph, in which the density of the undesirable edges is not much higher than the density of those edges in the graph. When graph Ramsey theory is viewed as a game, "Painter" 2-colors the edges of a graph presented by "Builder". Builder wins if every coloring has a monochromatic copy of a fixed graph @math . In the on-line version, iteratively, Builder presents one edge and Painter must color it. Builder must keep the presented graph in a class @math . Builder wins the game @math if a monochromatic copy of @math can be forced. The on-line degree Ramsey number @math is the least @math such that Builder wins @math when @math is the class of graphs with maximum degree at most @math . Our results include: 1) @math if and only if @math is a linear forest or each component lies inside @math . 2) @math , where @math . 3) @math for a tree @math , where @math and @math are two largest vertex degrees. 4) @math , with @math except for finitely many odd values of @math . 5) @math when @math . The lower bounds come from strategies for Painter that color edges red whenever the red graph remains in a specified class. The upper bounds use a result showing that Builder may assume that Painter plays "consistently". In the subgraph-freeness problem, we are given a constant-size graph @math , and wish to determine whether the network contains @math as a subgraph or not. The relaxation of the problem only requires us to distinguish graphs that are @math -free from graphs that are @math -far from @math -free, meaning an @math -fraction of their edges must be removed to obtain an @math -free graph. Recently, Censor-Hillel et. al. and showed that in the property-testing regime it is possible to test @math -freeness for any graph @math of size 4 in constant time, @math rounds, regardless of the network size. However, Fraigniaud et. al. also showed that their techniques for graphs @math of size 4 cannot test @math -cycle-freeness in constant time. In this paper we revisit the subgraph-freeness problem and show that @math -cycle-freeness, and indeed @math -freeness for many other graphs @math comprising more than 4 vertices, can be tested in constant time. We show that @math -freeness can be tested in @math rounds for any cycle @math , improving on the running time of @math of the previous algorithms for triangle-freeness and @math -freeness. In the special case of triangles, we show that triangle-freeness can be solved in @math rounds independently of @math , when @math is not too small with respect to the number of nodes and edges. We also show that @math -freeness for any constant-size tree @math can be tested in @math rounds, even without the property-testing relaxation. Building on these results, we define a general class of graphs for which we can test subgraph-freeness in @math rounds. This class includes all graphs over 5 vertices except the 5-clique, @math . For cliques @math over @math nodes, we show that @math -freeness can be tested in @math rounds, where @math is the number of edges.