Quantiles, such as the median or percentiles, provide concise and useful information about the distribution of a collection of items, drawn from a linearly ordered universe. We study data structures, called quantile summaries, which keep track of all quantiles, up to an error of at most @math . That is, an @math -approximate quantile summary first processes a stream of items and then, given any quantile query @math , returns an item from the stream, which is a @math -quantile for some @math . We focus on comparison-based quantile summaries that can only compare two items and are otherwise completely oblivious of the universe. The best such deterministic quantile summary to date, by Greenwald and Khanna (ACM SIGMOD '01), stores at most @math items, where @math is the number of items in the stream. We prove that this space bound is optimal by providing a matching lower bound. Our result thus rules out the possibility of constructing a deterministic comparison-based quantile summary in space @math , for any function @math that does not depend on @math . A consequence of our results is also to show a lower bound for randomized algorithms.
If we tolerate randomization and relax the requirement for worst-case error guarantees, it is possible to design quantile summaries with space close to @math . After a sequence of improvements @cite_0 @cite_3 @cite_4 @cite_10 , Karnin, Lang, and Liberty @cite_14 designed a randomized comparison-based quantile summary with space bounded by @math , where @math is the probability of not returning an @math -approximate @math -quantile for some @math . The algorithm combines careful sampling, and uses the Greenwald-Khanna summary as a subroutine. They also provide a reduction to transform the deterministic @math lower bound into a randomized lower bound of @math , implying optimality of their approach in its model. We discuss further how the deterministic and randomized lower bounds relate in .
@cite_14 @cite_4 @cite_3 @cite_0 @cite_10
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Over the past 30 years numerous algorithms have been designed for symmetry breaking problems in the LOCAL model, such as maximal matching, MIS, vertex coloring, and edge-coloring. For most problems the best randomized algorithm is at least exponentially faster than the best deterministic algorithm. In this paper we prove that these exponential gaps are necessary and establish connections between the deterministic and randomized complexities in the LOCAL model. Each result has a very compelling take-away message: 1. Fast @math -coloring of trees requires random bits: Building on the recent lower bounds of , we prove that the randomized complexity of @math -coloring a tree with maximum degree @math is @math , whereas its deterministic complexity is @math for any @math . This also establishes a large separation between the deterministic complexity of @math -coloring and @math -coloring trees. 2. Randomized lower bounds imply deterministic lower bounds: We prove that any deterministic algorithm for a natural class of problems that runs in @math rounds can be transformed to run in @math rounds. If the transformed algorithm violates a lower bound (even allowing randomization), then one can conclude that the problem requires @math time deterministically. 3. Deterministic lower bounds imply randomized lower bounds: We prove that the randomized complexity of any natural problem on instances of size @math is at least its deterministic complexity on instances of size @math . This shows that a deterministic @math lower bound for any problem implies a randomized @math lower bound. It also illustrates that the graph shattering technique is absolutely essential to the LOCAL model. A quantile summary is a data structure that approximates to "-relative error the order statistics of a much larger underlying dataset. In this paper we develop a randomized online quantile summary for the cash register data input model and comparison data domain model that uses O( 1 " log 1 " ) words of memory. This improves upon the previous best upper bound of O( 1 log 3=2 1 ) by Agarwal et. al. (PODS 2012). Further, by a lower bound of Hung and Ting (FAW 2010) no deterministic summary for the comparison model can outperform our randomized summary in terms of space complexity. Lastly, our summary has the nice property that O( 1 log 1 ) words suce The Gap-Hamming-Distance problem arose in the context of proving space lower bounds for a number of key problems in the data stream model. In this problem, Alice and Bob have to decide whether the Hamming distance between their @math -bit input strings is large (i.e., at least @math ) or small (i.e., at most @math ); they do not care if it is neither large nor small. This @math gap in the problem specification is crucial for capturing the approximation allowed to a data stream algorithm. Thus far, for randomized communication, an @math lower bound on this problem was known only in the one-way setting. We prove an @math lower bound for randomized protocols that use any constant number of rounds. As a consequence we conclude, for instance, that @math -approximately counting the number of distinct elements in a data stream requires @math space, even with multiple (a constant number of) passes over the input stream. This extends earlier one-pass lower bounds, answering a long-standing open question. We obtain similar results for approximating the frequency moments and for approximating the empirical entropy of a data stream. In the process, we also obtain tight @math lower and upper bounds on the one-way deterministic communication complexity of the problem. Finally, we give a simple combinatorial proof of an @math lower bound on the one-way randomized communication complexity. We design new polynomials for representing threshold functions in three different regimes: probabilistic polynomials of low degree, which need far less randomness than previous constructions, polynomial threshold functions (PTFs) with "nice" threshold behavior and degree almost as low as the probabilistic polynomials, and a new notion of probabilistic PTFs where we combine the above techniques to achieve even lower degree with similar "nice" threshold behavior. Utilizing these polynomial constructions, we design faster algorithms for a variety of problems: @math Offline Hamming Nearest (and Furthest) Neighbors: Given @math red and @math blue points in @math -dimensional Hamming space for @math , we can find an (exact) nearest (or furthest) blue neighbor for every red point in randomized time @math or deterministic time @math . These also lead to faster MAX-SAT algorithms for sparse CNFs. @math Offline Approximate Nearest (and Furthest) Neighbors: Given @math red and @math blue points in @math -dimensional @math or Euclidean space, we can find a @math -approximate nearest (or furthest) blue neighbor for each red point in randomized time near @math . @math SAT Algorithms and Lower Bounds for Circuits With Linear Threshold Functions: We give a satisfiability algorithm for @math circuits with a subquadratic number of linear threshold gates on the bottom layer, and a subexponential number of gates on the other layers, that runs in deterministic @math time. This also implies new circuit lower bounds for threshold circuits. We also give a randomized @math -time SAT algorithm for subexponential-size @math circuits, where the top @math gate and middle @math gates have @math fan-in. We consider the following scheduling problem. The input is a set of jobs with equal processing times, where each job is specified by its release time and deadline. The goal is to determine a single-processor nonpreemptive schedule that maximizes the number of completed jobs. In the online version, each job arrives at its release time. We give two online algorithms with competitive ratios below @math and show several lower bounds on the competitive ratios. First, we give a barely random @math -competitive algorithm that uses only one random bit. We also show a lower bound of @math on the competitive ratio of barely random algorithms that randomly choose one of two deterministic algorithms. If the two algorithms are selected with equal probability, we can further improve the bound to @math . Second, we give a deterministic @math -competitive algorithm in the model that allows restarts, and we show that in this model the ratio @math is optimal. For randomized algorithms with restarts we show a lower bound of @math .