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416
Proof verification and hardness of approximation problems
- IN PROC. 33RD ANN. IEEE SYMP. ON FOUND. OF COMP. SCI
, 1992
"... We show that every language in NP has a probablistic verifier that checks membership proofs for it using logarithmic number of random bits and by examining a constant number of bits in the proof. If a string is in the language, then there exists a proof such that the verifier accepts with probabilit ..."
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Cited by 797 (39 self)
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We show that every language in NP has a probablistic verifier that checks membership proofs for it using logarithmic number of random bits and by examining a constant number of bits in the proof. If a string is in the language, then there exists a proof such that the verifier accepts with probability 1 (i.e., for every choice of its random string). For strings not in the language, the verifier rejects every provided “proof " with probability at least 1/2. Our result builds upon and improves a recent result of Arora and Safra [6] whose verifiers examine a nonconstant number of bits in the proof (though this number is a very slowly growing function of the input length). As a consequence we prove that no MAX SNP-hard problem has a polynomial time approximation scheme, unless NP=P. The class MAX SNP was defined by Papadimitriou and Yannakakis [82] and hard problems for this class include vertex cover, maximum satisfiability, maximum cut, metric TSP, Steiner trees and shortest superstring. We also improve upon the clique hardness results of Feige, Goldwasser, Lovász, Safra and Szegedy [42], and Arora and Safra [6] and shows that there exists a positive ɛ such that approximating the maximum clique size in an N-vertex graph to within a factor of N ɛ is NP-hard.
A Threshold of ln n for Approximating Set Cover
- JOURNAL OF THE ACM
, 1998
"... Given a collection F of subsets of S = f1; : : : ; ng, set cover is the problem of selecting as few as possible subsets from F such that their union covers S, and max k-cover is the problem of selecting k subsets from F such that their union has maximum cardinality. Both these problems are NP-har ..."
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Cited by 776 (5 self)
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Given a collection F of subsets of S = f1; : : : ; ng, set cover is the problem of selecting as few as possible subsets from F such that their union covers S, and max k-cover is the problem of selecting k subsets from F such that their union has maximum cardinality. Both these problems are NP-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 o(1)) ln n), and previous results of Lund and Yannakakis, that showed hardness of approximation within a ratio of (log 2 n)=2 ' 0:72 lnn. For max k-cover we show an approximation threshold of (1 \Gamma 1=e) (up to low order terms), under the assumption that P != NP .
Some optimal inapproximability results
, 2002
"... We prove optimal, up to an arbitrary ffl? 0, inapproximability results for Max-Ek-Sat for k * 3, maximizing the number of satisfied linear equations in an over-determined system of linear equations modulo a prime p and Set Splitting. As a consequence of these results we get improved lower bounds for ..."
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Cited by 751 (11 self)
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We prove optimal, up to an arbitrary ffl? 0, inapproximability results for Max-Ek-Sat for k * 3, maximizing the number of satisfied linear equations in an over-determined system of linear equations modulo a prime p and Set Splitting. As a consequence of these results we get improved lower bounds for the efficient approximability of many optimization problems studied previously. In particular, for Max-E2-Sat, Max-Cut, Max-di-Cut, and Vertex cover. Warning: Essentially this paper has been published in JACM and is subject to copyright restrictions. In particular it is for personal use only.
Private Information Retrieval
"... We describe schemes that enable a user to access k replicated copies of a database ( k * 2) and privately retrieve informationstored in the database. This means that each individual database gets no information on the identity of the item retrieved by the user. For a single database, achieving thi ..."
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Cited by 558 (14 self)
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We describe schemes that enable a user to access k replicated copies of a database ( k * 2) and privately retrieve informationstored in the database. This means that each individual database gets no information on the identity of the item retrieved by the user. For a single database, achieving this type of privacy requires communicating the whole database, or n bits (where n is the number of bits in the database). Our schemes use the replication to gain substantial saving. In particular, we have ffl A two database scheme with communication complexity of O(n1=3).ffl
Property Testing and its connection to Learning and Approximation
"... We study the question of determining whether an unknown function has a particular property or is ffl-far from any function with that property. A property testing algorithm is given a sample of the value of the function on instances drawn according to some distribution, and possibly may query the fun ..."
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Cited by 475 (67 self)
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We study the question of determining whether an unknown function has a particular property or is ffl-far from any function with that property. A property testing algorithm is given a sample of the value of the function on instances drawn according to some distribution, and possibly may query 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 w.r.t the vertex set). Our graph property testing algorithms are probabilistic and make assertions which are correct with high probability, utilizing only poly(1=ffl) edge-queries into the graph, where ffl is the distance parameter. Moreover, the property testing algorithms can be used to efficiently (i.e., in time linear in the number of vertices) construct partitions of the graph which corre...
Probabilistic checking of proofs: a new characterization of NP
- JOURNAL OF THE ACM
, 1998
"... We give a new characterization of NP: the class NP contains exactly those languages L for which membership proofs (a proof that an input x is in L) can be verified probabilistically in polynomial time using logarithmic number of random bits and by reading sublogarithmic number of bits from the proof ..."
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Cited by 414 (26 self)
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We give a new characterization of NP: the class NP contains exactly those languages L for which membership proofs (a proof that an input x is in L) can be verified probabilistically in polynomial time using logarithmic number of random bits and by reading sublogarithmic number of bits from the proof. We discuss implications of this characterization; specifically, we show that approximating Clique and Independent Set, even in a very weak sense, is NP-hard.
The Complexity of Decentralized Control of Markov Decision Processes
- Mathematics of Operations Research
, 2000
"... We consider decentralized control of Markov decision processes and give complexity bounds on the worst-case running time for algorithms that find optimal solutions. Generalizations of both the fullyobservable case and the partially-observable case that allow for decentralized control are described. ..."
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Cited by 411 (46 self)
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We consider decentralized control of Markov decision processes and give complexity bounds on the worst-case running time for algorithms that find optimal solutions. Generalizations of both the fullyobservable case and the partially-observable case that allow for decentralized control are described. For even two agents, the finite-horizon problems corresponding to both of these models are hard for nondeterministic exponential time. These complexity results illustrate a fundamental difference between centralized and decentralized control of Markov decision processes. In contrast to the problems involving centralized control, the problems we consider provably do not admit polynomial-time algorithms. Furthermore, assuming EXP NEXP, the problems require super-exponential time to solve in the worst case.
A Parallel Repetition Theorem
- SIAM Journal on Computing
, 1998
"... We show that a parallel repetition of any two-prover one-round proof system (MIP(2, 1)) decreases the probability of error at an exponential rate. No constructive bound was previously known. The constant in the exponent (in our analysis) depends only on the original probability of error and on the t ..."
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Cited by 362 (9 self)
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We show that a parallel repetition of any two-prover one-round proof system (MIP(2, 1)) decreases the probability of error at an exponential rate. No constructive bound was previously known. The constant in the exponent (in our analysis) depends only on the original probability of error and on the total number of possible answers of the two provers. The dependency on the total number of possible answers is logarithmic, which was recently proved to be almost the best possible [U. Feige and O. Verbitsky, Proc. 11th Annual IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1996, pp. 70--76].
Self-Testing/Correcting with Applications to Numerical Problems
, 1990
"... Suppose someone gives us an extremely fast program P that we can call as a black box to compute a function f . Should we trust that P works correctly? A self-testing/correcting pair allows us to: (1) estimate the probability that P (x) 6= f(x) when x is randomly chosen; (2) on any input x, compute ..."
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Cited by 361 (27 self)
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Suppose someone gives us an extremely fast program P that we can call as a black box to compute a function f . Should we trust that P works correctly? A self-testing/correcting pair allows us to: (1) estimate the probability that P (x) 6= f(x) when x is randomly chosen; (2) on any input x, compute f(x) correctly as long as P is not too faulty on average. Furthermore, both (1) and (2) take time only slightly more than Computer Science Division, U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, Supported by NSF Grant No. CCR 88-13632. y International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, California 94704 z Computer Science Division, U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, Supported by an IBM Graduate Fellowship and NSF Grant No. CCR 88-13632. the original running time of P . We present general techniques for constructing simple to program selftesting /correcting pairs for a variety of numerical problems, including integer multiplication, modular multiplication, matrix multiplicatio...
Robust Characterizations of Polynomials with Applications to Program Testing
, 1996
"... The study of self-testing and self-correcting programs leads to the search for robust characterizations of functions. Here we make this notion precise and show such a characterization for polynomials. From this characterization, we get the following applications. ..."
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Cited by 361 (38 self)
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The study of self-testing and self-correcting programs leads to the search for robust characterizations of functions. Here we make this notion precise and show such a characterization for polynomials. From this characterization, we get the following applications.
