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Given a string $S$ of length $N$ on a fixed alphabet of $\sigma$ symbols, a grammar compressor produces a context-free grammar $G$ of size $n$ that generates $S$ and only $S$. In this paper we describe data structures to support the…
It is widely assumed that $O(m+\lg \sigma)$ is the best one can do for finding a pattern of length $m$ in a compacted trie storing strings over an alphabet of size $\sigma$, if one insists on linear-size data structures and deterministic…
The purpose of this short problem paper is to raise an extremal question on set systems which seems to be natural and appealing. Our question is: which set systems of a given size maximise the number of $(n+1)$-element chains in the power…
Preference orderings are orderings of a set of items according to the preferences (of judges). Such orderings arise in a variety of domains, including group decision making, consumer marketing, voting and machine learning. Measuring the…
We examine the open problem of finding the shortest string that contains each of the n! permutations of n symbols as contiguous substrings (i.e., the shortest superpermutation on n symbols). It has been conjectured that the shortest…
A longest repeat query on a string, motivated by its applications in many subfields including computational biology, asks for the longest repetitive substring(s) covering a particular string position (point query). In this paper, we extend…
Given a dominating set, how much smaller a dominating set can we find through elementary operations? Here, we proceed by iterative vertex addition and removal while maintaining the property that the set forms a dominating set of bounded…
The viability of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication device often depends on its ability to adapt to an individual user's unique abilities. Though human input can be noisy, there is often structure to our errors. For example,…
For any subshift, define $F_X(n)$ to be the collection of distinct follower sets of words of length $n$ in $X$. Based on a similar result of the second and third authors, we conjecture that if there exists an $n$ for which $|F_X(n)| \leq…
We study the maximum size of a set system on $n$ elements whose trace on any $b$ elements has size at most $k$. We show that if for some $b \ge i \ge 0$ the shatter function $f_R$ of a set system $([n],R)$ satisfies $f_R(b) < 2^i(b-i+1)$…
A synchronizing word of a deterministic finite complete automaton is a word whose action maps every state to a single one. Finding a shortest or a short synchronizing word is a central computational problem in the theory of synchronizing…
We introduce and study a new complexity function in combinatorics on words, which takes into account the smallest second occurrence time of a factor of an infinite word. We characterize the eventually periodic words and the Sturmian words…
We consider the problem of sparse coding, where each sample consists of a sparse linear combination of a set of dictionary atoms, and the task is to learn both the dictionary elements and the mixing coefficients. Alternating minimization is…
Secure codes are widely-studied combinatorial structures which were introduced for traitor tracing in broadcast encryption. To determine the maximum size of such structures is the main research objective. In this paper, we investigate the…
The main contribution of this paper is a mathematical definition of statistical sparsity, which is expressed as a limiting property of a sequence of probability distributions. The limit is characterized by an exceedance measure~$H$ and a…
Complementation of B\"uchi automata is an essential technique used in some approaches for termination analysis of programs. The long search for an optimal complementation construction climaxed with the work of Schewe, who proposed a…
We obtain improved lower bounds for additive spanners, additive emulators, and diameter-reducing shortcut sets. Spanners and emulators are sparse graphs that approximately preserve the distances of a given graph. A shortcut set is a set of…
We give a new $(1+\epsilon)$-approximation for sparsest cut problem on graphs where small sets expand significantly more than the sparsest cut (sets of size $n/r$ expand by a factor $\sqrt{\log n\log r}$ bigger, for some small $r$; this…
Constructing active sets is a key part of the Multivariate Decomposition Method. An algorithm for constructing optimal or quasi-optimal active sets is proposed in the paper. By numerical experiments, it is shown that the new method can…
We introduce the concept of strong high-order approximate minimizers for nonconvex optimization problems. These apply in both standard smooth and composite non-smooth settings, and additionally allow convex or inexpensive constraints. An…