13 Search Results for "Daskalakis, Constantinos"

Document
APPROX
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.23
On Instance-Optimal Algorithms for a Generalization of Nuts and Bolts and Generalized Sorting

Authors: Mayank Goswami and Riko Jacob

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 317, Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024)

Abstract
We generalize the classical nuts and bolts problem to a setting where the input is a collection of n nuts and m bolts, and there is no promise of any matching pairs. It is not allowed to compare a nut directly with a nut or a bolt directly with a bolt, and the goal is to perform the fewest nut-bolt comparisons to discover the partial order between the nuts and bolts. We term this problem bipartite sorting. We show that instances of bipartite sorting of the same size exhibit a wide range of complexity, and propose to perform a fine-grained analysis for this problem. We rule out straightforward notions of instance-optimality as being too stringent, and adopt a neighborhood-based definition. Our definition may be of independent interest as a unifying lens for instance-optimal algorithms for other static problems existing in literature. This includes problems like sorting (Estivill-Castro and Woods, ACM Comput. Surv. 1992), convex hull (Afshani, Barbay and Chan, JACM 2017), adaptive joins (Demaine, López-Ortiz and Munro, SODA 2000), and the recent concept of universal optimality for graphs (Haeupler, Hladík, Rozhoň, Tarjan and Tětek, 2023). As our main result on bipartite sorting, we give a randomized algorithm that is within a factor of O(log³(n+m)) of being instance-optimal w.h.p., with respect to the neighborhood-based definition. As our second contribution, we generalize bipartite sorting to DAG sorting, when the underlying DAG is not necessarily bipartite. As an unexpected consequence of a simple algorithm for DAG sorting, we rule out a potential lower bound on the widely-studied problem of sorting with priced information, posed by (Charikar, Fagin, Guruswami, Kleinberg, Raghavan and Sahai, STOC 2000). In this problem, comparing keys i and j has a known cost c_{ij} ∈ ℝ^+ ∪ {∞}, and the goal is to sort the keys in an instance-optimal way, by keeping the total cost of an algorithm as close as possible to ∑_{i=1}^{n-1} c_{x(i)x(i+1)}. Here x(1) < ⋯ < x(n) is the sorted order. While several special cases of cost functions have received a lot of attention in the community, no progress on the general version with arbitrary costs has been reported so far. One reason for this lack of progress seems to be a widely-cited Ω(n) lower bound on the competitive ratio for finding the maximum. This Ω(n) lower bound by (Gupta and Kumar, FOCS 2000) uses costs in {0,1,n, ∞}, and although not extended to sorting, this barrier seems to have stalled any progress on the general cost case. We rule out such a potential lower bound by showing the existence of an algorithm with a Õ(n^{3/4}) competitive ratio for the {0,1,n,∞} cost version. This generalizes the setting of generalized sorting proposed by (Huang, Kannan and Khanna, FOCS 2011), where the costs are either 1 or infinity, and the cost of the cheapest proof is always n-1.
Cite as

Mayank Goswami and Riko Jacob. On Instance-Optimal Algorithms for a Generalization of Nuts and Bolts and Generalized Sorting. In Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 317, pp. 23:1-23:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{goswami_et_al:LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.23,
  author =	{Goswami, Mayank and Jacob, Riko},
  title =	{{On Instance-Optimal Algorithms for a Generalization of Nuts and Bolts and Generalized Sorting}},
  booktitle =	{Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024)},
  pages =	{23:1--23:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-348-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{317},
  editor =	{Kumar, Amit and Ron-Zewi, Noga},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.23},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-210168},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.23},
  annote =	{Keywords: Sorting, Priced Information, Instance Optimality, Nuts and Bolts}
}
Document
RANDOM
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.61
When Can an Expander Code Correct Ω(n) Errors in O(n) Time?

Authors: Kuan Cheng, Minghui Ouyang, Chong Shangguan, and Yuanting Shen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 317, Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024)

Abstract
Tanner codes are graph-based linear codes whose parity-check matrices can be characterized by a bipartite graph G together with a linear inner code C₀. Expander codes are Tanner codes whose defining bipartite graph G has good expansion property. This paper is motivated by the following natural and fundamental problem in decoding expander codes: What are the sufficient and necessary conditions that δ and d₀ must satisfy, so that every bipartite expander G with vertex expansion ratio δ and every linear inner code C₀ with minimum distance d₀ together define an expander code that corrects Ω(n) errors in O(n) time? For C₀ being the parity-check code, the landmark work of Sipser and Spielman (IEEE-TIT'96) showed that δ > 3/4 is sufficient; later Viderman (ACM-TOCT'13) improved this to δ > 2/3-Ω(1) and he also showed that δ > 1/2 is necessary. For general linear code C₀, the previously best-known result of Dowling and Gao (IEEE-TIT'18) showed that d₀ = Ω(cδ^{-2}) is sufficient, where c is the left-degree of G. In this paper, we give a near-optimal solution to the above question for general C₀ by showing that δ d₀ > 3 is sufficient and δ d₀ > 1 is necessary, thereby also significantly improving Dowling-Gao’s result. We present two novel algorithms for decoding expander codes, where the first algorithm is deterministic, and the second one is randomized and has a larger decoding radius.
Cite as

Kuan Cheng, Minghui Ouyang, Chong Shangguan, and Yuanting Shen. When Can an Expander Code Correct Ω(n) Errors in O(n) Time?. In Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 317, pp. 61:1-61:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{cheng_et_al:LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.61,
  author =	{Cheng, Kuan and Ouyang, Minghui and Shangguan, Chong and Shen, Yuanting},
  title =	{{When Can an Expander Code Correct \Omega(n) Errors in O(n) Time?}},
  booktitle =	{Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024)},
  pages =	{61:1--61:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-348-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{317},
  editor =	{Kumar, Amit and Ron-Zewi, Noga},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.61},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-210543},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.61},
  annote =	{Keywords: expander codes, expander graphs, linear-time decoding}
}
Document
RANDOM
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.70
On Sampling from Ising Models with Spectral Constraints

Authors: Andreas Galanis, Alkis Kalavasis, and Anthimos Vardis Kandiros

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 317, Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024)

Abstract
We consider the problem of sampling from the Ising model when the underlying interaction matrix has eigenvalues lying within an interval of length γ. Recent work in this setting has shown various algorithmic results that apply roughly when γ < 1, notably with nearly-linear running times based on the classical Glauber dynamics. However, the optimality of the range of γ was not clear since previous inapproximability results developed for the antiferromagnetic case (where the matrix has entries ≤ 0) apply only for γ > 2. To this end, Kunisky (SODA'24) recently provided evidence that the problem becomes hard already when γ > 1 based on the low-degree hardness for an inference problem on random matrices. Based on this, he conjectured that sampling from the Ising model in the same range of γ is NP-hard. Here we confirm this conjecture, complementing in particular the known algorithmic results by showing NP-hardness results for approximately counting and sampling when γ > 1, with strong inapproximability guarantees; we also obtain a more refined hardness result for matrices where only a constant number of entries per row are allowed to be non-zero. The main observation in our reductions is that, for γ > 1, Glauber dynamics mixes slowly when the interactions are all positive (ferromagnetic) for the complete and random regular graphs, due to a bimodality in the underlying distribution. While ferromagnetic interactions typically preclude NP-hardness results, here we work around this by introducing in an appropriate way mild antiferromagnetism, keeping the spectrum roughly within the same range. This allows us to exploit the bimodality of the aforementioned graphs and show the target NP-hardness by adapting suitably previous inapproximability techniques developed for antiferromagnetic systems.
Cite as

Andreas Galanis, Alkis Kalavasis, and Anthimos Vardis Kandiros. On Sampling from Ising Models with Spectral Constraints. In Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 317, pp. 70:1-70:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{galanis_et_al:LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.70,
  author =	{Galanis, Andreas and Kalavasis, Alkis and Kandiros, Anthimos Vardis},
  title =	{{On Sampling from Ising Models with Spectral Constraints}},
  booktitle =	{Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2024)},
  pages =	{70:1--70:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-348-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{317},
  editor =	{Kumar, Amit and Ron-Zewi, Noga},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.70},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-210638},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2024.70},
  annote =	{Keywords: Ising model, spectral constraints, Glauber dynamics, mean-field Ising, random regular graphs}
}
Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.44
Bayesian Calibrated Click-Through Auctions

Authors: Junjie Chen, Minming Li, Haifeng Xu, and Song Zuo

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 297, 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)

Abstract
We study information design in click-through auctions, in which the bidders/advertisers bid for winning an opportunity to show their ads but only pay for realized clicks. The payment may or may not happen, and its probability is called the click-through rate (CTR). This auction format is widely used in the industry of online advertising. Bidders have private values, whereas the seller has private information about each bidder’s CTRs. We are interested in the seller’s problem of partially revealing CTR information to maximize revenue. Information design in click-through auctions turns out to be intriguingly different from almost all previous studies in this space since any revealed information about CTRs will never affect bidders' bidding behaviors - they will always bid their true value per click - but only affect the auction’s allocation and payment rule. In some sense, this makes information design effectively a constrained mechanism design problem. Our first result is an FPTAS to compute an approximately optimal mechanism under a constant number of bidders. The design of this algorithm leverages Bayesian bidder values which help to "smooth" the seller’s revenue function and lead to better tractability. The design of this FPTAS is complex and primarily algorithmic. Our second main result pursues the design of "simple" mechanisms that are approximately optimal yet more practical. We primarily focus on the two-bidder situation, which is already notoriously challenging as demonstrated in recent works. When bidders' CTR distribution is symmetric, we develop a simple prior-free signaling scheme, whose construction relies on a parameter termed optimal signal ratio. The constructed scheme provably obtains a good approximation as long as the maximum and minimum of bidders' value density functions do not differ much.
Cite as

Junjie Chen, Minming Li, Haifeng Xu, and Song Zuo. Bayesian Calibrated Click-Through Auctions. In 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 297, pp. 44:1-44:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{chen_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.44,
  author =	{Chen, Junjie and Li, Minming and Xu, Haifeng and Zuo, Song},
  title =	{{Bayesian Calibrated Click-Through Auctions}},
  booktitle =	{51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)},
  pages =	{44:1--44:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-322-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{297},
  editor =	{Bringmann, Karl and Grohe, Martin and Puppis, Gabriele and Svensson, Ola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.44},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-201878},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.44},
  annote =	{Keywords: information design, ad auctions, online advertising, mechanism design}
}
Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.72
On the Smoothed Complexity of Combinatorial Local Search

Authors: Yiannis Giannakopoulos, Alexander Grosz, and Themistoklis Melissourgos

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 297, 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)

Abstract
We propose a unifying framework for smoothed analysis of combinatorial local optimization problems, and show how a diverse selection of problems within the complexity class PLS can be cast within this model. This abstraction allows us to identify key structural properties, and corresponding parameters, that determine the smoothed running time of local search dynamics. We formalize this via a black-box tool that provides concrete bounds on the expected maximum number of steps needed until local search reaches an exact local optimum. This bound is particularly strong, in the sense that it holds for any starting feasible solution, any choice of pivoting rule, and does not rely on the choice of specific noise distributions that are applied on the input, but it is parameterized by just a global upper bound ϕ on the probability density. The power of this tool can be demonstrated by instantiating it for various PLS-hard problems of interest to derive efficient smoothed running times (as a function of ϕ and the input size). Most notably, we focus on the important local optimization problem of finding pure Nash equilibria in Congestion Games, that has not been studied before from a smoothed analysis perspective. Specifically, we propose novel smoothed analysis models for general and Network Congestion Games, under various representations, including explicit, step-function, and polynomial resource latencies. We study PLS-hard instances of these problems and show that their standard local search algorithms run in polynomial smoothed time. Further applications of our framework to a wide range of additional combinatorial problems can be found in the full version of our paper.
Cite as

Yiannis Giannakopoulos, Alexander Grosz, and Themistoklis Melissourgos. On the Smoothed Complexity of Combinatorial Local Search. In 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 297, pp. 72:1-72:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{giannakopoulos_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.72,
  author =	{Giannakopoulos, Yiannis and Grosz, Alexander and Melissourgos, Themistoklis},
  title =	{{On the Smoothed Complexity of Combinatorial Local Search}},
  booktitle =	{51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)},
  pages =	{72:1--72:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-322-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{297},
  editor =	{Bringmann, Karl and Grohe, Martin and Puppis, Gabriele and Svensson, Ola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.72},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-202154},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.72},
  annote =	{Keywords: Smoothed Analysis, local search, better-response dynamics, PLS-hardness, combinatorial local optimization, congestion games, pure Nash equilibria}
}
Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.92
Algorithms for the Generalized Poset Sorting Problem

Authors: Shaofeng H.-C. Jiang, Wenqian Wang, Yubo Zhang, and Yuhao Zhang

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 297, 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)

Abstract
We consider a generalized poset sorting problem (GPS), in which we are given a query graph G = (V, E) and an unknown poset 𝒫(V, ≺) that is defined on the same vertex set V, and the goal is to make as few queries as possible to edges in G in order to fully recover 𝒫, where each query (u, v) returns the relation between u, v, i.e., u ≺ v, v ≺ u or u ̸ ∼ v. This generalizes both the poset sorting problem [Faigle et al., SICOMP 88] and the generalized sorting problem [Huang et al., FOCS 11]. We give algorithms with Õ(n poly(k)) query complexity when G is a complete bipartite graph or G is stochastic under the Erdős-Rényi model, where k is the width of the poset, and these generalize [Daskalakis et al., SICOMP 11] which only studies complete graph G. Both results are based on a unified framework that reduces the poset sorting to partitioning the vertices with respect to a given pivot element, which may be of independent interest. Moreover, we also propose novel algorithms to implement this partition oracle. Notably, we suggest a randomized BFS with vertex skipping for the stochastic G, and it yields a nearly-tight bound even for the special case of generalized sorting (for stochastic G) which is comparable to the main result of a recent work [Kuszmaul et al., FOCS 21] but is conceptually different and simplified. Our study of GPS also leads to a new Õ(n^{1 - 1 / (2W)}) competitive ratio for the so-called weighted generalized sorting problem where W is the number of distinct weights in the query graph. This problem was considered as an open question in [Charikar et al., JCSS 02], and our result makes important progress as it yields the first nontrivial sublinear ratio for general weighted query graphs (for any bounded W). We obtain this via an Õ(nk + n^{1.5}) query complexity algorithm for the case where every edge in G is guaranteed to be comparable in the poset, which generalizes a Õ(n^{1.5}) bound for generalized sorting [Huang et al., FOCS 11].
Cite as

Shaofeng H.-C. Jiang, Wenqian Wang, Yubo Zhang, and Yuhao Zhang. Algorithms for the Generalized Poset Sorting Problem. In 51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 297, pp. 92:1-92:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{jiang_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.92,
  author =	{Jiang, Shaofeng H.-C. and Wang, Wenqian and Zhang, Yubo and Zhang, Yuhao},
  title =	{{Algorithms for the Generalized Poset Sorting Problem}},
  booktitle =	{51st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2024)},
  pages =	{92:1--92:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-322-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{297},
  editor =	{Bringmann, Karl and Grohe, Martin and Puppis, Gabriele and Svensson, Ola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.92},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-202359},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.92},
  annote =	{Keywords: sorting, poset sorting, generalized sorting}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2024.37
Smooth Nash Equilibria: Algorithms and Complexity

Authors: Constantinos Daskalakis, Noah Golowich, Nika Haghtalab, and Abhishek Shetty

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 287, 15th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2024)

Abstract
A fundamental shortcoming of the concept of Nash equilibrium is its computational intractability: approximating Nash equilibria in normal-form games is PPAD-hard. In this paper, inspired by the ideas of smoothed analysis, we introduce a relaxed variant of Nash equilibrium called σ-smooth Nash equilibrium, for a {smoothness parameter} σ. In a σ-smooth Nash equilibrium, players only need to achieve utility at least as high as their best deviation to a σ-smooth strategy, which is a distribution that does not put too much mass (as parametrized by σ) on any fixed action. We distinguish two variants of σ-smooth Nash equilibria: strong σ-smooth Nash equilibria, in which players are required to play σ-smooth strategies under equilibrium play, and weak σ-smooth Nash equilibria, where there is no such requirement. We show that both weak and strong σ-smooth Nash equilibria have superior computational properties to Nash equilibria: when σ as well as an approximation parameter ϵ and the number of players are all constants, there is a {constant-time} randomized algorithm to find a weak ϵ-approximate σ-smooth Nash equilibrium in normal-form games. In the same parameter regime, there is a polynomial-time deterministic algorithm to find a strong ϵ-approximate σ-smooth Nash equilibrium in a normal-form game. These results stand in contrast to the optimal algorithm for computing ϵ-approximate Nash equilibria, which cannot run in faster than quasipolynomial-time, subject to complexity-theoretic assumptions. We complement our upper bounds by showing that when either σ or ϵ is an inverse polynomial, finding a weak ϵ-approximate σ-smooth Nash equilibria becomes computationally intractable. Our results are the first to propose a variant of Nash equilibrium which is computationally tractable, allows players to act independently, and which, as we discuss, is justified by an extensive line of work on individual choice behavior in the economics literature.
Cite as

Constantinos Daskalakis, Noah Golowich, Nika Haghtalab, and Abhishek Shetty. Smooth Nash Equilibria: Algorithms and Complexity. In 15th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 287, pp. 37:1-37:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{daskalakis_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2024.37,
  author =	{Daskalakis, Constantinos and Golowich, Noah and Haghtalab, Nika and Shetty, Abhishek},
  title =	{{Smooth Nash Equilibria: Algorithms and Complexity}},
  booktitle =	{15th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2024)},
  pages =	{37:1--37:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-309-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{287},
  editor =	{Guruswami, Venkatesan},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2024.37},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-195657},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2024.37},
  annote =	{Keywords: Nash equilibrium, smoothed analysis, PPAD}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.76
The Complexity of Infinite-Horizon General-Sum Stochastic Games

Authors: Yujia Jin, Vidya Muthukumar, and Aaron Sidford

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 251, 14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2023)

Abstract
We study the complexity of computing stationary Nash equilibrium (NE) in n-player infinite-horizon general-sum stochastic games. We focus on the problem of computing NE in such stochastic games when each player is restricted to choosing a stationary policy and rewards are discounted. First, we prove that computing such NE is in PPAD (in addition to clearly being PPAD-hard). Second, we consider turn-based specializations of such games where at each state there is at most a single player that can take actions and show that these (seemingly-simpler) games remain PPAD-hard. Third, we show that under further structural assumptions on the rewards computing NE in such turn-based games is possible in polynomial time. Towards achieving these results we establish structural facts about stochastic games of broader utility, including monotonicity of utilities under single-state single-action changes and reductions to settings where each player controls a single state.
Cite as

Yujia Jin, Vidya Muthukumar, and Aaron Sidford. The Complexity of Infinite-Horizon General-Sum Stochastic Games. In 14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 251, pp. 76:1-76:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{jin_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.76,
  author =	{Jin, Yujia and Muthukumar, Vidya and Sidford, Aaron},
  title =	{{The Complexity of Infinite-Horizon General-Sum Stochastic Games}},
  booktitle =	{14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2023)},
  pages =	{76:1--76:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-263-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{251},
  editor =	{Tauman Kalai, Yael},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.76},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-175791},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.76},
  annote =	{Keywords: complexity, stochastic games, general-sum games, Nash equilibrium}
}
Document
Invited Talk
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2022.2
Equilibrium Computation, Deep Learning, and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (Invited Talk)

Authors: Constantinos Daskalakis

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 229, 49th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2022)

Abstract
Machine Learning has recently made significant advances in challenges such as speech and image recognition, automatic translation, and text generation, much of that progress being fueled by the success of gradient descent-based optimization methods in computing local optima of non-convex objectives. From robustifying machine learning models against adversarial attacks to causal inference, training generative models, multi-robot interactions, and learning in strategic environments, many outstanding challenges in Machine Learning lie at its interface with Game Theory. On this front, however, gradient-descent based optimization methods have been less successful. Here, the role of single-objective optimization is played by equilibrium computation, but gradient-descent based methods commonly fail to find equilibria, and even computing local approximate equilibria has remained daunting. We shed light on these challenges through a combination of learning-theoretic, complexity-theoretic, game-theoretic and topological techniques, presenting obstacles and opportunities for Machine Learning and Game Theory going forward. I will assume no Deep Learning background for this talk and present results from joint works with S. Skoulakis and M. Zampetakis [Daskalakis et al., 2021] as well as with N. Golowich and K. Zhang [Daskalakis et al., 2022].
Cite as

Constantinos Daskalakis. Equilibrium Computation, Deep Learning, and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (Invited Talk). In 49th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 229, p. 2:1, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{daskalakis:LIPIcs.ICALP.2022.2,
  author =	{Daskalakis, Constantinos},
  title =	{{Equilibrium Computation, Deep Learning, and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning}},
  booktitle =	{49th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2022)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:1},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-235-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{229},
  editor =	{Boja\'{n}czyk, Miko{\l}aj and Merelli, Emanuela and Woodruff, David P.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2022.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-163431},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2022.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Deep Learning, Multi-Agent (Reinforcement) Learning, Game Theory, Nonconvex Optimization, PPAD}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2021.41
Interactive Proofs for Verifying Machine Learning

Authors: Shafi Goldwasser, Guy N. Rothblum, Jonathan Shafer, and Amir Yehudayoff

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 185, 12th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2021)

Abstract
We consider the following question: using a source of labeled data and interaction with an untrusted prover, what is the complexity of verifying that a given hypothesis is "approximately correct"? We study interactive proof systems for PAC verification, where a verifier that interacts with a prover is required to accept good hypotheses, and reject bad hypotheses. Both the verifier and the prover are efficient and have access to labeled data samples from an unknown distribution. We are interested in cases where the verifier can use significantly less data than is required for (agnostic) PAC learning, or use a substantially cheaper data source (e.g., using only random samples for verification, even though learning requires membership queries). We believe that today, when data and data-driven algorithms are quickly gaining prominence, the question of verifying purported outcomes of data analyses is very well-motivated. We show three main results. First, we prove that for a specific hypothesis class, verification is significantly cheaper than learning in terms of sample complexity, even if the verifier engages with the prover only in a single-round (NP-like) protocol. Moreover, for this class we prove that single-round verification is also significantly cheaper than testing closeness to the class. Second, for the broad class of Fourier-sparse boolean functions, we show a multi-round (IP-like) verification protocol, where the prover uses membership queries, and the verifier is able to assess the result while only using random samples. Third, we show that verification is not always more efficient. Namely, we show a class of functions where verification requires as many samples as learning does, up to a logarithmic factor.
Cite as

Shafi Goldwasser, Guy N. Rothblum, Jonathan Shafer, and Amir Yehudayoff. Interactive Proofs for Verifying Machine Learning. In 12th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 185, pp. 41:1-41:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{goldwasser_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2021.41,
  author =	{Goldwasser, Shafi and Rothblum, Guy N. and Shafer, Jonathan and Yehudayoff, Amir},
  title =	{{Interactive Proofs for Verifying Machine Learning}},
  booktitle =	{12th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2021)},
  pages =	{41:1--41:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-177-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{185},
  editor =	{Lee, James R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2021.41},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-135806},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2021.41},
  annote =	{Keywords: PAC learning, Fourier analysis of boolean functions, Complexity gaps, Complexity lower bounds, Goldreich-Levin algorithm, Kushilevitz-Mansour algorithm, Distribution testing}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2019.27
Last-Iterate Convergence: Zero-Sum Games and Constrained Min-Max Optimization

Authors: Constantinos Daskalakis and Ioannis Panageas

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 124, 10th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2019)

Abstract
Motivated by applications in Game Theory, Optimization, and Generative Adversarial Networks, recent work of Daskalakis et al [Daskalakis et al., ICLR, 2018] and follow-up work of Liang and Stokes [Liang and Stokes, 2018] have established that a variant of the widely used Gradient Descent/Ascent procedure, called "Optimistic Gradient Descent/Ascent (OGDA)", exhibits last-iterate convergence to saddle points in unconstrained convex-concave min-max optimization problems. We show that the same holds true in the more general problem of constrained min-max optimization under a variant of the no-regret Multiplicative-Weights-Update method called "Optimistic Multiplicative-Weights Update (OMWU)". This answers an open question of Syrgkanis et al [Syrgkanis et al., NIPS, 2015]. The proof of our result requires fundamentally different techniques from those that exist in no-regret learning literature and the aforementioned papers. We show that OMWU monotonically improves the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the current iterate to the (appropriately normalized) min-max solution until it enters a neighborhood of the solution. Inside that neighborhood we show that OMWU becomes a contracting map converging to the exact solution. We believe that our techniques will be useful in the analysis of the last iterate of other learning algorithms.
Cite as

Constantinos Daskalakis and Ioannis Panageas. Last-Iterate Convergence: Zero-Sum Games and Constrained Min-Max Optimization. In 10th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 124, pp. 27:1-27:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{daskalakis_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2019.27,
  author =	{Daskalakis, Constantinos and Panageas, Ioannis},
  title =	{{Last-Iterate Convergence: Zero-Sum Games and Constrained Min-Max Optimization}},
  booktitle =	{10th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2019)},
  pages =	{27:1--27:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-095-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{124},
  editor =	{Blum, Avrim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2019.27},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-101204},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2019.27},
  annote =	{Keywords: No regret learning, Zero-sum games, Convergence, Dynamical Systems, KL divergence}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2017.32
Optimal Stopping Rules for Sequential Hypothesis Testing

Authors: Constantinos Daskalakis and Yasushi Kawase

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 87, 25th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2017)

Abstract
Suppose that we are given sample access to an unknown distribution p over n elements and an explicit distribution q over the same n elements. We would like to reject the null hypothesis "p=q" after seeing as few samples as possible, when p =/= q, while we never want to reject the null, when p=q. Well-known results show that Theta(sqrt{n}/epsilon^2) samples are necessary and sufficient for distinguishing whether p equals q versus p is epsilon-far from q in total variation distance. However, this requires the distinguishing radius epsilon to be fixed prior to deciding how many samples to request. Our goal is instead to design sequential hypothesis testers, i.e. online algorithms that request i.i.d. samples from p and stop as soon as they can confidently reject the hypothesis p=q, without being given a lower bound on the distance between p and q, when p =/= q. In particular, we want to minimize the number of samples requested by our tests as a function of the distance between p and q, and if p=q we want the algorithm, with high probability, to never reject the null. Our work is motivated by and addresses the practical challenge of sequential A/B testing in Statistics. We show that, when n=2, any sequential hypothesis test must see Omega(1/{d_{tv}(p,q)^2} log log 1/{d_{tv}(p,q)}) samples, with high (constant) probability, before it rejects p=q, where d_{tv}(p,q) is the - unknown to the tester - total variation distance between p and q. We match the dependence of this lower bound on d_{tv}(p,q) by proposing a sequential tester that rejects p=q from at most O({\sqrt{n}}/{d_{tv}(p,q)^2}log log 1/{d_{tv}(p,q)}) samples with high (constant) probability. The Omega(sqrt{n}) dependence on the support size n is also known to be necessary. We similarly provide two-sample sequential hypothesis testers, when sample access is given to both p and q, and discuss applications to sequential A/B testing.
Cite as

Constantinos Daskalakis and Yasushi Kawase. Optimal Stopping Rules for Sequential Hypothesis Testing. In 25th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 87, pp. 32:1-32:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{daskalakis_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2017.32,
  author =	{Daskalakis, Constantinos and Kawase, Yasushi},
  title =	{{Optimal Stopping Rules for Sequential Hypothesis Testing}},
  booktitle =	{25th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2017)},
  pages =	{32:1--32:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-049-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{87},
  editor =	{Pruhs, Kirk and Sohler, Christian},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2017.32},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-78237},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2017.32},
  annote =	{Keywords: property testing, sequential hypothesis testing, A/B testing}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2016.24
The Complexity of Hex and the Jordan Curve Theorem

Authors: Aviv Adler, Constantinos Daskalakis, and Erik D. Demaine

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 55, 43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2016)

Abstract
The Jordan curve theorem and Brouwer's fixed-point theorem are fundamental problems in topology. We study their computational relationship, showing that a stylized computational version of Jordan’s theorem is PPAD-complete, and therefore in a sense computationally equivalent to Brouwer’s theorem. As a corollary, our computational result implies that these two theorems directly imply each other mathematically, complementing Maehara's proof that Brouwer implies Jordan [Maehara, 1984]. We then turn to the combinatorial game of Hex which is related to Jordan's theorem, and where the existence of a winner can be used to show Brouwer's theorem [Gale,1979]. We establish that determining who won an (implicitly encoded) play of Hex is PSPACE-complete by adapting a reduction (due to Goldberg [Goldberg,2015]) from Quantified Boolean Formula (QBF). As this problem is analogous to evaluating the output of a canonical path-following algorithm for finding a Brouwer fixed point - and which is known to be PSPACE-complete [Goldberg/Papadimitriou/Savani, 2013] - we thereby establish a connection between Brouwer, Jordan and Hex higher in the complexity hierarchy.
Cite as

Aviv Adler, Constantinos Daskalakis, and Erik D. Demaine. The Complexity of Hex and the Jordan Curve Theorem. In 43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2016). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 55, pp. 24:1-24:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2016)

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@InProceedings{adler_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2016.24,
  author =	{Adler, Aviv and Daskalakis, Constantinos and Demaine, Erik D.},
  title =	{{The Complexity of Hex and the Jordan Curve Theorem}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2016)},
  pages =	{24:1--24:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-013-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2016},
  volume =	{55},
  editor =	{Chatzigiannakis, Ioannis and Mitzenmacher, Michael and Rabani, Yuval and Sangiorgi, Davide},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2016.24},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-63032},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2016.24},
  annote =	{Keywords: Jordan, Brouwer, Hex, PPAD, PSPACE}
}
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