Related papers: Asymmetric R\'enyi Problem
In 1960, R\'enyi asked for the number of random queries necessary to recover a hidden bijective labeling of n distinct objects. In each query one selects a random subset of labels and asks, what is the set of objects that have these labels?…
R\'enyi's parking problem (or $1D$ sequential interval packing problem) dates back to 1958, when R\'enyi studied the following random process: Consider an interval $I$ of length $x$, and sequentially and randomly pack disjoint unit…
We introduce the problem of hidden Hamiltonian cycle recovery, where there is an unknown Hamiltonian cycle in an $n$-vertex complete graph that needs to be inferred from noisy edge measurements. The measurements are independent and…
The problem of learning or reconstructing an unknown graph from a known family via partial-information queries arises as a mathematical model in various contexts. The most basic type of access to the graph is via \emph{edge queries}, where…
Consider $n$ items, each of which is characterised by one of $d+1$ possible features in $\{0, \ldots, d\}$. We study the inference task of learning these types by queries on subsets, or pools, of the items that only reveal a form of…
This work focuses on the problem of learning an unknown $3$-uniform hypergraph using edge-detecting queries. Our goal is to design a querying strategy that recovers the hyperedge set using as few queries as possible. We restrict our…
A matrix is given in ``shredded'' form if we are presented with the multiset of rows and the multiset of columns, but not told which row is which or which column is which. The matrix is reconstructible if it is uniquely determined by this…
We consider the problem of distilling uniform random bits from an unknown source with a given $p$-entropy using linear hashing. As our main result, we estimate the expected $p$-divergence from the uniform distribution over the ensemble of…
We consider the problem of recovering items matching a partially specified pattern in multidimensional trees (quadtrees and $k$-d trees). We assume the traditional model where the data consist of independent and uniform points in the unit…
We study $p$-Faulty Search, a variant of the classic cow-path optimization problem, where a unit speed robot searches the half-line (or $1$-ray) for a hidden item. The searcher is probabilistically faulty, and detection of the item with…
Mixture of linear regressions is a popular learning theoretic model that is used widely to represent heterogeneous data. In the simplest form, this model assumes that the labels are generated from either of two different linear models and…
This paper solves a problem that was stated by M. A. Harrison in 1973~\cite{harrison1973number}. This problem, that has remained open since then is concerned with counting equivalence classes of $n\times r$ binary matrices under row and…
We prove that any algorithm for learning parities requires either a memory of quadratic size or an exponential number of samples. This proves a recent conjecture of Steinhardt, Valiant and Wager and shows that for some learning problems a…
Finding a fluorescent target in a biological environment is a common and pressing microscopy problem. This task is formally analogous to the canonical search problem. In ideal (noise-free, truthful) search problems, the well-known binary…
It has been a long-standing problem to efficiently learn a halfspace using as few labels as possible in the presence of noise. In this work, we propose an efficient Perceptron-based algorithm for actively learning homogeneous halfspaces…
We consider a basic problem in unsupervised learning: learning an unknown \emph{Poisson Binomial Distribution}. A Poisson Binomial Distribution (PBD) over $\{0,1,\dots,n\}$ is the distribution of a sum of $n$ independent Bernoulli random…
A special type of binomial splitting process is studied. Such a process can be used to model a high-dimensional corner parking problem, as well as the depth of random PATRICIA tries (a special class of digital tree data structures). The…
Consider a query-based data acquisition problem that aims to recover the values of $k$ binary variables from parity (XOR) measurements of chosen subsets of the variables. Assume the response model where only a randomly selected subset of…
Let $V$ be a set of $n$ points on the real line. Suppose that each pairwise distance is known independently with probability $p$. How much of $V$ can be reconstructed up to isometry? We prove that $p = (\log n)/n$ is a sharp threshold for…
Motivated by an application of eliciting users' preferences, we investigate the problem of learning hemimetrics, i.e., pairwise distances among a set of $n$ items that satisfy triangle inequalities and non-negativity constraints. In our…