Related papers: TURF: A Two-factor, Universal, Robust, Fast Distri…
A fundamental issue in real-world systems, such as sensor networks, is the selection of observations which most effectively reduce uncertainty. More specifically, we address the long standing problem of nonmyopically selecting the most…
We give a algorithm for exact sampling from the Bingham distribution $p(x)\propto \exp(x^\top A x)$ on the sphere $\mathcal S^{d-1}$ with expected runtime of $\operatorname{poly}(d, \lambda_{\max}(A)-\lambda_{\min}(A))$. The algorithm is…
We study a fundamental stochastic selection problem involving $n$ independent random variables, each of which can be queried at some cost. Given a tolerance level $\delta$, the goal is to find a value that is $\delta$-approximately minimum…
We present a new distributed model of probabilistically checkable proofs (PCP). A satisfying assignment $x \in \{0,1\}^n$ to a CNF formula $\varphi$ is shared between two parties, where Alice knows $x_1, \dots, x_{n/2}$, Bob knows…
We investigate the statistical properties of Temporal Difference (TD) learning with Polyak-Ruppert averaging, arguably one of the most widely used algorithms in reinforcement learning, for the task of estimating the parameters of the…
Diffusion on complex networks is often modeled as a stochastic process. Yet, recent work on strategic diffusion emphasizes the decision power of agents and treats diffusion as a strategic problem. Here we study the computational aspects of…
We present four novel approximation algorithms for finding triangulation of minimum treewidth. Two of the algorithms improve on the running times of algorithms by Robertson and Seymour, and Becker and Geiger that approximate the optimum by…
We provide time- and sample-efficient algorithms for learning and testing latent-tree Ising models, i.e. Ising models that may only be observed at their leaf nodes. On the learning side, we obtain efficient algorithms for learning a…
In this paper, we propose a distributed second- order method for reinforcement learning. Our approach is the fastest in literature so-far as it outperforms state-of-the-art methods, including ADMM, by significant margins. We achieve this by…
We study the task of selecting $k$ nodes, in a social network of size $n$, to seed a diffusion with maximum expected spread size, under the independent cascade model with cascade probability $p$. Most of the previous work on this problem…
Randomized algorithms depend on accurate sampling from probability distributions, as their correctness and performance hinge on the quality of the generated samples. However, even for common distributions like Binomial, exact sampling is…
We study the densest subgraph problem and its NP-hard densest at-most-$k$ subgraph variant through the lens of learning-augmented algorithms. We show that, given a reasonably accurate predictor that estimates whether a node belongs to the…
We have a set of processors (or agents) and a set of graph networks defined over some vertex set. Each processor can access a subset of the graph networks. Each processor has a demand specified as a pair of vertices $<u, v>$, along with a…
We give the first polynomial-time algorithm for performing linear or polynomial regression resilient to adversarial corruptions in both examples and labels. Given a sufficiently large (polynomial-size) training set drawn i.i.d. from…
We develop a computationally efficient and robust algorithm for generating pseudo-random samples from a broad class of smooth probability distributions in one and two dimensions. The algorithm is based on inverse transform sampling with a…
Reinforcement learning with function approximation has recently achieved tremendous results in applications with large state spaces. This empirical success has motivated a growing body of theoretical work proposing necessary and sufficient…
We consider the question of approximating Max 2-CSP where each variable appears in at most $d$ constraints (but with possibly arbitrarily large alphabet). There is a simple $(\frac{d+1}{2})$-approximation algorithm for the problem. We prove…
The method of stable random projections is a tool for efficiently computing the $l_\alpha$ distances using low memory, where $0<\alpha \leq 2$ is a tuning parameter. The method boils down to a statistical estimation task and various…
Estimating symmetric properties of a distribution, e.g. support size, coverage, entropy, distance to uniformity, are among the most fundamental problems in algorithmic statistics. While each of these properties have been studied extensively…
We study the problem of distinguishing between two symmetric probability distributions over $n$ bits by observing $k$ bits of a sample, subject to the constraint that all $k-1$-wise marginal distributions of the two distributions are…