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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.8

General Multiplicative Spanners in Practice

Authors: Fritz Bökler, Markus Chimani, and Henning Jasper

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 371, 24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026)

Abstract

Given an undirected graph G with edge weights and lengths, a minimum α-spanner is a least-weight subgraph H ⊆ G that preserves distances w.r.t. the lengths between all node pairs up to a factor of α. Literature often takes the simplifying assumption of a single (coupled) edge function for weights and lengths. For such instances, several exact and non-exact algorithms are known and have been thoroughly evaluated in practice. However, many practical instances have decoupled form, as their weights and lengths are generally independent. Due to the increased complexity, only few (and even fewer practical) algorithms are able to guarantee low-weight solutions. This prompts practitioners to force their naturally decoupled instances into a coupled format, forsaking any quality guarantee. We implement several exact, approximative and heuristic algorithms for decoupled α-spanners, and use algorithm engineering to speed them up in practice. Our hypothesis-driven experiments evaluate their performance w.r.t. solution quality and speed. Generally, many practical instances can indeed be solved exactly within reasonable time, while LP-based approximation algorithms are not worthwhile. We find that standard greedy algorithms often yield acceptable results, but there are also practical instances for which they yield arbitrarily poor solutions. Here, augmented greedy variations offer a good compromise between solution quality and speed.

Cite as

Fritz Bökler, Markus Chimani, and Henning Jasper. General Multiplicative Spanners in Practice. In 24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 371, pp. 8:1-8:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{bokler_et_al:LIPIcs.SEA.2026.8,
  author =	{B\"{o}kler, Fritz and Chimani, Markus and Jasper, Henning},
  title =	{{General Multiplicative Spanners in Practice}},
  booktitle =	{24th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2026)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-422-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{371},
  editor =	{Aum\"{u}ller, Martin and Finocchi, Irene},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260120},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2026.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: Graph spanners, ILP, experimental study, algorithm engineering}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.2

Near-Real-Time Solutions for Online String Problems

Authors: Dominik Köppl and Gregory Kucherov

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)

Abstract

Based on the Breslauer-Italiano online suffix tree construction algorithm (2013) with double logarithmic worst-case guarantees on the update time per letter, we develop near-real-time algorithms for several classical problems on strings, including the computation of the longest repeating suffix array, the (reversed) Lempel-Ziv 77 factorization, and the maintenance of minimal unique substrings, all in an online manner. Our solutions improve over the best known running times for these problems in terms of the worst-case time per letter, for which we achieve a poly-log-logarithmic time complexity, within a linear space. Best known results for these problems require a poly-logarithmic time complexity per letter or only provide amortized complexity bounds. As a result of independent interest, we give conversions between the longest previous factor array and the longest repeating suffix array in space and time bounds based on their irreducible representations, which can have sizes sublinear in the length of the input string.

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Dominik Köppl and Gregory Kucherov. Near-Real-Time Solutions for Online String Problems. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 2:1-2:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{koppl_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.2,
  author =	{K\"{o}ppl, Dominik and Kucherov, Gregory},
  title =	{{Near-Real-Time Solutions for Online String Problems}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259287},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: online algorithms, string algorithms, suffix tree, real-time computation, Lempel-Ziv factorization, minimal unique substrings}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.10

R-Enum Revisited: Speedup and Extension for Context-Sensitive Repeats and Net Frequencies

Authors: Kotaro Kimura and Tomohiro I

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)

Abstract

A repeat is a substring that occurs at least twice in a string, and is called a maximal repeat if it cannot be extended outwards without reducing its frequency. Nishimoto and Tabei [CPM, 2021] proposed r-enum, an algorithm to enumerate various characteristic substrings, including maximal repeats, in a string T of length n in O(r) words of compressed working space, where r ≤ n is the number of runs in the Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT) of T. Given the run-length encoded BWT (RLBWT) of T, r-enum runs in O(n log log_w (n/r)) time in addition to the time linear to the number of output strings, where w = Θ(log n) is the word size. In this paper, we first improve the O(n log log_w (n/r)) term to O(n). We next extend r-enum to compute other context-sensitive repeats such as near-supermaximal repeats (NSMRs) and supermaximal repeats, as well as the context diversity for every maximal repeat in the same complexities. Furthermore, we study net occurrences: An occurrence of a repeat is called a net occurrence if it is not covered by another repeat, and the net frequency of a repeat is the number of its net occurrences. With this terminology, an NSMR is a repeat with a positive net frequency. Given the RLBWT of T, we show how to compute the set 𝒮^{nsmr} of all NSMRs in T together with their net frequency/occurrences in O(n) time and O(r) space. We also show that an O(r)-space data structure can be built from the RLBWT to compute the net frequency/occurrences of any pattern in optimal time. The data structure is built in O(r) space and in O(n) time with high probability or deterministic O(n + |𝒮^{nsmr}| log log min(σ, |𝒮^{nsmr}|)) time, where σ ≤ r is the alphabet size of T. To achieve this, we prove that the total number of net occurrences is less than 2r. With the duality between net occurrences and minimal unique substrings (MUSs), we get a new upper bound 2r of the number of MUSs in T, which may be of independent interest.

Cite as

Kotaro Kimura and Tomohiro I. R-Enum Revisited: Speedup and Extension for Context-Sensitive Repeats and Net Frequencies. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 10:1-10:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{kimura_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.10,
  author =	{Kimura, Kotaro and I, Tomohiro},
  title =	{{R-Enum Revisited: Speedup and Extension for Context-Sensitive Repeats and Net Frequencies}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259361},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Supermaximal repeats, Largest maximal repeats, Net frequencies, Run-length Burrows-Wheeler transform, Compressed data mining}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.23

Indexing Range Maximum-Sum Segment Queries with Offsets

Authors: Seungbum Jo and Dominik Köppl

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 370, 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)

Abstract

Given an array of n real numbers, the maximum segment sum (MSS) problem is to find a contiguous subarray that has the largest sum. While the MSS problem can be solved optimally with Kadane’s algorithm in O(n) time, the study of its indexing version spawned new extensions such as (a) retrieving the MSS after subtracting a query offset parameter for all array entries or (b) retrieving the MSS for arbitrary query ranges. We here study the combination of both problems (a) and (b), which requires retrieving the MSS for arbitrary query ranges after subtracting a query offset parameter for all array entries. For that, we present an index whose query time is only slower than the best known for (a) by a factor of O(log n). In detail, our index uses O(n log n) space, supports queries in O(log² n) time, and can be constructed in O(n log³ n) time. As side results, we study our combined problem in the context of run-length compressed input, and also deduce a solution for (a) that works in run-length compressed space and time. Finally we give supportive lower bounds for our query problem, showing that there is only a polylogarithmic gap of improvement left.

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Seungbum Jo and Dominik Köppl. Indexing Range Maximum-Sum Segment Queries with Offsets. In 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 370, pp. 23:1-23:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{jo_et_al:LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.23,
  author =	{Jo, Seungbum and K\"{o}ppl, Dominik},
  title =	{{Indexing Range Maximum-Sum Segment Queries with Offsets}},
  booktitle =	{20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)},
  pages =	{23:1--23:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-421-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{370},
  editor =	{Fraigniaud, Pierre},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.23},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260597},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.23},
  annote =	{Keywords: maximum segment sum, data structure, range query}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.35

Efficient Index for Square Pattern Matching

Authors: Po-Chun Chen, Che-Wei Tsao, Wing-Kai Hon, and Dominik Köppl

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)

Abstract

A string S is called a square if it can be written as the concatenation of two identical strings. Two strings P and Q of the same length are said to square match if, for every substring of P, it is a square if and only if the corresponding substring of Q is also a square. The square pattern matching problem asks for locating all substrings of a given text T of length n that square match a query pattern P of length m. This notion captures similarity in repetition structures and is motivated by applications in areas such as bioinformatics and music structure analysis. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique, called the longest prefix square (LPS) encoding, which represents the square structure of a string as an integer array of the same length. We show that two strings square match if and only if they have identical LPS encodings. Based on this result, we construct an index solving the square pattern matching problem in time O(m lg m + occ) using O(nlg²n) bits of space, where occ denotes the number of occurrences of substrings in T that square match P. If the LPS encoding of P is precomputed, the query time improves to O(m + occ).

Cite as

Po-Chun Chen, Che-Wei Tsao, Wing-Kai Hon, and Dominik Köppl. Efficient Index for Square Pattern Matching. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 35:1-35:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{chen_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.35,
  author =	{Chen, Po-Chun and Tsao, Che-Wei and Hon, Wing-Kai and K\"{o}ppl, Dominik},
  title =	{{Efficient Index for Square Pattern Matching}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{35:1--35:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.35},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259617},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.35},
  annote =	{Keywords: string algorithms, pattern matching, indexing, squares}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.7

When to Ask a Question: Understanding Communication Strategies in Generative AI Tools

Authors: Charlotte Park, Kate Donahue, and Manish Raghavan

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 368, 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)

Abstract

Generative AI models differ from traditional machine learning tools in that they allow users to provide as much or as little information as they choose in their inputs. This flexibility often leads users to omit certain details, relying on the models to infer and fill in under-specified information based on distributional knowledge of user preferences. Such inferences may privilege majority viewpoints and disadvantage users with atypical preferences, raising concerns about fairness. Unlike more traditional recommender systems, LLMs can explicitly solicit more information from users through natural language. However, while directly eliciting user preferences could increase personalization and mitigate inequality, excessive querying places a burden on users who value efficiency. We develop a stylized model of user-LLM interaction and develop an objective that captures tradeoff between user burden and preference representation. Building on the observation that individual preferences are often correlated, we analyze how AI systems should balance inference and elicitation, characterizing the optimal amount of information to solicit before content generation. Ultimately, we show that information elicitation can mitigate the systematic biases of preference inference, enabling the design of generative tools that better incorporate diverse user perspectives while maintaining efficiency. We complement this theoretical analysis with an empirical evaluation illustrating the model’s predictions and exploring their practical implications.

Cite as

Charlotte Park, Kate Donahue, and Manish Raghavan. When to Ask a Question: Understanding Communication Strategies in Generative AI Tools. In 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 368, pp. 7:1-7:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{park_et_al:LIPIcs.FORC.2026.7,
  author =	{Park, Charlotte and Donahue, Kate and Raghavan, Manish},
  title =	{{When to Ask a Question: Understanding Communication Strategies in Generative AI Tools}},
  booktitle =	{7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-419-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{368},
  editor =	{Lin, Huijia (Rachel)},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259782},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: human-AI interaction, user modeling, personalization}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.11

Limitations on Accurate, Trusted, Human-Level Reasoning

Authors: Rina Panigrahy and Vatsal Sharan

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 368, 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)

Abstract

We identify a fundamental incompatibility between the goals of accuracy, trust, and human-level reasoning in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, for strict mathematical definitions of these notions. We define accuracy of a system as the property that it never makes any false claims when it has the ability to abstain from making a prediction on any input, and trust as the assumption that the system is accurate. We define human-level reasoning as the property of an AI system always matching or exceeding human capability. Our core finding is that - for our formal definitions of these notions - an accurate and trusted AI system cannot be a human-level reasoning system: for such an accurate, trusted system there are task instances which are easily and provably solvable by a human but not by the system. Our proofs draw parallels to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and Turing’s proof of the undecidability of the halting problem, and can be regarded as interpretations of Gödel’s and Turing’s results. Key to our proof is the formalization of the notion of trust, which allows us to separate the intrinsic property of a system (being accurate) from its epistemic status (being trusted).

Cite as

Rina Panigrahy and Vatsal Sharan. Limitations on Accurate, Trusted, Human-Level Reasoning. In 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 368, pp. 11:1-11:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{panigrahy_et_al:LIPIcs.FORC.2026.11,
  author =	{Panigrahy, Rina and Sharan, Vatsal},
  title =	{{Limitations on Accurate, Trusted, Human-Level Reasoning}},
  booktitle =	{7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)},
  pages =	{11:1--11:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-419-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{368},
  editor =	{Lin, Huijia (Rachel)},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.11},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259840},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.11},
  annote =	{Keywords: Accuracy, Safety, Trust, Complexity-theoretic limitations}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.1

Computational Hardness of Private Coreset

Authors: Badih Ghazi, Cristóbal Guzmán, Pritish Kamath, Alexander Knop, Ravi Kumar, and Pasin Manurangsi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 368, 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)

Abstract

We study the problem of differentially private (DP) computation of coreset for the k-means objective. For a given input set of points, a coreset is another set of points such that the k-means objective for any candidate solution is preserved up to a multiplicative (1 ± α) factor (and some additive factor). We prove the first computational lower bounds for this problem. Specifically, assuming the existence of one-way functions, we show that no polynomial-time (ε, 1/n^{ω(1)})-DP algorithm can compute a coreset for k-means in the 𝓁_∞-metric for some constant α > 0 (and some constant additive factor), even for k = 3. For k-means in the Euclidean metric, we show a similar result but only for α = Θ(1/d²), where d is the dimension.

Cite as

Badih Ghazi, Cristóbal Guzmán, Pritish Kamath, Alexander Knop, Ravi Kumar, and Pasin Manurangsi. Computational Hardness of Private Coreset. In 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 368, pp. 1:1-1:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{ghazi_et_al:LIPIcs.FORC.2026.1,
  author =	{Ghazi, Badih and Guzm\'{a}n, Crist\'{o}bal and Kamath, Pritish and Knop, Alexander and Kumar, Ravi and Manurangsi, Pasin},
  title =	{{Computational Hardness of Private Coreset}},
  booktitle =	{7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-419-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{368},
  editor =	{Lin, Huijia (Rachel)},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259725},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Differentially Private Clustering, Coreset, Cryptographic Hardness}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.16

Optimal Partition Selection with Rényi Differential Privacy

Authors: Charlie Harrison and Pasin Manurangsi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 368, 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)

Abstract

A common problem in private data analysis is the partition selection problem, where each user holds a set of partitions (e.g. keys in a GROUP BY operation) from a possibly unbounded set. The challenge here is in maximizing the set of released partitions while respecting a differential privacy constraint. Previous work [Desfontaines et al., 2021] presented an optimal (ε, δ)-DP algorithm when each user submits only a single partition. We generalize this approach to find the optimal algorithm under δ-approximate (α, ε)-Rényi differential privacy (RDP), which allows much tighter analysis under composition. Motivated by the non-existence of a general optimality result in the case where users submit multiple partitions each, we present an extension of our optimal algorithm tuned for L² bounded weighted partition selection which can be used as a drop-in improvement over the Gaussian mechanism any time the partition frequency is not also needed. We show that our primitive can be easily plugged into state of the art partition selection algorithms (PolicyGaussian from [Gopi et al., 2020] and MAD2R from [Justin Y. Chen et al., 2025]), improving performance both for parallel and sequential adaptive algorithms. Finally, we show that there is an inherent cost to algorithms which do support releasing the frequency as well as the partitions. Specifically, we formulate a basic notion of optimal approximate RDP algorithm for partition selection using additive noise, and show that there is a numerical separation between additive and non-additive noise mechanisms for this problem.

Cite as

Charlie Harrison and Pasin Manurangsi. Optimal Partition Selection with Rényi Differential Privacy. In 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 368, pp. 16:1-16:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{harrison_et_al:LIPIcs.FORC.2026.16,
  author =	{Harrison, Charlie and Manurangsi, Pasin},
  title =	{{Optimal Partition Selection with R\'{e}nyi Differential Privacy}},
  booktitle =	{7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-419-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{368},
  editor =	{Lin, Huijia (Rachel)},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259894},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Differentially Privacy, Partition Selection, Renyi Differentially Privacy}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.20

Privacy, Prediction, and Allocation

Authors: Ben Jacobsen and Nitin Kohli

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 368, 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)

Abstract

Algorithmic predictions are increasingly used to inform the allocation of scarce resources. The promise of these methods is that, through machine learning, they can better identify the people who would benefit most from interventions. Recently, however, several works have called this assumption into question by demonstrating the existence of settings where simple, unit-level allocation strategies can meet or even exceed the performance of those based on individual-level targeting. Separately, other works have objected to individual-level targeting on privacy grounds, leading to an unusual situation where a single solution, unit-level targeting, is recommended for reasons of both privacy and utility. Motivated by the desire to fully understand the interplay of privacy and targeting levels, we initiate the study of aid allocation systems that satisfy differential privacy, synthesizing existing works on private optimization with the economic models of aid allocation used in the non-private literature. To this end, we investigate private variants of both individual and unit-level allocation strategies in both stochastic and distribution-free settings under a range of constraints on data availability. Through this analysis, we provide clean, interpretable bounds characterizing the tradeoffs between privacy, efficiency, and targeting precision in allocation.

Cite as

Ben Jacobsen and Nitin Kohli. Privacy, Prediction, and Allocation. In 7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 368, pp. 20:1-20:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{jacobsen_et_al:LIPIcs.FORC.2026.20,
  author =	{Jacobsen, Ben and Kohli, Nitin},
  title =	{{Privacy, Prediction, and Allocation}},
  booktitle =	{7th Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing (FORC 2026)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:24},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-419-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{368},
  editor =	{Lin, Huijia (Rachel)},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259935},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FORC.2026.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: Differential privacy, fair allocation, limits of prediction}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.26

Finding a Fair Scoring Function for Top-k Selection: From Hardness to Practice

Authors: Guangya Cai

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract

We study the problem of finding a fair linear scoring function over (numerical) attributes for top-k selection, ensuring fairness through a proportional representation constraint on the protected group. Existing algorithms do not scale efficiently, particularly in higher dimensions. Our hardness analysis shows that in more than two dimensions, no algorithm is likely to scale efficiently with respect to dataset size, and the computational complexity is likely to grow rapidly with dimensionality. However, the hardness results also provide key insights guiding algorithm design, leading to our two-pronged solution: (1) For small k, our analysis reveals a gap in the hardness barrier. By addressing various engineering challenges, including achieving efficient parallelism, we turn this potential of efficiency into an optimized geometry-based algorithm delivering substantial performance gains. (2) For large k, where the hardness is robust, we employ a practically efficient optimization-based algorithm which, despite being theoretically worse, achieves superior real-world performance. Experimental evaluations on real-world datasets then explore scenarios where worst-case behavior does not manifest, identifying areas critical to practical performance. Our solution achieves speedups of up to several orders of magnitude compared to the state of the art, an efficiency made possible through a tight integration of hardness analysis, algorithm design, practical engineering, and empirical evaluation.

Cite as

Guangya Cai. Finding a Fair Scoring Function for Top-k Selection: From Hardness to Practice. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 26:1-26:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{cai:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.26,
  author =	{Cai, Guangya},
  title =	{{Finding a Fair Scoring Function for Top-k Selection: From Hardness to Practice}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{26:1--26:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.26},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258320},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.26},
  annote =	{Keywords: Fairness, Top-k, Integration}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.33

Near-Optimal Bounds for Parameterized Euclidean k-Means

Authors: Vincent Cohen-Addad, Karthik C. S., David Saulpic, and Chris Schwiegelshohn

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract

The k-means problem is a classic objective for modeling clustering in a metric space. Given a set of points in a metric space, the goal is to find k representative points so as to minimize the sum of the squared distances from each point to its closest representative. In this work, we study the approximability of k-means in Euclidean spaces parameterized by the number of clusters, k. In seminal works, de la Vega, Karpinski, Kenyon, and Rabani [STOC'03] and Kumar, Sabharwal, and Sen [JACM'10] showed how to obtain a (1+ε)-approximation for high-dimensional Euclidean k-means in time 2^{(k/ε)^O(1)} ⋅ dn^O(1). In this work, we introduce a new fine-grained hypothesis called Exponential Time for Expanders Hypothesis (XXH) which roughly asserts that there are no non-trivial exponential time approximation algorithms for the vertex cover problem on near perfect vertex expanders. Assuming XXH, we close the above long line of work on approximating Euclidean k-means by showing that there is no 2^{(k/ε)^{1-o(1)}} ⋅ n^O(1) time algorithm achieving a (1+ε)-approximation for k-means in Euclidean space. This lower bound is tight as it matches the algorithm given by Feldman, Monemizadeh, and Sohler [SoCG'07] whose runtime is 2^O(k/ε) + O(ndk). Furthermore, assuming XXH, we show that the seminal O(n^{kd+1}) runtime exact algorithm of Inaba, Katoh, and Imai [SoCG'94] for k-means is optimal for small values of k.

Cite as

Vincent Cohen-Addad, Karthik C. S., David Saulpic, and Chris Schwiegelshohn. Near-Optimal Bounds for Parameterized Euclidean k-Means. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 33:1-33:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{cohenaddad_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.33,
  author =	{Cohen-Addad, Vincent and C. S., Karthik and Saulpic, David and Schwiegelshohn, Chris},
  title =	{{Near-Optimal Bounds for Parameterized Euclidean k-Means}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{33:1--33:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.33},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258391},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.33},
  annote =	{Keywords: k-means clustering, Euclidean space, Fine-Grained Complexity}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.38

On the Size of k-Irreducible Triangulations

Authors: Vincent Delecroix, Oscar Fontaine, and Arnaud de Mesmay

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract

A triangulation of a surface is k-irreducible if every non-contractible curve has length at least k and any edge contraction breaks this property. Equivalently, every edge belongs to a non-contractible curve of length k and there are no shorter non-contractible curves. We prove that a k-irreducible triangulation of an orientable surface of genus g has O(k²g) triangles, which is optimal. This is an improvement over the previous best bound k^O(k) g² of Gao, Richter and Seymour [Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B, 1996].

Cite as

Vincent Delecroix, Oscar Fontaine, and Arnaud de Mesmay. On the Size of k-Irreducible Triangulations. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 38:1-38:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{delecroix_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.38,
  author =	{Delecroix, Vincent and Fontaine, Oscar and de Mesmay, Arnaud},
  title =	{{On the Size of k-Irreducible Triangulations}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{38:1--38:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.38},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258446},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.38},
  annote =	{Keywords: surface, irreducible triangulation, system of curves, minimal position, systolic geometry}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.42

Compressed Data Structures for Heegaard Splitting

Authors: Henrique Ennes and Clément Maria

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract

Heegaard splittings provide a natural representation of closed 3-manifolds by gluing handlebodies along a common surface. These splittings can be equivalently given by two finite sets of meridians lying on the surface, which define a Heegaard diagram. We present a data structure to effectively represent Heegaard diagrams as normal curves with respect to triangulations of a surface of complexity measured by the space required to express the normal coordinates' vectors in binary. This structure can be significantly more compressed than triangulations of 3-manifolds, giving exponential gains for some families. Even with this succinct definition of complexity, we establish polynomial-time algorithms for comparing and manipulating diagrams, performing stabilizations, detecting trivial stabilizations and reductions, and computing topological invariants of the underlying manifolds, such as their fundamental and homology groups. We also contrast early implementations of our techniques with standard software programs for 3-manifolds, achieving faster algorithms for the average cases and exponential gains in speed for some particular presentations of the inputs.

Cite as

Henrique Ennes and Clément Maria. Compressed Data Structures for Heegaard Splitting. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 42:1-42:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{ennes_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.42,
  author =	{Ennes, Henrique and Maria, Cl\'{e}ment},
  title =	{{Compressed Data Structures for Heegaard Splitting}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{42:1--42:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.42},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258484},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.42},
  annote =	{Keywords: 3-manifold, Heegaard splitting, curves on surfaces, surface theory, data structure, computational topology}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.60

Space-Efficient Approximate Spherical Range Counting in High Dimensions

Authors: Andreas Kalavas and Ioannis Psarros

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract

We study the following range searching problem in high-dimensional Euclidean spaces: given a finite set P ⊂ ℝ^d, where each p ∈ P is assigned a weight w_p, and radius r > 0, we need to preprocess P into a data structure such that when a new query point q ∈ ℝ^d arrives, the data structure reports the cumulative weight of points of P within Euclidean distance r from q. Solving the problem exactly seems to require space usage that is exponential to the dimension, a phenomenon known as the curse of dimensionality. Thus, we focus on approximate solutions where points up to (1+ε)r away from q may be taken into account, where ε > 0 is an input parameter known during preprocessing. We build a data structure with near-linear space usage, and query time in n^{1-Θ(ε⁴/log(1/ε))}+t_q^ϱ⋅n^{1-ϱ}, for some ϱ = Θ(ε²), where t_q is the number of points of P in the ambiguity zone, i.e., at distance between r and (1+ε)r from the query q. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first data structure with efficient space usage (subquadratic or near-linear for any ε > 0) and query time that remains sublinear for any sublinear t_q. We supplement our worst-case bounds with a query-driven preprocessing algorithm to build data structures that are well-adapted to the query distribution.

Cite as

Andreas Kalavas and Ioannis Psarros. Space-Efficient Approximate Spherical Range Counting in High Dimensions. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 60:1-60:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{kalavas_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.60,
  author =	{Kalavas, Andreas and Psarros, Ioannis},
  title =	{{Space-Efficient Approximate Spherical Range Counting in High Dimensions}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{60:1--60:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.60},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258670},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.60},
  annote =	{Keywords: Approximate range counting, partition trees, high dimensions}
}

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