the first provable approximation guarantees for efficient algorithms. Using an analysis framework based on submodular functions, we show that a natural greedy strategy obtains a solution that is provably within 63 % of optimal for several classes of models; our framework suggests a general approach

refer to as dither modulation. Using deterministic models to evaluate digital watermarking methods, we show that QIM is "provably good" against arbitrary bounded and fully informed attacks, which arise in several copyright applications, and in particular, it achieves provably better rate

Abstract not found

the solution to a nonlinear programming relaxation. This relaxation can be interpreted both as a semidefinite program and as an eigenvalue minimization problem. The best previously known approximation algorithms for these problems had performance guarantees of ...

the function on instances of its choice. First, we establish some connections between property testing and problems in learning theory. Next, we focus on testing graph properties, and devise algorithms to test whether a graph has properties such as being k-colorable or having a ae-clique (clique of density ae

-hard. We prove that (1 \Gamma o(1)) ln n is a threshold below which set cover cannot be approximated efficiently, unless NP has slightly superpolynomial time algorithms. This closes the gap (up to low order terms) between the ratio of approximation achievable by the greedy algorithm (which is (1 \Gamma

-limit performance of "Turbo Codes" --- codes whose decoding algorithm is equivalent to loopy belief propagation in a chain-structured Bayesian network. In this paper we ask: is there something special about the error-correcting code context, or does loopy propagation work as an approximate

We survey the current techniques to cope with the problem of string matching allowing errors. This is becoming a more and more relevant issue for many fast growing areas such as information retrieval and computational biology. We focus on online searching and mostly on edit distance, explaining the problem and its relevance, its statistical behavior, its history and current developments, and the central ideas of the algorithms and their complexities. We present a number of experiments to compare the performance of the different algorithms and show which are the best choices according to each case. We conclude with some future work directions and open problems.

In this paper we develop some statistical theory for factor models of large dimensions. The focus is the determination of the number of factors, which is an unresolved issue in the rapidly growing literature on multifactor models. We propose a panel Cp criterion and show that the number of factors can be consistently estimated using the criterion. The theory is developed under the framework of large cross-sections (N) and large time dimensions (T). No restriction is imposed on the relation between N and T. Simulations show that the proposed criterion yields almost precise estimates of the number of factors for configurations of the panel data encountered in practice. The idea that variations in a large number of economic variables can be modelled bya small number of reference variables is appealing and is used in manyeconomic analysis. In the finance literature, the arbitrage pricing theory(APT) of Ross (1976) assumes that a small number of factors can be used to explain a large number of asset returns.

inÇÐÓ�Ò We present a novel Locality-Sensitive Hashing scheme for the Approximate Nearest Neighbor Problem underÐÔnorm, based onÔstable distributions. Our scheme improves the running time of the earlier algorithm for the case of theÐnorm. It also yields the first known provably efficient approximate