17 Search Results for "Goldenberg, Elazar"

Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2026.32
Constant Rate Isometric Embeddings of Hamming Metric into Edit Metric

Authors: Sudatta Bhattacharya, Sanjana Dey, Elazar Goldenberg, Mursalin Habib, Bernhard Haeupler, Karthik C. S., and Michal Koucký

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 374, 53rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2026)

Abstract
A function φ: {0,1}^n → {0,1}^N is called an isometric embedding of the n-dimensional Hamming metric space to the N-dimensional edit metric space if, for all x, y ∈ {0,1}ⁿ, the Hamming distance between x and y is equal to the edit distance between φ(x) and φ(y). The rate of such an embedding is defined as the ratio n/N. It is well known in the literature how to construct isometric embeddings with a rate of Ω(1/log n). However, achieving even near-isometric embeddings with a positive constant rate has remained elusive until now. In this paper, we present an isometric embedding with a rate of 1/8 by discovering connections to synchronization strings, which were studied in the context of insertion-deletion codes (Haeupler-Shahrasbi [JACM'21]). At a technical level, we introduce a framework for obtaining high-rate isometric embeddings using a novel object called a misaligner. We speculate that, with sufficient computational resources, our framework could potentially yield isometric embeddings with a rate of 1/5. As an immediate consequence of our constant rate isometric embedding, we improve known conditional lower bounds for the closest pair problem and the discrete 1-center problem in the edit metric and NP-hardness of approximation results for clustering problems and the Steiner tree problem in the edit metric, but now with optimal dependency on the dimension. Furthermore, we obtain optimal lower bounds for the gap edit distance problem in the two-player randomized communication complexity model. We complement our results by showing that no isometric embedding φ:{0,1}^n → {0,1}^N can have rate greater than 15/32 for all positive integers n. En route to proving this upper bound, we uncover fundamental structural properties necessary for every Hamming-to-edit isometric embedding. We also prove similar upper and lower bounds for embeddings over larger alphabets. Finally, we consider embeddings φ:Σ_in^n → Σ_out^N between different input and output alphabets, where the rate is given by (n log|Σ_in|)/(Nlog|Σ_out|). In this setting, we show that the rate can be made arbitrarily close to 1.
Cite as

Sudatta Bhattacharya, Sanjana Dey, Elazar Goldenberg, Mursalin Habib, Bernhard Haeupler, Karthik C. S., and Michal Koucký. Constant Rate Isometric Embeddings of Hamming Metric into Edit Metric. In 53rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 374, pp. 32:1-32:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{bhattacharya_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2026.32,
  author =	{Bhattacharya, Sudatta and Dey, Sanjana and Goldenberg, Elazar and Habib, Mursalin and Haeupler, Bernhard and Karthik C. S. and Kouck\'{y}, Michal},
  title =	{{Constant Rate Isometric Embeddings of Hamming Metric into Edit Metric}},
  booktitle =	{53rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2026)},
  pages =	{32:1--32:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-428-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{374},
  editor =	{Bhattacharya, Sayan and Nanongkai, Danupon and Benedikt, Michael 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.2026.32},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-264215},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2026.32},
  annote =	{Keywords: Edit distance, Hamming distance, metric embeddings, synchronization strings, fine-grained complexity}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2025.8
Binary k-Center with Missing Entries: Structure Leads to Tractability

Authors: Tobias Friedrich, Kirill Simonov, and Farehe Soheil

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 358, 20th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2025)

Abstract
k-Center clustering is a fundamental classification problem, where the task is to categorize the given collection of entities into k clusters and come up with a representative for each cluster, so that the maximum distance between an entity and its representative is minimized. In this work, we focus on the setting where the entities are represented by binary vectors with missing entries, which model incomplete categorical data. This version of the problem has wide applications, from predictive analytics to bioinformatics. Our main finding is that the problem, which is notoriously hard from the classical complexity viewpoint, becomes tractable as soon as the known entries are sparse and exhibit a certain structure. Formally, we show fixed-parameter tractable algorithms for the parameters vertex cover, fracture number, and treewidth of the row-column graph, which encodes the positions of the known entries of the matrix. Additionally, we tie the complexity of the 1-cluster variant of the problem, which is famous under the name Closest String, to the complexity of solving integer linear programs with few constraints. This implies, in particular, that improving upon the running times of our algorithms would lead to more efficient algorithms for integer linear programming in general.
Cite as

Tobias Friedrich, Kirill Simonov, and Farehe Soheil. Binary k-Center with Missing Entries: Structure Leads to Tractability. In 20th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 358, pp. 8:1-8:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{friedrich_et_al:LIPIcs.IPEC.2025.8,
  author =	{Friedrich, Tobias and Simonov, Kirill and Soheil, Farehe},
  title =	{{Binary k-Center with Missing Entries: Structure Leads to Tractability}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2025)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-407-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{358},
  editor =	{Agrawal, Akanksha and van Leeuwen, Erik Jan},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2025.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-251403},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2025.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: Clustering, Missing Entries, k-Center, Parameterized Algorithms}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.111
Hardness of Median and Center in the Ulam Metric

Authors: Nick Fischer, Elazar Goldenberg, Mursalin Habib, and Karthik C. S.

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 351, 33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025)

Abstract
The classical rank aggregation problem seeks to combine a set X of n permutations into a single representative "consensus" permutation. In this paper, we investigate two fundamental rank aggregation tasks under the well-studied Ulam metric: computing a median permutation (which minimizes the sum of Ulam distances to X) and computing a center permutation (which minimizes the maximum Ulam distance to X) in two settings. - Continuous Setting: In the continuous setting, the median/center is allowed to be any permutation. It is known that computing a center in the Ulam metric is NP-hard and we add to this by showing that computing a median is NP-hard as well via a simple reduction from the Max-Cut problem. While this result may not be unexpected, it had remained elusive until now and confirms a speculation by Chakraborty, Das, and Krauthgamer [SODA '21]. - Discrete Setting: In the discrete setting, the median/center must be a permutation from the input set. We fully resolve the fine-grained complexity of the discrete median and discrete center problems under the Ulam metric, proving that the naive Õ(n² L)-time algorithm (where L is the length of the permutation) is conditionally optimal. This resolves an open problem raised by Abboud, Bateni, Cohen-Addad, Karthik C. S., and Seddighin [APPROX '23]. Our reductions are inspired by the known fine-grained lower bounds for similarity measures, but we face and overcome several new highly technical challenges.
Cite as

Nick Fischer, Elazar Goldenberg, Mursalin Habib, and Karthik C. S.. Hardness of Median and Center in the Ulam Metric. In 33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 351, pp. 111:1-111:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{fischer_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2025.111,
  author =	{Fischer, Nick and Goldenberg, Elazar and Habib, Mursalin and Karthik C. S.},
  title =	{{Hardness of Median and Center in the Ulam Metric}},
  booktitle =	{33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025)},
  pages =	{111:1--111:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-395-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{351},
  editor =	{Benoit, Anne and Kaplan, Haim and Wild, Sebastian and Herman, Grzegorz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.111},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-245809},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.111},
  annote =	{Keywords: Ulam distance, median, center, rank aggregation, fine-grained complexity}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.43
On the Complexity of Finding 1-Center Spanning Trees

Authors: Pin-Hsian Lee, Meng-Tsung Tsai, and Hung-Lung Wang

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 349, 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)

Abstract
We consider the problem of finding a spanning tree T of a given undirected graph G such that any other spanning tree can be obtained from T by removing k edges and subsequently adding k edges, where k is minimized over all spanning trees of G. We refer to this minimum k as the treeradius of G. Treeradius is an interesting graph parameter with natural interpretations: (1) It is the smallest radius of a Hamming ball centered at an extreme point of the spanning tree polytope that covers the entire polytope. (2) Any graph with bounded treeradius also has bounded treewidth. Consequently, if a problem admits a fixed-parameter algorithm parameterized by treewidth, it also admits a fixed-parameter algorithm parameterized by treeradius. In this paper, we show that computing the exact treeradius for n-vertex graphs requires 2^Ω(n) time under the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) and does not admit a PTAS, with an inapproximability bound of 1153/1152, unless P = NP. This hardness result is surprising, as treeradius has significantly higher ETH complexity compared to analogous problems on shortest path polytopes and star subgraph polytopes.
Cite as

Pin-Hsian Lee, Meng-Tsung Tsai, and Hung-Lung Wang. On the Complexity of Finding 1-Center Spanning Trees. In 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 349, pp. 43:1-43:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{lee_et_al:LIPIcs.WADS.2025.43,
  author =	{Lee, Pin-Hsian and Tsai, Meng-Tsung and Wang, Hung-Lung},
  title =	{{On the Complexity of Finding 1-Center Spanning Trees}},
  booktitle =	{19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)},
  pages =	{43:1--43:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-398-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{349},
  editor =	{Morin, Pat and Oh, Eunjin},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.43},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-242743},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.43},
  annote =	{Keywords: Treeradius, Spanning tree polytope, Shortest s, t-path polytope}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.7
Sequence Similarity Estimation by Random Subsequence Sketching

Authors: Ke Chen, Vinamratha Pattar, and Mingfu Shao

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 344, 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)

Abstract
Sequence similarity estimation is essential for many bioinformatics tasks, including functional annotation, phylogenetic analysis, and overlap graph construction. Alignment-free methods aim to solve large-scale sequence similarity estimation by mapping sequences to more easily comparable features that can approximate edit distances efficiently. Substrings or k-mers, as the dominant choice of features, face an unavoidable compromise between sensitivity and specificity when selecting the proper k-value. Recently, subsequence-based features have shown improved performance, but they are computationally demanding, and determining the ideal subsequence length remains an intricate art. In this work, we introduce SubseqSketch, a novel alignment-free scheme that maps a sequence to an integer vector, where the entries correspond to dynamic, rather than fixed, lengths of random subsequences. The cosine similarity between these vectors exhibits a strong correlation with the edit similarity between the original sequences. Through experiments on benchmark datasets, we demonstrate that SubseqSketch is both efficient and effective across various alignment-free tasks, including nearest neighbor search and phylogenetic clustering. A C++ implementation of SubseqSketch is openly available at https://github.com/Shao-Group/SubseqSketch.
Cite as

Ke Chen, Vinamratha Pattar, and Mingfu Shao. Sequence Similarity Estimation by Random Subsequence Sketching. In 25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 344, pp. 7:1-7:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{chen_et_al:LIPIcs.WABI.2025.7,
  author =	{Chen, Ke and Pattar, Vinamratha and Shao, Mingfu},
  title =	{{Sequence Similarity Estimation by Random Subsequence Sketching}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI 2025)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-386-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{344},
  editor =	{Brejov\'{a}, Bro\v{n}a and Patro, Rob},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239332},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WABI.2025.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Alignment-free sequence comparison, Phylogenetic clustering, Nearest neighbor search, Edit distance embedding}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.7
Sparser Abelian High Dimensional Expanders

Authors: Yotam Dikstein, Siqi Liu, and Avi Wigderson

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

Abstract
The focus of this paper is the development of new elementary techniques for the construction and analysis of high dimensional expanders. Specifically, we present two new explicit constructions of Cayley high dimensional expanders (HDXs) over the abelian group 𝔽₂ⁿ. Our expansion proofs use only linear algebra and combinatorial arguments. The first construction gives local spectral HDXs of any constant dimension and subpolynomial degree exp(n^ε) for every ε > 0, improving on a construction by Golowich [Golowich, 2023] which achieves ε = 1/2. [Golowich, 2023] derives these HDXs by sparsifying the complete Grassmann poset of subspaces. The novelty in our construction is the ability to sparsify any expanding Grassmann posets, leading to iterated sparsification and much smaller degrees. The sparse Grassmannian (which is of independent interest in the theory of HDXs) serves as the generating set of the Cayley graph. Our second construction gives a 2-dimensional HDX of any polynomial degree exp(ε n) for any constant ε > 0, which is simultaneously a spectral expander and a coboundary expander. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such non-trivial construction. We name it the Johnson complex, as it is derived from the classical Johnson scheme, whose vertices serve as the generating set of this Cayley graph. This construction may be viewed as a derandomization of the recent random geometric complexes of [Liu et al., 2023]. Establishing coboundary expansion through Gromov’s "cone method" and the associated isoperimetric inequalities is the most intricate aspect of this construction. While these two constructions are quite different, we show that they both share a common structure, resembling the intersection patterns of vectors in the Hadamard code. We propose a general framework of such "Hadamard-like" constructions in the hope that it will yield new HDXs.
Cite as

Yotam Dikstein, Siqi Liu, and Avi Wigderson. Sparser Abelian High Dimensional Expanders. In 40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 339, pp. 7:1-7:98, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{dikstein_et_al:LIPIcs.CCC.2025.7,
  author =	{Dikstein, Yotam and Liu, Siqi and Wigderson, Avi},
  title =	{{Sparser Abelian High Dimensional Expanders}},
  booktitle =	{40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:98},
  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.2025.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-237013},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Local spectral expander, coboundary expander, Grassmannian expander}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.2
Hardness Amplification for Real-Valued Functions

Authors: Yunqi Li and Prashant Nalini Vasudevan

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

Abstract
Given an integer-valued function f:{0,1}ⁿ → {0,1,… , m-1} that is mildly hard to compute on instances drawn from some distribution D over {0,1}ⁿ, we show that the function g(x_1, … , x_t) = f(x_1) + ⋯ + f(x_t) is strongly hard to compute on instances (x_1,… ,x_t) drawn from the product distribution D^t. We also show the same for the task of approximately computing real-valued functions f:{0,1}ⁿ → [0,m). Our theorems immediately imply hardness self-amplification for several natural problems including Max-Clique and Max-SAT, Approximate #SAT, Entropy Estimation, etc..
Cite as

Yunqi Li and Prashant Nalini Vasudevan. Hardness Amplification for Real-Valued Functions. In 40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 339, pp. 2:1-2:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{li_et_al:LIPIcs.CCC.2025.2,
  author =	{Li, Yunqi and Vasudevan, Prashant Nalini},
  title =	{{Hardness Amplification for Real-Valued Functions}},
  booktitle =	{40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:25},
  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.2025.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-236967},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Average-case complexity, hardness amplification}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.10
Biased Linearity Testing in the 1% Regime

Authors: Subhash Khot and Kunal Mittal

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

Abstract
We study linearity testing over the p-biased hypercube ({0,1}ⁿ, μ_p^{⊗n}) in the 1% regime. For a distribution ν supported over {x ∈ {0,1}^k:∑_{i=1}^k x_i = 0 (mod 2)}, with marginal distribution μ_p in each coordinate, the corresponding k-query linearity test Lin(ν) proceeds as follows: Given query access to a function f:{0,1}ⁿ → {-1,1}, sample (x_1,… ,x_k)∼ ν^{⊗n}, query f on x_1,… ,x_k, and accept if and only if ∏_{i ∈ [k]} f(x_i) = 1. Building on the work of Bhangale, Khot, and Minzer (STOC '23), we show, for 0 < p ≤ 1/2, that if k ≥ 1+1/p, then there exists a distribution ν such that the test Lin(ν) works in the 1% regime; that is, any function f:{0,1}ⁿ → {-1,1} passing the test Lin(ν) with probability ≥ 1/2+ε, for some constant ε > 0, satisfies Pr_{x∼μ_p^{⊗n}}[f(x) = g(x)] ≥ 1/2+δ, for some linear function g, and a constant δ = δ(ε) > 0. Conversely, we show that if k < 1+1/p, then no such test Lin(ν) works in the 1% regime. Our key observation is that the linearity test Lin(ν) works if and only if the distribution ν satisfies a certain pairwise independence property.
Cite as

Subhash Khot and Kunal Mittal. Biased Linearity Testing in the 1% Regime. In 40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 339, pp. 10:1-10:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{khot_et_al:LIPIcs.CCC.2025.10,
  author =	{Khot, Subhash and Mittal, Kunal},
  title =	{{Biased Linearity Testing in the 1\% Regime}},
  booktitle =	{40th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2025)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:23},
  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.2025.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-237046},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2025.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Linearity test, 1\% regime, p-biased}
}
Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.11
A Near-Optimal Polynomial Distance Lemma over Boolean Slices

Authors: Prashanth Amireddy, Amik Raj Behera, Srikanth Srinivasan, and Madhu Sudan

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

Abstract
The celebrated Ore-DeMillo-Lipton-Schwartz-Zippel (ODLSZ) lemma asserts that n-variate non-zero polynomial functions of degree d over a field 𝔽, are non-zero over any "grid" (points of the form Sⁿ for finite subset S ⊆ 𝔽) with probability at least max{|S|^{-d/(|S|-1)},1-d/|S|} over the choice of random point from the grid. In particular, over the Boolean cube (S = {0,1} ⊆ 𝔽), the lemma asserts non-zero polynomials are non-zero with probability at least 2^{-d}. In this work we extend the ODLSZ lemma optimally (up to lower-order terms) to "Boolean slices" i.e., points of Hamming weight exactly k. We show that non-zero polynomials on the slice are non-zero with probability (t/n)^{d}(1 - o_{n}(1)) where t = min{k,n-k} for every d ≤ k ≤ (n-d). As with the ODLSZ lemma, our results extend to polynomials over Abelian groups. This bound is tight upto the error term as evidenced by multilinear monomials of degree d, and it is also the case that some corrective term is necessary. A particularly interesting case is the "balanced slice" (k = n/2) where our lemma asserts that non-zero polynomials are non-zero with roughly the same probability on the slice as on the whole cube. The behaviour of low-degree polynomials over Boolean slices has received much attention in recent years. However, the problem of proving a tight version of the ODLSZ lemma does not seem to have been considered before, except for a recent work of Amireddy, Behera, Paraashar, Srinivasan and Sudan (SODA 2025), who established a sub-optimal bound of approximately ((k/n)⋅ (1-(k/n)))^d using a proof similar to that of the standard ODLSZ lemma. While the statement of our result mimics that of the ODLSZ lemma, our proof is significantly more intricate and involves spectral reasoning which is employed to show that a natural way of embedding a copy of the Boolean cube inside a balanced Boolean slice is a good sampler.
Cite as

Prashanth Amireddy, Amik Raj Behera, Srikanth Srinivasan, and Madhu Sudan. A Near-Optimal Polynomial Distance Lemma over Boolean Slices. In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 334, pp. 11:1-11:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{amireddy_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.11,
  author =	{Amireddy, Prashanth and Behera, Amik Raj and Srinivasan, Srikanth and Sudan, Madhu},
  title =	{{A Near-Optimal Polynomial Distance Lemma over Boolean Slices}},
  booktitle =	{52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)},
  pages =	{11:1--11:17},
  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.2025.11},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-233881},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.11},
  annote =	{Keywords: Low-degree polynomials, Boolean slices, Schwartz-Zippel Lemma}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.42
Range Counting Oracles for Geometric Problems

Authors: Anne Driemel, Morteza Monemizadeh, Eunjin Oh, Frank Staals, and David P. Woodruff

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 332, 41st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2025)

Abstract
In this paper, we study estimators for geometric optimization problems in the sublinear geometric model. In this model, we have oracle access to a point set with size n in a discrete space [Δ]^d, where queries can be made to an oracle that responds to orthogonal range counting requests. The query complexity of an optimization problem is measured by the number of oracle queries required to compute an estimator for the problem. We investigate two problems in this framework, the Euclidean Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) and Earth Mover Distance (EMD). For EMD, we show the existence of an estimator that approximates the cost of EMD with O(log Δ)-relative error and O(nΔ/(s^{1+1/d}))-additive error using O(s polylog Δ) range counting queries for any parameter s with 1 ≤ s ≤ n. Moreover, we prove that this bound is tight. For MST, we demonstrate that the weight of MST can be estimated within a factor of (1 ± ε) using Õ(√n) range counting queries.
Cite as

Anne Driemel, Morteza Monemizadeh, Eunjin Oh, Frank Staals, and David P. Woodruff. Range Counting Oracles for Geometric Problems. In 41st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 332, pp. 42:1-42:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{driemel_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.42,
  author =	{Driemel, Anne and Monemizadeh, Morteza and Oh, Eunjin and Staals, Frank and Woodruff, David P.},
  title =	{{Range Counting Oracles for Geometric Problems}},
  booktitle =	{41st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2025)},
  pages =	{42:1--42:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-370-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{332},
  editor =	{Aichholzer, Oswin and Wang, Haitao},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.42},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231941},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.42},
  annote =	{Keywords: Range counting oracles, minimum spanning trees, Earth Mover’s Distance}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.94
New Direct Sum Tests

Authors: Alek Westover, Edward Yu, and Kai Zhe Zheng

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 325, 16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2025)

Abstract
A function f:[n]^{d} → 𝔽₂ is a direct sum if there are functions L_i:[n] → 𝔽₂ such that f(x) = ∑_i L_i(x_i). In this work we give multiple results related to the property testing of direct sums. Our first result concerns a test proposed by Dinur and Golubev in [Dinur and Golubev, 2019]. We call their test the Diamond test and show that it is indeed a direct sum tester. More specifically, we show that if a function f is ε-far from being a direct sum function, then the Diamond test rejects f with probability at least Ω_{n,ε}(1). Even in the case of n = 2, the Diamond test is, to the best of our knowledge, novel and yields a new tester for the classic property of affinity. Apart from the Diamond test, we also analyze a broad family of direct sum tests, which at a high level, run an arbitrary affinity test on the restriction of f to a random hypercube inside of [n]^d. This family of tests includes the direct sum test analyzed in [Dinur and Golubev, 2019], but does not include the Diamond test. As an application of our result, we obtain a direct sum test which works in the online adversary model of [Iden Kalemaj et al., 2022]. Finally, we also discuss a Fourier analytic interpretation of the diamond tester in the n = 2 case, as well as prove local correction results for direct sum as conjectured by [Dinur and Golubev, 2019].
Cite as

Alek Westover, Edward Yu, and Kai Zhe Zheng. New Direct Sum Tests. In 16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 325, pp. 94:1-94:26, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{westover_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.94,
  author =	{Westover, Alek and Yu, Edward and Zheng, Kai Zhe},
  title =	{{New Direct Sum Tests}},
  booktitle =	{16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2025)},
  pages =	{94:1--94:26},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-361-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{325},
  editor =	{Meka, Raghu},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.94},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-227229},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.94},
  annote =	{Keywords: Linearity testing, Direct sum, Grids}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2024.11
Many Flavors of Edit Distance

Authors: Sudatta Bhattacharya, Sanjana Dey, Elazar Goldenberg, and Michal Koucký

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 323, 44th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2024)

Abstract
Several measures exist for string similarity, including notable ones like the edit distance and the indel distance. The former measures the count of insertions, deletions, and substitutions required to transform one string into another, while the latter specifically quantifies the number of insertions and deletions. Many algorithmic solutions explicitly address one of these measures, and frequently techniques applicable to one can also be adapted to work with the other. In this paper, we investigate whether there exists a standardized approach for applying results from one setting to another. Specifically, we demonstrate the capability to reduce questions regarding string similarity over arbitrary alphabets to equivalent questions over a binary alphabet. Furthermore, we illustrate how to transform questions concerning indel distance into equivalent questions based on edit distance. This complements an earlier result of Tiskin (2007) which addresses the inverse direction.
Cite as

Sudatta Bhattacharya, Sanjana Dey, Elazar Goldenberg, and Michal Koucký. Many Flavors of Edit Distance. In 44th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 323, pp. 11:1-11:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{bhattacharya_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2024.11,
  author =	{Bhattacharya, Sudatta and Dey, Sanjana and Goldenberg, Elazar and Kouck\'{y}, Michal},
  title =	{{Many Flavors of Edit Distance}},
  booktitle =	{44th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2024)},
  pages =	{11:1--11:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-355-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{323},
  editor =	{Barman, Siddharth and Lasota, S{\l}awomir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2024.11},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-222004},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2024.11},
  annote =	{Keywords: Edit distance, Indel distance, Embedding, LCS, Alphabet Reduction}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2023.3
Can You Solve Closest String Faster Than Exhaustive Search?

Authors: Amir Abboud, Nick Fischer, Elazar Goldenberg, Karthik C. S., and Ron Safier

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 274, 31st Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2023)

Abstract
We study the fundamental problem of finding the best string to represent a given set, in the form of the Closest String problem: Given a set X ⊆ Σ^d of n strings, find the string x^* minimizing the radius of the smallest Hamming ball around x^* that encloses all the strings in X. In this paper, we investigate whether the Closest String problem admits algorithms that are faster than the trivial exhaustive search algorithm. We obtain the following results for the two natural versions of the problem: - In the continuous Closest String problem, the goal is to find the solution string x^* anywhere in Σ^d. For binary strings, the exhaustive search algorithm runs in time O(2^d poly(nd)) and we prove that it cannot be improved to time O(2^{(1-ε) d} poly(nd)), for any ε > 0, unless the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis fails. - In the discrete Closest String problem, x^* is required to be in the input set X. While this problem is clearly in polynomial time, its fine-grained complexity has been pinpointed to be quadratic time n^{2 ± o(1)} whenever the dimension is ω(log n) < d < n^o(1). We complement this known hardness result with new algorithms, proving essentially that whenever d falls out of this hard range, the discrete Closest String problem can be solved faster than exhaustive search. In the small-d regime, our algorithm is based on a novel application of the inclusion-exclusion principle. Interestingly, all of our results apply (and some are even stronger) to the natural dual of the Closest String problem, called the Remotest String problem, where the task is to find a string maximizing the Hamming distance to all the strings in X.
Cite as

Amir Abboud, Nick Fischer, Elazar Goldenberg, Karthik C. S., and Ron Safier. Can You Solve Closest String Faster Than Exhaustive Search?. In 31st Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 274, pp. 3:1-3:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{abboud_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2023.3,
  author =	{Abboud, Amir and Fischer, Nick and Goldenberg, Elazar and Karthik C. S. and Safier, Ron},
  title =	{{Can You Solve Closest String Faster Than Exhaustive Search?}},
  booktitle =	{31st Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2023)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-295-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{274},
  editor =	{G{\o}rtz, Inge Li and Farach-Colton, Martin and Puglisi, Simon J. and Herman, Grzegorz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2023.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-186566},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2023.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Closest string, fine-grained complexity, SETH, inclusion-exclusion}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.58
An Algorithmic Bridge Between Hamming and Levenshtein Distances

Authors: Elazar Goldenberg, Tomasz Kociumaka, Robert Krauthgamer, and Barna Saha

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

Abstract
The edit distance between strings classically assigns unit cost to every character insertion, deletion, and substitution, whereas the Hamming distance only allows substitutions. In many real-life scenarios, insertions and deletions (abbreviated indels) appear frequently but significantly less so than substitutions. To model this, we consider substitutions being cheaper than indels, with cost 1/a for a parameter a ≥ 1. This basic variant, denoted ED_a, bridges classical edit distance (a = 1) with Hamming distance (a → ∞), leading to interesting algorithmic challenges: Does the time complexity of computing ED_a interpolate between that of Hamming distance (linear time) and edit distance (quadratic time)? What about approximating ED_a? We first present a simple deterministic exact algorithm for ED_a and further prove that it is near-optimal assuming the Orthogonal Vectors Conjecture. Our main result is a randomized algorithm computing a (1+ε)-approximation of ED_a(X,Y), given strings X,Y of total length n and a bound k ≥ ED_a(X,Y). For simplicity, let us focus on k ≥ 1 and a constant ε > 0; then, our algorithm takes Õ(n/a + ak³) time. Unless a = Õ(1), in which case ED_a resembles the standard edit distance, and for the most interesting regime of small enough k, this running time is sublinear in n. We also consider a very natural version that asks to find a (k_I, k_S)-alignment, i.e., an alignment with at most k_I indels and k_S substitutions. In this setting, we give an exact algorithm and, more importantly, an Õ((nk_I)/k_S + k_S k_I³)-time (1,1+ε)-bicriteria approximation algorithm. The latter solution is based on the techniques we develop for ED_a for a = Θ(k_S/k_I), and its running time is again sublinear in n whenever k_I ≪ k_S and the overall distance is small enough. These bounds are in stark contrast to unit-cost edit distance, where state-of-the-art algorithms are far from achieving (1+ε)-approximation in sublinear time, even for a favorable choice of k.
Cite as

Elazar Goldenberg, Tomasz Kociumaka, Robert Krauthgamer, and Barna Saha. An Algorithmic Bridge Between Hamming and Levenshtein Distances. In 14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 251, pp. 58:1-58:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{goldenberg_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.58,
  author =	{Goldenberg, Elazar and Kociumaka, Tomasz and Krauthgamer, Robert and Saha, Barna},
  title =	{{An Algorithmic Bridge Between Hamming and Levenshtein Distances}},
  booktitle =	{14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2023)},
  pages =	{58:1--58:23},
  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.2023.58},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-175615},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.58},
  annote =	{Keywords: edit distance, Hamming distance, Longest Common Extension queries}
}
Document
Invited Talk
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2021.5
Sublinear Algorithms for Edit Distance (Invited Talk)

Authors: Barna Saha

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 202, 46th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2021)

Abstract
The edit distance is a way of quantifying how similar two strings are to one another by counting the minimum number of character insertions, deletions, and substitutions required to transform one string into the other. A simple dynamic programming computes the edit distance between two strings of length n in O(n²) time, and a more sophisticated algorithm runs in time O(n+t²) where t is the distance (Landau, Myers and Schmidt, SICOMP 1998). In pursuit of obtaining faster running time, the last couple of decades have seen a flurry of research on approximating edit distance, including polylogarithmic approximation in near-linear time (Andoni, Krauthgamer and Onak, FOCS 2010), and a constant-factor approximation in subquadratic time (Chakrabarty, Das, Goldenberg, Koucký and Saks, FOCS 2018). In this talk, we will discuss recent progress that goes beyond linear time, and studies sublinear time algorithms for edit distance. We will also discuss the role preprocessing might play in designing fast algorithms. This is a joint work with Elazar Goldenberg, Tomasz Kociumaka, Robert Krauthgamer, and Aviad Rubinstein.
Cite as

Barna Saha. Sublinear Algorithms for Edit Distance (Invited Talk). In 46th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 202, p. 5:1, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{saha:LIPIcs.MFCS.2021.5,
  author =	{Saha, Barna},
  title =	{{Sublinear Algorithms for Edit Distance}},
  booktitle =	{46th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2021)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:1},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-201-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{202},
  editor =	{Bonchi, Filippo and Puglisi, Simon J.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2021.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-144452},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2021.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Edit distance, sublinear algorithms, string processing}
}
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