Related papers: Open Problem: Properly learning decision trees in …
Consider $n$ independent, biased coins, each with a known probability of heads. Presented with an ordering of these coins, flip (i.e., toss) each coin once, in that order, until we have observed both a *head* and a *tail*, or flipped all…
In this paper, we are interested in the number of red nodes in red-black trees. We first present an $O(n^2\log n)$ time dynamic programming solution for computing $r(n)$, the largest number of red internal nodes in a red-black tree on $n$…
Many applications, including rank aggregation and crowd-labeling, can be modeled in terms of a bivariate isotonic matrix with unknown permutations acting on its rows and columns. We consider the problem of estimating such a matrix based on…
We consider online algorithms for the $k$-server problem on trees. Chrobak and Larmore proposed a $k$-competitive algorithm for this problem that has the optimal competitive ratio. However, a naive implementation of their algorithm has…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points that are moving in the plane, we consider the problem of computing a spanning tree for these moving points that does not change its combinatorial structure during the point movement. The objective is to…
We present a new uniform random sampler for binary trees with $n$ internal nodes consuming $2n + \Theta(\log(n)^2)$ random bits on average. This makes it quasi-optimal and out-performs the classical Remy algorithm. We also present a sampler…
We give two results on PAC learning DNF formulas using membership queries in the challenging "distribution-free" learning framework, where learning algorithms must succeed for an arbitrary and unknown distribution over $\{0,1\}^n$. (1) We…
We consider the problem of learning an unknown partition of an $n$ element universe using rank queries. Such queries take as input a subset of the universe and return the number of parts of the partition it intersects. We give a simple…
We consider the NP-hard problem of finding a spanning tree with a maximum number of internal vertices. This problem is a generalization of the famous Hamiltonian Path problem. Our dynamic-programming algorithms for general and…
We consider the problem of efficiently solving a system of $n$ non-linear equations in ${\mathbb R}^d$. Addressing Smale's 17th problem stated in 1998, we consider a setting whereby the $n$ equations are random homogeneous polynomials of…
The Bayesian network structure learning (BNSL) problem asks for a directed acyclic graph that maximizes a given score function. For networks with $n$ nodes, the fastest known algorithms run in time $O(2^n n^2)$ in the worst case, with no…
We tackle the problems of computing the rightmost variant of the Lempel-Ziv factorizations in the online/sliding model. Previous best bounds for this problem are O(n log n) time with O(n) space, due to Amir et al. [IPL 2002] for the online…
Decision tree algorithms have been among the most popular algorithms for interpretable (transparent) machine learning since the early 1980's. The problem that has plagued decision tree algorithms since their inception is their lack of…
We revisit the problem of learning from untrusted batches introduced by Qiao and Valiant [QV17]. Recently, Jain and Orlitsky [JO19] gave a simple semidefinite programming approach based on the cut-norm that achieves essentially…
An algorithm for unification modulo one-sided distributivity is an early result by Tid\'en and Arnborg. More recently this theory has been of interest in cryptographic protocol analysis due to the fact that many cryptographic operators…
We give a polynomial time algorithm for the lossy population recovery problem. In this problem, the goal is to approximately learn an unknown distribution on binary strings of length $n$ from lossy samples: for some parameter $\mu$ each…
This paper describes an algorithm (thus far referred to as the "Dragonfly Algorithm") by which the subset-sum problem can be solved in $O(n^{11}\log(n))$ time complexity. The paper will first detail the generalized "product-derivative"…
Choosing a suitable algorithm from the myriads of different search heuristics is difficult when faced with a novel optimization problem. In this work, we argue that the purely academic question of what could be the best possible algorithm…
The structure of an evolving network contains information about its past. Extracting this information efficiently, however, is, in general, a difficult challenge. We formulate a fast and efficient method to estimate the most likely history…
Permutation patterns and pattern avoidance have been intensively studied in combinatorics and computer science, going back at least to the seminal work of Knuth on stack-sorting (1968). Perhaps the most natural algorithmic question in this…