Related papers: From Discrepancy to Majority
We study two models of the Majority problem. We are given n balls and an unknown coloring of them with two colors. We can ask sets of balls of size k as queries, and in the so-called General Model the answer to a query shows if all the…
Consider a bin containing $n$ balls colored with two colors. In a $k$-query, $k$ balls are selected by a questioner and the oracle's reply is related (depending on the computation model being considered) to the distribution of colors of the…
A classical problem in combinatorics seeks colorings of low discrepancy. More concretely, the goal is to color the elements of a set system so that the number of appearances of any color among the elements in each set is as balanced as…
Given a set of n balls each colored with a color, a ball is said to be majority, k-majority, plurality if its color class has size larger than half of the number of balls, has size at least k, has size larger than any other color class;…
For $0<\delta\leq 1$, let $R_k(m;\delta)$ denote the smallest $N$ such that every coloring of $k$-element subsets by two colors yields an $m$-element set $M$ with relative discrepancy $\delta$, which means that one color class has at least…
We consider the discrepancy problem of coloring $n$ intervals with $k$ colors such that at each point on the line, the maximal difference between the number of intervals of any two colors is minimal. Somewhat surprisingly, a coloring with…
The partial coloring method is one of the most powerful and widely used method in combinatorial discrepancy problems. However, in many cases it leads to sub-optimal bounds as the partial coloring step must be iterated a logarithmic number…
We extend the notion of combinatorial discrepancy to \emph{non-additive} functions. Our main result is an upper bound of $O(\sqrt{n \log(nk)})$ on the non-additive $k$-color discrepancy when $k$ is a prime power. We demonstrate two…
The $k$-majority game is played with $n$ numbered balls, each coloured with one of two colours. It is given that there are at least $k$ balls of the majority colour, where $k$ is a fixed integer greater than $n/2$. On each turn the player…
We consider the problem of finding a low discrepancy coloring for sparse set systems where each element lies in at most t sets. We give an efficient algorithm that finds a coloring with discrepancy O((t log n)^{1/2}), matching the best…
We consider the problem of finding a low discrepancy coloring for sparse set systems where each element lies in at most $t$ sets. We give an algorithm that finds a coloring with discrepancy $O((t \log n \log s)^{1/2})$ where $s$ is the…
Motivated by many applications, we study clustering with a faulty oracle. In this problem, there are $n$ items belonging to $k$ unknown clusters, and the algorithm is allowed to ask the oracle whether two items belong to the same cluster or…
We show that several versions of Floyd and Rivest's improved algorithm Select for finding the $k$th smallest of $n$ elements require at most $n+\min\{k,n-k\}+O(n^{1/2}\ln^{1/2}n)$ comparisons on average and with high probability. This…
We prove the following asymptotically tight lower bound for $k$-color discrepancy: For any $k \geq 2$, there exists a hypergraph with $n$ hyperedges such that its $k$-color discrepancy is at least $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$. This improves on the…
Suppose that the vertices of a graph $G$ are colored with two colors in an unknown way. The color that occurs on more than half of the vertices is called the majority color (if it exists), and any vertex of this color is called a majority…
In this paper we describe a new efficient (in fact optimal) data structure for the {\em top-$K$ color problem}. Each element of an array $A$ is assigned a color $c$ with priority $p(c)$. For a query range $[a,b]$ and a value $K$, we have to…
As the most powerful tool in discrepancy theory, the partial coloring method has wide applications in many problems including the Beck-Fiala problem and Spencer's celebrated result. Currently, there are two major algorithmic methods for the…
A neat 1972 result of Pohl asserts that [3n/2]-2 comparisons are sufficient, and also necessary in the worst case, for finding both the minimum and the maximum of an n-element totally ordered set. The set is accessed via an oracle for…
In the snippets problem, the goal is to preprocess text $T$ so that given two patterns $P_1$ and $P_2$, one can locate the occurrences of the two patterns in $T$ that are closest to each other, or report their distance. Kopelowitz and…
Suppose we are given a set of $n$ balls $\{b_1,\ldots,b_n\}$ each colored either red or blue in some way unknown to us. To find out some information about the colors, we can query any triple of balls $\{b_{i_1},b_{i_2},b_{i_3}\}$. As an…