Simple 2-approximations for bad triangle transversals and some hardness results for related problems
Florian Adriaens, Nikolaj tatti
Given a signed graph, the bad triangle transversal (BTT) problem asks to find the smallest number of edges that need to be removed such that the remaining graph does not have a triangle with exactly one negative edge (a bad triangle). We propose novel 2-approximations for this problem, which are much simpler and faster than a folklore adaptation of the 2-approximation by Krivelevich for finding a minimum triangle transversal in unsigned graphs. One of our algorithms also works for weighted BTT and for approximately optimal feasible solutions to the bad triangle cover LP. Using a recent result on approximating the bad triangle cover LP, we obtain a $(2+ε)$ approximation in time almost equal to the time needed to find a maximal set of edge-disjoint bad triangles (which would give a standard 3-approximation). Additionally, several inapproximability results are provided. For complete signed graphs, we show that BTT is NP-hard to approximate with factor better than $\frac{2137}{2136}$. Our reduction also implies the same hardness result for related problems such as correlation clustering (cluster editing), cluster deletion and the min. strong triadic closure problem. On complete signed graphs, BTT is closely related to correlation clustering. We show that the correlation clustering optimum is at most $3/2$ times the BTT optimum, by describing a pivot procedure that transforms BTT solutions into clusters. This improves a result by Veldt, which states that their ratio is at most two.
The Query Complexity of Uniform Pricing
Houshuang Chen, Yaonan Jin, Pinyan Lu
et al.
Real-world pricing mechanisms are typically optimized using training data, a setting corresponding to the \textit{pricing query complexity} problem in Mechanism Design. The previous work [LSTW23] studies the \textit{single-distribution} case, with tight bounds of $\widetildeΘ(\varepsilon^{-3})$ for a \textit{general} distribution and $\widetildeΘ(\varepsilon^{-2})$ for either a \textit{regular} or \textit{monotone-hazard-rate (MHR)} distribution, where $\varepsilon \in (0, 1)$ denotes the (additive) revenue loss of a learned uniform price relative to the Bayesian-optimal uniform price. This can be directly interpreted as ``the query complexity of the {\em \textsf{Uniform Pricing}} mechanism, in the \textit{single-distribution} case''. Yet in the \textit{multi-distribution} case, can the regularity and MHR conditions still lead to improvements over the tight bound $\widetildeΘ(\varepsilon^{-3})$ for general distributions? We answer this question in the negative, by establishing a (near-)matching lower bound $Ω(\varepsilon^{-3})$ for either \textit{two regular distributions} or \textit{three MHR distributions}. We also address the \textit{regret minimization} problem and, in comparison with the folklore upper bound $\widetilde{O}(T^{2 / 3})$ for general distributions (see, e.g., [SW24]), establish a (near-)matching lower bound $Ω(T^{2 / 3})$ for either \textit{two regular distributions} or \textit{three MHR distributions}, via a black-box reduction. Again, this is in stark contrast to the tight bound $\widetildeΘ(T^{1 / 2})$ for a single regular or MHR distribution.
Gromov-Witten theory, degenerations, and the tautological ring
Davesh Maulik, Dhruv Ranganathan
Gromov-Witten (GW) theory produces Chow and cohomology classes on the moduli of curves, and there are several conjectures/speculations about their relation to the tautological ring. We develop new degeneration techniques to address these. In Chow, we show that GW cycles of complete intersections in products of projective spaces (and more generally a broad class of toric varieties) with restricted insertions are tautological. This gives significant evidence for a 2010 speculation of Pandharipande that GW cycles of varieties over the algebraic numbers are tautological. In particular, the 0-cycle for curves on the quintic threefold is proportional to a zero stratum in the moduli space of stable curves. In cohomology, we show that in normal crossings degenerations, GW classes of the general fiber lie in the span of absolute GW classes of the special fiber strata. This confirms a 2006 conjecture of Levine-Pandharipande for targets that degenerate into elementary pieces, including complete intersections in products of projective spaces and many toric varieties. Our proofs rely on several reconstruction theorems in logarithmic GW theory, which make the logarithmic degeneration formula an inductive tool to compute GW cycles via snc degenerations. We prove a folklore conjecture that logarithmic GW cycles of a pair are determined by absolute invariants of the strata. We prove a conjecture of Urundolil Kumaran and the second author that GW cycles of toric pairs are tautological, and analogous results for broken toric bundles. We also develop tools to study GW cycles with vanishing cohomology and strengthen the logarithmic degeneration formula to allow iteration.
All-Subsets Important Separators with Applications to Sample Sets, Balanced Separators and Vertex Sparsifiers in Directed Graphs
Aditya Anand, Euiwoong Lee, Jason Li
et al.
Given a directed graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, a parameter $k$ and two disjoint subsets $S,T \subseteq V(G)$, we show that the number of all-subsets important separators, which is the number of $A$-$B$ important vertex separators of size at most $k$ over all $A \subseteq S$ and $B \subseteq T$, is at most $β(|S|, |T|, k) = 4^k {|S| \choose \leq k} {|T| \choose \leq 2k}$, where ${x \choose \leq c} = \sum_{i = 1}^c {x \choose i}$, and that they can be enumerated in time $O(β(|S|,|T|,k)k^2(m+n))$. This is a generalization of the folklore result stating that the number of $A$-$B$ important separators for two fixed sets $A$ and $B$ is at most $4^k$ (first implicitly shown by Chen, Liu and Lu Algorithmica '09). From this result, we obtain the following applications: We give a construction for detection sets and sample sets in directed graphs, generalizing the results of Kleinberg (Internet Mathematics' 03) and Feige and Mahdian (STOC' 06) to directed graphs. Via our new sample sets, we give the first FPT algorithm for finding balanced separators in directed graphs parameterized by $k$, the size of the separator. Our algorithm runs in time $2^{O(k)} (m + n)$. We also give a $O({\sqrt{\log k}})$ approximation algorithm for the same problem. Finally, we present new results on vertex sparsifiers for preserving small cuts.
Decoded Quantum Interferometry Requires Structure
Eric R. Anschuetz, David Gamarnik, Jonathan Z. Lu
We study the performance of Decoded Quantum Interferometry (DQI) on typical instances of MAX-$k$-XOR-SAT when the transpose of the constraint matrix is drawn from a standard ensemble of LDPC parity check matrices. We prove that if the decoding step of DQI corrects up to the folklore efficient decoding threshold for LDPC codes, then DQI is obstructed by a topological feature of the near-optimal space of solutions known as the overlap gap property (OGP). As the OGP is widely conjectured to exactly characterize the performance of state-of-the-art classical algorithms, this result suggests that DQI has no quantum advantage in optimizing unstructured MAX-$k$-XOR-SAT instances. We also give numerical evidence supporting this conjecture by showing that approximate message passing (AMP)--a classical algorithm conjectured to saturate the OGP threshold--outperforms DQI on a related ensemble of MAX-$k$-XOR-SAT instances. Finally, we prove that depth-$1$ QAOA outperforms DQI at sufficiently large $k$ under the same decoding threshold assumption. Our result follows by showing that DQI is approximately Lipschitz under the quantum Wasserstein metric over many standard ensembles of codes. We then prove that MAX-$k$-XOR-SAT exhibits both an OGP and a related topological obstruction known as the chaos property; this is the first known OGP threshold for MAX-$k$-XOR-SAT at fixed $k$, which may be of independent interest. Finally, we prove that both of these topological properties inhibit approximately Lipschitz algorithms such as DQI from optimizing MAX-$k$-XOR-SAT to large approximation ratio.
en
quant-ph, cond-mat.dis-nn
On the number of $k$-mers admitting a given lexicographical minimizer
Florian Ingels, Camille Marchet, Mikaël Salson
The minimizer of a word of size $k$ (a $k$-mer) is defined as its smallest substring of size $m$ (with $m\leq k$), according to some ordering on $m$-mers. minimizers have been used in bioinformatics -- notably -- to partition sequencing datasets, binning together $k$-mers that share the same minimizer. It is folklore that using the lexicographical order lead to very unbalanced partitions, resulting in an abundant literature devoted to devising alternative orders for achieving better balanced partitions. To the best of our knowledge, the unbalanced-ness of lexicographical-based minimizer partitions has never been investigated from a theoretical point of view. In this article, we aim to fill this gap and determine, for a given minimizer, how many $k$-mers would admit the chosen minimizer -- i.e. what would be the size of the bucket associated to the chosen minimizer in the worst case, where all $k$-mers would be seen in the data. We show that this number can be computed in $O(km)$ space and $O(km^2)$ time. We further introduce approximations that can be computed in $O(k)$ space and $O(km)$ time. We also show on genomic datasets that the practical number of $k$-mers associated to a minimizer are closely correlated to the theoretical expected number. We introduce two conjectures that could help closely approximating the total number of $k$-mers sharing a minimizer. We believe that characterising the distribution of the number of $k$-mers per minimizer will help devise efficient lexicographic-based minimizer bucketting.
Standard automorphisms of semisimple Lie algebras and their relations
David Reynoso-Mercado
Let $\mathfrak{g}$ be the simple Lie algebra of square matrices $(n+1)\times (n+1)$ with zero trace. There are certain relations concerning standard automorphisms that are considered ``folklore". One can find a complete proof of these in Millson and Toledano Laredo's work [Transformation Groups, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2005, pp. 217-254], but said proof is based on topological arguments which are non-trivial. The aim of this work is to verify these relations in an elementary way.
Are Bayesian networks typically faithful?
Philip Boeken, Patrick Forré, Joris M. Mooij
Faithfulness is a common assumption in causal inference, often motivated by the fact that the faithful parameters of linear Gaussian and discrete Bayesian networks are typical, and the folklore belief that this should also hold for other classes of Bayesian networks. We address this open question by showing that among all Bayesian networks over a given DAG, the faithful Bayesian networks are indeed `typical': they constitute a dense, open set with respect to the total variation metric. This does not directly imply that faithfulness is typical in restricted classes of Bayesian networks that are often considered in statistical applications. To this end we consider the class of Bayesian networks parametrised by conditional exponential families, for which we show that under regularity conditions, the faithful parameters constitute a dense and open set, the unfaithful parameters have Lebesgue measure zero, and the induced faithful distributions are open and dense in the weak topology. This extends the existing results for linear Gaussian and discrete Bayesian networks. We also show for nonparametric classes of Bayesian networks with uniformly equicontinuous and uniformly bounded conditional densities that the faithful Bayesian networks are open and dense in the weak topology. All these results also hold for Bayesian networks with latent variables, if faithfulness is only required to hold with respect to the latent projection. Finally, for the considered conditional exponential family parametrisations and nonparametric conditional density models, the topological properties of conditional independence imply the existence of a consistent conditional independence test. Together with the topological properties of faithfulness, this implies that sound constraint-based causal discovery algorithms like PC and FCI are consistent on an open and dense -- and hence `typical' -- set of Bayesian networks.
A Complete Expressiveness Hierarchy for Subgraph GNNs via Subgraph Weisfeiler-Lehman Tests
Bohang Zhang, Guhao Feng, Yiheng Du
et al.
Recently, subgraph GNNs have emerged as an important direction for developing expressive graph neural networks (GNNs). While numerous architectures have been proposed, so far there is still a limited understanding of how various design paradigms differ in terms of expressive power, nor is it clear what design principle achieves maximal expressiveness with minimal architectural complexity. To address these fundamental questions, this paper conducts a systematic study of general node-based subgraph GNNs through the lens of Subgraph Weisfeiler-Lehman Tests (SWL). Our central result is to build a complete hierarchy of SWL with strictly growing expressivity. Concretely, we prove that any node-based subgraph GNN falls into one of the six SWL equivalence classes, among which $\mathsf{SSWL}$ achieves the maximal expressive power. We also study how these equivalence classes differ in terms of their practical expressiveness such as encoding graph distance and biconnectivity. Furthermore, we give a tight expressivity upper bound of all SWL algorithms by establishing a close relation with localized versions of WL and Folklore WL (FWL) tests. Our results provide insights into the power of existing subgraph GNNs, guide the design of new architectures, and point out their limitations by revealing an inherent gap with the 2-FWL test. Finally, experiments demonstrate that $\mathsf{SSWL}$-inspired subgraph GNNs can significantly outperform prior architectures on multiple benchmarks despite great simplicity.
Thermal Entropy in Calabi-Yau Quantum Mechanics
Min-xin Huang
We consider the von Neumann entropy of a thermal mixed state in quantum systems derived from mirror curves, where the kinetic terms are exponential functions of the momentum operators. Using the mathematical results on the asymptotics of the energy eigenvalues, we compute the asymptotic entropy in high temperature limit and compare with that of the conventional models. We discuss the connections with some folklores in quantum gravity, particularly on the finiteness of entropy.
Structural Subtyping as Parametric Polymorphism
Wenhao Tang, Daniel Hillerström, James McKinna
et al.
Structural subtyping and parametric polymorphism provide similar flexibility and reusability to programmers. For example, both features enable the programmer to provide a wider record as an argument to a function that expects a narrower one. However, the means by which they do so differs substantially, and the precise details of the relationship between them exists, at best, as folklore in literature. In this paper, we systematically study the relative expressive power of structural subtyping and parametric polymorphism. We focus our investigation on establishing the extent to which parametric polymorphism, in the form of row and presence polymorphism, can encode structural subtyping for variant and record types. We base our study on various Church-style $λ$-calculi extended with records and variants, different forms of structural subtyping, and row and presence polymorphism. We characterise expressiveness by exhibiting compositional translations between calculi. For each translation we prove a type preservation and operational correspondence result. We also prove a number of non-existence results. By imposing restrictions on both source and target types, we reveal further subtleties in the expressiveness landscape, the restrictions enabling otherwise impossible translations to be defined. More specifically, we prove that full subtyping cannot be encoded via polymorphism, but we show that several restricted forms of subtyping can be encoded via particular forms of polymorphism.
Women’s evangelical activities and church growth in Romani communities
MAGDALENA SLAVKOVA
Stories about church growth in Romani communities proliferate across Europe but the question of how women contributed to religious mobilization in the interwar period requires further study. The Roma in Bulgaria became an important target group for foreign and local missionaries from various denominations, including, among others, evangelical Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals. Their aim was first to correct the laxity of Romani morals, and then to support them to win a religious place of their own in society. Women, in particular, were encouraged to work among children and the female part of their communities and to be collaborative with the male evangelists in advancing common activities. A specific field of action for female believers was women’s associations which were purposely created among both the Bulgarians and the Roma. This article is configured as an ethnographic discussion on the role of women acting as agents of religious change. Thus, I refer in detail to the cases of Boyana (Puncheva), Anka Minkova, and Keva Stefanova, whose activities were mainly related to the Romani church in the village of Golintsi in northwestern Bulgaria. Using a combined ethnological approach, I employ information from different sources: open-ended interviews, hard-to-reach archival sources, and periodicals issued in Bulgaria and abroad. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0.
History (General) and history of Europe, Anthropology
Curupira
Pedro Figueiredo Neto
“Curupira” was shot along the Javari Valley, the border region of Peru and Brazil. The story follows Arturo, a local riverine, as he paddles through the darkness in pursuit of the elusive Curupira — a mythological creature deeply ingrained in the region's folklore.
Throughout the film, Arturo unveils Curupira's ambiguous nature and its crucial role in managing the relationship between humans and the fauna and flora. As the narrative progresses, we are offered a glimpse into Arturo's childhood, we learn about the transformation of the forest into maize plantations and aviaries, and the cunning exploitation of the Curupira myth by loggers and hunters to justify and legitimise extraction.
This film is a compelling account of the intricate relationship between culture and ecology in the Amazon region, how environmental transformation is rendered intelligible, and provide fresh insights into how myths can be co-opted, not least (re)created into new syntheses.
This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (2021.03558.CEECIND/CP1696/CT0002).
Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology
Localization of the continuum directed random polymer
Sayan Das, Weitao Zhu
We consider the continuum directed random polymer (CDRP) model that arises as a scaling limit from $1+1$ dimensional directed polymers in the intermediate disorder regime. We show that for a point-to-point polymer of length $t$ and any $p\in (0,1)$, the quenched density of the point on the path which is $pt$ distance away from the origin when centered around its random mode $\mathcal{M}_{p,t}$ converges in law to an explicit random density function as $t\to\infty$ without any scaling. Similarly, in the case of point-to-line polymers of length $t$, the quenched density of the endpoint of the path when centered around its random mode $\mathcal{M}_{*,t}$ converges in law to an explicit random density. The limiting random densities are proportional to $e^{-\mathcal{R}_σ(x)}$ where $\mathcal{R}_σ(x)$ is a two-sided 3D Bessel process with appropriate diffusion coefficient $σ$. In addition, the laws of the random modes $\mathcal{M}_{*,t}$, $\mathcal{M}_{p,t}$ themselves converge in distribution upon $t^{2/3}$ scaling to the maximizer of $\operatorname{Airy}_2$ process minus a parabola and points on the geodesics of the directed landscape respectively. Our localization results stated above provide an affirmative case of the folklore "favorite region" conjecture. Our proof techniques also allow us to prove properties of the KPZ equation such as ergodicity and limiting Bessel behaviors around the maximum.
On the Practical Power of Automata in Pattern Matching
Ora Amir, Amihood Amir, Aviezri Fraenkel
et al.
The classical pattern matching paradigm is that of seeking occurrences of one string - the pattern, in another - the text, where both strings are drawn from an alphabet set $Σ$. Assuming the text length is $n$ and the pattern length is $m$, this problem can naively be solved in time $O(nm)$. In Knuth, Morris and Pratt's seminal paper of 1977, an automaton, was developed that allows solving this problem in time $O(n)$ for any alphabet. This automaton, which we will refer to as the {\em KMP-automaton}, has proven useful in solving many other problems. A notable example is the {\em parameterized pattern matching} model. In this model, a consistent renaming of symbols from $Σ$ is allowed in a match. The parameterized matching paradigm has proven useful in problems in software engineering, computer vision, and other applications. It has long been suspected that for texts where the symbols are uniformly random, the naive algorithm will perform as well as the KMP algorithm. In this paper we examine the practical efficiency of the KMP algorithm vs. the naive algorithm on a randomly generated text. We analyse the time under various parameters, such as alphabet size, pattern length, and the distribution of pattern occurrences in the text. We do this for both the original exact matching problem and parameterized matching. While the folklore wisdom is vindicated by these findings for the exact matching case, surprisingly, the KMP algorithm works significantly faster than the naive in the parameterized matching case. We check this hypothesis for DNA texts, and observe a similar behaviour as in the random text. We also show a very structured case where the automaton is much more efficient.
Extensions and approximations of Banach-valued Sobolev functions
Miguel García-Bravo, Toni Ikonen, Zheng Zhu
In complete metric measure spaces equipped with a doubling measure and supporting a weak Poincaré inequality, we investigate when a given Banach-valued Sobolev function defined on a subset satisfying a measure-density condition is the restriction of a Banach-valued Sobolev function defined on the whole space. We investigate the problem for Hajłasz- and Newton-Sobolev spaces, respectively. First, we show that Hajłasz-Sobolev extendability is independent of the target Banach spaces. We also show that every $c_0$-valued Newton-Sobolev extension set is a Banach-valued Newton-Sobolev extension set for every Banach space. We also prove that any measurable set satisfying a measure-density condition and a weak Poincaré inequality up to some scale is a Banach-valued Newton-Sobolev extension set for every Banach space. Conversely, we verify a folklore result stating that when $n\leq p<\infty$, every $W^{1,p}$-extension domain $Ω\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ supports a weak $(1,p)$-Poincaré inequality up to some scale. As a related result of independent interest, we prove that in any metric measure space when $1 \leq p < \infty$ and real-valued Lipschitz functions with bounded support are norm-dense in the real-valued $W^{1,p}$-space, then Banach-valued Lipschitz functions with bounded support are energy-dense in every Banach-valued $W^{1,p}$-space whenever the Banach space has the so-called metric approximation property.
Gorakhnath and the Kanphata Yogis
G. W. Briggs
ANALYTICAL CATEGORIES AND ETHNIC GENRES
D. Ben-Amos
Was ist eine Sage?" This question, raised by Carl Herman Tillhagen a few years ago,1 is equally applicable to other folklore genres. The search for the thematic and strucutral attributes which distinguish one form from another has continuously occupied folklorists who aspire to establish research in this field on a systematic basis. Thus, Alan Dundes states that "the problem...of defining folklore boils down to the task of defining exhaustively all the forms of folklore. Once this has been accomplished, it will be possible to give an enumerative definition of folklore. However, thus far in the illustrious history of the discipline, not so much as one genre has been completely defined."2 Disciplines Folklore | Near and Middle Eastern Studies This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/143
Making intangible heritage: El Condor Pasa and other stories from UNESCO
Fernando Rios
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, Professor of Folklore, Ethnology, and Museum Studies at the University of Iceland, has authored a fascinating, evocative, and highly accessible book that proposes to ‘change ...
Boson stars: Gravitational equilibria of self-interacting scalar fields.
M. Colpi, S. Shapiro, I. Wasserman
500 sitasi
en
Physics, Medicine