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Reference-request is used when the author needs to know about work related to the question.

26 votes
3 answers
1k views

Graph Isomorphism and hidden subgroups

I'm trying to understand the relationship between graph isomorphism and the hidden subgroup problem. Is there a good reference for this ?
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
21 votes
1 answer
336 views

A comparison of extractors in terms of tradeoffs between time, randomness and space ?

Is there a good survey that compares different extractors, concentrators and superconcentrators and lays out the best methods in terms of the tradeoff between randomness, time and space ?
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
21 votes
1 answer
730 views

A flowchart for concentration bounds

When I teach tail bounds, I use the usual progression: If your r.v is positive, you can apply Markov's inequality If you have independence and also bounded variance, you can apply Chebyshev's inequ …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
701 views

Balls and Bins analysis in the m >> n regime

It's well known that if you throw n balls into n bins, the most loaded bin is highly likely to have $O(\log n)$ balls in it. In general, one can ask about $m > n$ balls in $n$ bins. A paper from RANDO …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
17 votes
4 answers
811 views

Applications of metric structures on posets/lattices in theoryCS

Since the term is overloaded, a brief definition first. A poset is a set $X$ endowed with a partial order $\le$. Given two elements $a,b \in X$, we can define $x \vee y$ (join) as their least upper bo …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
349 views

On the status of learnability inside $\mathsf{TC}^0$

I'm trying to understand the complexity of functions expressible via threshold gates and this led me to $\mathsf{TC}^0$. In particular, I'm interested what's currently known about learning inside $\ma …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
14 votes
0 answers
384 views

Applications of fat shattering dimension in computational geometry

The fat shattering dimension generalizes the notion of VC-dimension to handle function classes where the range is $(0,1)$, instead of $\{0,1\}$. Fat shattering dimension plays the same role as VC-dime …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
14 votes
4 answers
2k views

Theoretical study of coordinate descent methods

I'm preparing some course material on heuristics for optimization, and have been looking at coordinate descent methods. The setting is here a multivariate function $f$ that you wish to optimize. $f$ h …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
1k views

Successful application of branch-and-bound methods for NP-hard problems

Branch and bound is an effective heuristic for search problems, and Wikipedia lists a number of hard problems where branch-and-bound has been used. However, I haven't been able to find references to s …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
275 views

A question on linear extensions of partial orders

If you're given a collection of partial orders, topological sort will tell you if there's an extension of the collection to a total order (an extension in this case is a total order consistent with ea …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
271 views

Art gallery variants with pairwise visibility?

The traditional art gallery problem sets up a region and guards with some notion of visibility, and asks for the minimum number of guards that need to be placed to see the entire region. Has anyone e …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
418 views

Property Testing for Independent Sets

Suppose we're given a graph $G$ and parameters $k,\epsilon$. Are there ranges of values for $k$ (or is it doable for all $k$) for which it is possible to test whether $G$ is $\epsilon$-far from having …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
347 views

Heuristics for Optimization

Since it's Friday, it's time for a CW question. I'm looking for heuristics that have wide use in optimization problems. To limit the scope to more 'theory-friendly' heuristics, here are the rules (som …
5 votes
1 answer
581 views

A good exposition of the random restriction method

I'm wondering if there are good references that describe the random restriction method as a lower bound technique ? I'm aware that it's linked to the switching lemma and shows up in many different pro …
Suresh Venkat's user avatar