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Documents authored by Putterman, Aaron

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.19
Characterizing the Distinguishability of Product Distributions Through Multicalibration

Authors: Cassandra Marcussen, Aaron Putterman, and Salil Vadhan

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 339, 40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025)

Abstract
Given a sequence of samples x_1, … , x_k promised to be drawn from one of two distributions X₀, X₁, a well-studied problem in statistics is to decide which distribution the samples are from. Information theoretically, the maximum advantage in distinguishing the two distributions given k samples is captured by the total variation distance between X₀^{⊗k} and X₁^{⊗k}. However, when we restrict our attention to efficient distinguishers (i.e., small circuits) of these two distributions, exactly characterizing the ability to distinguish X₀^{⊗k} and X₁^{⊗k} is more involved and less understood. In this work, we give a general way to reduce bounds on the computational indistinguishability of X₀ and X₁ to bounds on the information-theoretic indistinguishability of some specific, related variables X̃₀ and X̃₁. As a consequence, we prove a new, tight characterization of the number of samples k needed to efficiently distinguish X₀^{⊗k} and X₁^{⊗k} with constant advantage as k = Θ(d_H^{-2}(X̃₀, X̃₁)), which is the inverse of the squared Hellinger distance d_H between two distributions X̃₀ and X̃₁ that are computationally indistinguishable from X₀ and X₁. Likewise, our framework can be used to re-derive a result of Halevi and Rabin (TCC 2008) and Geier (TCC 2022), proving nearly-tight bounds on how computational indistinguishability scales with the number of samples for arbitrary product distributions. At the heart of our work is the use of the Multicalibration Theorem (Hébert-Johnson, Kim, Reingold, Rothblum 2018) in a way inspired by recent work of Casacuberta, Dwork, and Vadhan (STOC 2024). Multicalibration allows us to relate the computational indistinguishability of X₀, X₁ to the statistical indistinguishability of X̃₀, X̃₁ (for lower bounds on k) and construct explicit circuits to distinguish between X̃₀, X̃₁ and consequently X₀, X₁ (for upper bounds on k).
Cite as

Cassandra Marcussen, Aaron Putterman, and Salil Vadhan. Characterizing the Distinguishability of Product Distributions Through Multicalibration. In 40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 339, pp. 19:1-19:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{marcussen_et_al:LIPIcs.CCC.2025.19,
  author =	{Marcussen, Cassandra and Putterman, Aaron and Vadhan, Salil},
  title =	{{Characterizing the Distinguishability of Product Distributions Through Multicalibration}},
  booktitle =	{40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025)},
  pages =	{19:1--19:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-379-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{339},
  editor =	{Srinivasan, Srikanth},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.19},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-237130},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.19},
  annote =	{Keywords: Multicalibration, computational distinguishability}
}
Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.107
A Theory of Spectral CSP Sparsification

Authors: Sanjeev Khanna, Aaron Putterman, and Madhu Sudan

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 334, 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)

Abstract
We initiate the study of spectral sparsification for instances of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). In particular, we introduce a notion of the spectral energy of a fractional assignment for a Boolean CSP instance, and define a spectral sparsifier as a weighted subset of constraints that approximately preserves this energy for all fractional assignments. Our definition not only strengthens the combinatorial notion of a CSP sparsifier but also extends well-studied concepts such as spectral sparsifiers for graphs and hypergraphs. Recent work by Khanna, Putterman, and Sudan [SODA 2024] demonstrated near-linear sized combinatorial sparsifiers for a broad class of CSPs, which they term field-affine CSPs. Our main result is a polynomial-time algorithm that constructs a spectral CSP sparsifier of near-quadratic size for all field-affine CSPs. This class of CSPs includes graph (and hypergraph) cuts, XORs, and more generally, any predicate which can be written as P(x₁, … x_r) = 𝟏[∑ a_i x_i ≠ b mod p]. Based on our notion of the spectral energy of a fractional assignment, we also define an analog of the second eigenvalue of a CSP instance. We then show an extension of Cheeger’s inequality for all even-arity XOR CSPs, showing that this second eigenvalue loosely captures the "expansion" of the underlying CSP. This extension specializes to the case of Cheeger’s inequality when all constraints are even XORs and thus gives a new generalization of this powerful inequality which converts the combinatorial notion of expansion to an analytic property. Perhaps the most important effect of spectral sparsification is that it has led to certifiable sparsifiers for graphs and hypergraphs. This aspect remains open in our case even for XOR CSPs since the eigenvalues we describe in our Cheeger inequality are not known to be efficiently computable. Computing this efficiently, and/or finding other ways to certifiably sparsify CSPs are open questions emerging from our work. Another important open question is determining which classes of CSPs have near-linear size spectral sparsifiers.
Cite as

Sanjeev Khanna, Aaron Putterman, and Madhu Sudan. A Theory of Spectral CSP Sparsification. In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 334, pp. 107:1-107:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{khanna_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.107,
  author =	{Khanna, Sanjeev and Putterman, Aaron and Sudan, Madhu},
  title =	{{A Theory of Spectral CSP Sparsification}},
  booktitle =	{52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)},
  pages =	{107:1--107:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-372-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{334},
  editor =	{Censor-Hillel, Keren and Grandoni, Fabrizio and Ouaknine, Jo\"{e}l and Puppis, Gabriele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.107},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-234840},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.107},
  annote =	{Keywords: Sparsification, sketching, hypergraphs}
}
Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.108
Near-Optimal Hypergraph Sparsification in Insertion-Only and Bounded-Deletion Streams

Authors: Sanjeev Khanna, Aaron Putterman, and Madhu Sudan

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 334, 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)

Abstract
We study the problem of constructing hypergraph cut sparsifiers in the streaming model where a hypergraph on n vertices is revealed either via an arbitrary sequence of hyperedge insertions alone (insertion-only streaming model) or via an arbitrary sequence of hyperedge insertions and deletions (dynamic streaming model). For any ε ∈ (0,1), a (1 ± ε) hypergraph cut-sparsifier of a hypergraph H is a reweighted subgraph H' whose cut values approximate those of H to within a (1 ± ε) factor. Prior work shows that in the static setting, one can construct a (1 ± ε) hypergraph cut-sparsifier using Õ(nr/ε²) bits of space [Chen-Khanna-Nagda FOCS 2020], and in the setting of dynamic streams using Õ(nrlog m/ε²) bits of space [Khanna-Putterman-Sudan FOCS 2024]; here the Õ notation hides terms that are polylogarithmic in n, and we use m to denote the total number of hyperedges in the hypergraph. Up until now, the best known space complexity for insertion-only streams has been the same as that for the dynamic streams. This naturally poses the question of understanding the complexity of hypergraph sparsification in insertion-only streams. Perhaps surprisingly, in this work we show that in insertion-only streams, a (1 ± ε) cut-sparsifier can be computed in Õ(nr/ε²) bits of space, matching the complexity of the static setting. As a consequence, this also establishes an Ω(log m) factor separation between the space complexity of hypergraph cut sparsification in insertion-only streams and dynamic streams, as the latter is provably known to require Ω(nr log m) bits of space. To better explain this gap, we then show a more general result: namely, if the stream has at most k hyperedge deletions then Õ(n r log k/ε²) bits of space suffice for hypergraph cut sparsification. Thus the space complexity smoothly interpolates between the insertion-only regime (k = 0) and the fully dynamic regime (k = m). Our algorithmic results are driven by a key technical insight: once sufficiently many hyperedges have been inserted into the stream (relative to the number of allowed deletions), we can significantly reduce the underlying hypergraph by size by irrevocably contracting large subsets of vertices. Finally, we complement this result with an essentially matching lower bound of Ω(n r log(k/n)) bits, thus providing essentially a tight characterization of the space complexity for hypergraph cut-sparsification across a spectrum of streaming models.
Cite as

Sanjeev Khanna, Aaron Putterman, and Madhu Sudan. Near-Optimal Hypergraph Sparsification in Insertion-Only and Bounded-Deletion Streams. In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 334, pp. 108:1-108:11, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{khanna_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.108,
  author =	{Khanna, Sanjeev and Putterman, Aaron and Sudan, Madhu},
  title =	{{Near-Optimal Hypergraph Sparsification in Insertion-Only and Bounded-Deletion Streams}},
  booktitle =	{52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)},
  pages =	{108:1--108:11},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-372-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{334},
  editor =	{Censor-Hillel, Keren and Grandoni, Fabrizio and Ouaknine, Jo\"{e}l and Puppis, Gabriele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.108},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-234851},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.108},
  annote =	{Keywords: Sparsification, sketching, hypergraphs}
}
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