Related papers: Deriving differential approximation results for $k…
The distribution of overlaps of solutions of a random CSP is an indicator of the overall geometry of its solution space. For random $k$-SAT, nonrigorous methods from Statistical Physics support the validity of the ``one step replica…
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…
We prove a new Elekes-Szab\'o type estimate on the size of the intersection of a Cartesian product $A\times B\times C$ with an algebraic surface $\{f=0\}$ over the reals. In particular, if $A,B,C$ are sets of $N$ real numbers and $f$ is a…
We show improved NP-hardness of approximating Ordering Constraint Satisfaction Problems (OCSPs). For the two most well-studied OCSPs, Maximum Acyclic Subgraph and Maximum Betweenness, we prove inapproximability of $14/15+\epsilon$ and…
Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) consist of a set of variables taking values from some finite domain and a set of local constraints on these variables. The objective is to find an assignment to the variables that maximizes the…
A $(k \times l)$-birthday repetition $\mathcal{G}^{k \times l}$ of a two-prover game $\mathcal{G}$ is a game in which the two provers are sent random sets of questions from $\mathcal{G}$ of sizes $k$ and $l$ respectively. These two sets are…
The $2$-Wasserstein distance is sensitive to minor geometric differences between distributions, making it a very powerful dissimilarity metric. However, due to this sensitivity, a small outlier mass can also cause a significant increase in…
We give a general unified method that can be used for $L_1$ {\em closeness testing} of a wide range of univariate structured distribution families. More specifically, we design a sample optimal and computationally efficient algorithm for…
This thesis explores algorithmic applications and limitations of convex relaxation hierarchies for approximating some discrete and continuous optimization problems. - We show a dichotomy of approximability of constraint satisfaction…
We investigate deep composite polynomial approximations of continuous but non-differentiable functions with algebraic cusp singularities. The functions in focus consist of finitely many cusp terms of the form $|x-a_j|^{\alpha_j}$ with…
We analyze the sketching approximability of constraint satisfaction problems on Boolean domains, where the constraints are balanced linear threshold functions applied to literals. In~particular, we explore the approximability of…
We define a novel notion of ``non-backtracking'' matrix associated to any symmetric matrix, and we prove a ``Ihara-Bass'' type formula for it. We use this theory to prove new results on polynomial-time strong refutations of random…
We address the fundamental network design problem of constructing approximate minimum spanners. Our contributions are for the distributed setting, providing both algorithmic and hardness results. Our main hardness result shows that an…
A classical result in additive combinatorics, which is a combination of Balog-Szemer\'edi-Gowers theorem and a variant of Freiman's theorem due to Ruzsa, says that if a subset $A$ of $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ contains at least $c |A|^3$ additive…
We propose a framework of algorithm vs. hardness for all Max-CSPs and demonstrate it for a large class of predicates. This framework extends the work of Raghavendra [STOC, 2008], who showed a similar result for almost satisfiable Max-CSPs.…
We propose a new conjecture on hardness of low-degree $2$-CSP's, and show that new hardness of approximation results for Densest $k$-Subgraph and several other problems, including a graph partitioning problem, and a variation of the Graph…
We consider the Low Rank Approximation problem, where the input consists of a matrix $A \in \mathbb{R}^{n_R \times n_C}$ and an integer $k$, and the goal is to find a matrix $B$ of rank at most $k$ that minimizes $\| A - B \|_0$, which is…
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…
In all state-of-the-art sketching and coreset techniques for clustering, as well as in the best known fixed-parameter tractable approximation algorithms, randomness plays a key role. For the classic $k$-median and $k$-means problems, there…
The area of parameterized approximation seeks to combine approximation and parameterized algorithms to obtain, e.g., (1+eps)-approximations in f(k,eps)n^{O(1)} time where k is some parameter of the input. We obtain the following results on…