Related papers: Hardness Results for Weaver's Discrepancy Problem

In this paper the convolution integrals $\int_0^t(t-s)^{\lambda -1}b(s)ds$ with hyper-singular kernels are considered, where $\lambda\le 0$ and $b$ is a smooth or $b$ is in $L^1(\mathbb{R}_+)$. For such $\lambda$ these integrals diverge…

The matrix spectral and nuclear norms appear in enormous applications. The generalizations of these norms to higher-order tensors is becoming increasingly important but unfortunately they are NP-hard to compute or even approximate. Although…

One of the equivalent formulations of the Kadison-Singer problem which was resolved in 2013 by Marcus, Spielman and Srivastava, is the "paving conjecture". Roughly speaking, the paving conjecture states that every positive semi-definite…

We prove the #P-hardness of the counting problems associated with various satisfiability, graph and combinatorial problems, when restricted to planar instances. These problems include \begin{romannum} \item[{}] {\sc 3Sat, 1-3Sat, 1-Ex3Sat,…

We study the distribution of partial sums of Rademacher random multiplicative functions $(f(n))_n$ evaluated at polynomial arguments. We show that for a polynomial $P\in \mathbb Z[x]$ that is a product of at least two distinct linear…

The Workflow Satisfiability Problem (WSP) asks whether there exists an assignment of authorized users to the steps in a workflow specification, subject to certain constraints on the assignment. The problem is NP-hard even when restricted to…

Recently, due to the genomic sequence analysis in several types of cancer, the genomic data based on {\em copy number profiles} ({\em CNP} for short) are getting more and more popular. A CNP is a vector where each component is a…

In this paper, we prove that the inequalities $\alpha [1/3 Q(a,b)+2/3 A(a,b)]+(1-\alpha)Q^{1/3}(a,b)A^{2/3}(a,b)<M(a,b) <\beta [1/3 Q(a,b)+2/3 A(a,b)]+(1-\beta)Q^{1/3}(a,b)A^{2/3}(a,b)$ and $\lambda [1/6 C(a,b)+5/6…

We give an elementary proof of a somewhat curious result, namely, that deciding whether a convex function is self-concordant is in general an intractable problem.

Partitioning the vertices of a graph into two roughly equal parts while minimizing the number of edges crossing the cut is a fundamental problem (called Balanced Separator) that arises in many settings. For this problem, and variants such…

A classic result due to Schaefer (1978) classifies all constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) over the Boolean domain as being either in $\mathsf{P}$ or $\mathsf{NP}$-hard. This paper considers a promise-problem variant of CSPs called…

The vertex cover problem is one of the most important and intensively studied combinatorial optimization problems. Khot and Regev (2003) proved that the problem is NP-hard to approximate within a factor $2 - \epsilon$, assuming the Unique…

An NP-hard problem is considered of intersecting a given set of $n$ straight line segments on the plane with the smallest cardinality set of disks of fixed radii $r>0,$ where the set of segments forms a straight line drawing $G=(V,E)$ of a…

Sum-product networks (SPNs) are a class of probabilistic graphical models that allow tractable marginal inference. However, the maximum a posteriori (MAP) inference in SPNs is NP-hard. We investigate MAP inference in SPNs from both…

We show that the computational problem CONSENSUS-HALVING is PPA-complete, the first PPA-completeness result for a problem whose definition does not involve an explicit circuit. We also show that an approximate version of this problem is…

Nash-Williams proved that every graph has a well-balanced orientation. A key ingredient in his proof is admissible odd-vertex pairings. We show that for two slightly different definitions of admissible odd-vertex pairings, deciding whether…

Given a random $n \times n$ symmetric matrix $\boldsymbol W$ drawn from the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE), we consider the problem of certifying an upper bound on the maximum value of the quadratic form $\boldsymbol x^\top \boldsymbol…

The cancellation problem asks whether $A[X_1,X_2,\ldots,X_n] \cong B[Y_1,Y_2,\ldots,Y_n]$ implies $A \cong B$. Hamann introduced the class of steadfast rings as the rings for which a version of the cancellation problem considered by…

The Graph Pricing problem is among the fundamental problems whose approximability is not well-understood. While there is a simple combinatorial 1/4-approximation algorithm, the best hardness result remains at 1/2 assuming the Unique Games…

Estimating covariance matrices is a problem of fundamental importance in multivariate statistics. In practice it is increasingly frequent to work with data matrices $X$ of dimension $n\times p$, where $p$ and $n$ are both large. Results…