Property Testing on Product Distributions: Optimal Testers for Bounded Derivative Properties

We present a new linear-time algorithm for constructing multiway search trees with near-optimal search cost whose running time is independent of the size of the node in the tree. With the analysis of our construction method, we provide a new upper bound on the average search cost for multiway search trees that nearly matches the lower bound. In fact, it is tight for infinitely many probability distributions. This problem is well-studied in the literature for the case of binary search trees. Using our new construction method, we are able to provide the tightest upper bound on the average search cost for an optimal binary search tree.

We study multi-finger binary search trees (BSTs), a far-reaching extension of the classical BST model, with connections to the well-studied k-server problem. Finger search is a popular technique for speeding up BST operations when a query sequence has locality of reference. BSTs with multiple fingers can exploit more general regularities in the input. In this paper we consider the cost of serving a sequence of queries in an optimal (offline) BST with k fingers, a powerful benchmark against which other algorithms can be measured. We show that the k-finger optimum can be matched by a standard dynamic BST (having a single root-finger) with an O(log{k}) factor overhead. This result is tight for all k, improving the O(k) factor implicit in earlier work. Furthermore, we describe new online BSTs that match this bound up to a (log{k})^{O(1)} factor. Previously only the "one-finger" special case was known to hold for an online BST (Iacono, Langerman, 2016; Cole et al., 2000). Splay trees, assuming their conjectured optimality (Sleator and Tarjan, 1983), would have to match our bounds for all k. Our online algorithms are randomized and combine techniques developed for the k-server problem with a multiplicative-weights scheme for learning tree metrics. To our knowledge, this is the first time when tools developed for the k-server problem are used in BSTs. As an application of our k-finger results, we show that BSTs can efficiently serve queries that are close to some recently accessed item. This is a (restricted) form of the unified property (Iacono, 2001) that was previously not known to hold for any BST algorithm, online or offline.

In a multiprocessor system, a lock-based scheme is used to ensure consistency and correctness during parallel processing. To manipulate a binary search tree in parallel, a process that modifies the current state of the data structure has to lock a certain portion of the tree. Lock-based schemes result in a longer wait time for the rest of the processes, particularly if a large portion of the tree has been locked. In a concurrent environment, the root of the binary search tree may therefore become a bottleneck, as it is the only entry point for all processes. To reduce the total wait time, it is possible to create and maintain a binary search tree with multiple roots, thereby allowing multiple processors to act upon different trees simultaneously. In this paper, we present static and dynamic methods to create and maintain a binary search tree with multiple roots. Without considerable overhead, a set of connected trees is created that resembles a forest, yet acts as a single binary search tree.

A function f : D ? R has Lipschitz constant c if dR(f(x),f(y)) = c· dD(x,y) for all x,y in D, where dR and dD denote the distance functions on the range and domain of f, respectively. We say a function is Lipschitz if it has Lipschitz constant 1. (Note that rescaling by a factor of 1/c converts a function with a Lipschitz constant c into a Lipschitz function.) In other words, Lipschitz functions are not very sensitive to small changes in the input. We initiate the study of testing and local reconstruction of the Lipschitz property of functions. A property tester has to distinguish functions with the property (in this case, Lipschitz) from functions that are e -far from having the property, that is, differ from every function with the property on at least an e fraction of the domain. A local filter reconstructs an arbitrary function f to ensure that the reconstructed function g has the desired property (in this case, is Lipschitz), changing f only when necessary. A local filter is given a function f and a query x and, after looking up the value of f on a small number of points, it has to output g(x) for some function g, which has the desired property and does not depend on x. If f has the property, g must be equal to f. We consider functions over domains {0,1}d, {1,..., n} and {1,..., n}d, equipped with l1 distance. We design efficient testers of the Lipschitz property for functions of the form f:{0,1}d? d Z, where d ? (0,1] and d Z is the set of integer multiples of d, and of the form f: {1,..., n} ? R, where R is (discretely) metrically convex. In the first case, the tester runs in time O(d· min{d,r}/d e ), where r is the diameter of the image of f, in the second, in time O((log n)/e ). We give corresponding lower bounds of O (d) and O (log n) on the query complexity (in the second case, only for nonadaptive 1-sided error testers). Our lower bound for functions over {0,1}dis tight for the case of the {0,1,2} range and constant e. The first tester implies an algorithm for functions of the form f:{0,1}d? R that distinguishes Lipschitz functions from functions that are e -far from (1+d )-Lipschitz. We also present a local filter of the Lipschitz property for functions of the form f: {1,..., n}d ? R with lookup complexity O((log n+1)d). For functions of the form {0,1}d, we show that every nonadaptive local filter has lookup complexity exponential in d. The testers that we developed have applications to programs analysis. The reconstructors have applications to data privacy. For the first application, the Lipschitz property of the function computed by a program corresponds to a notion of robustness to noise in the data. The application to privacy is based on the fact that a function f of entries in a database of sensitive information can be released with noise of magnitude proportional to a Lipschitz constant of f, while preserving the privacy of individuals whose data is stored in the database (Dwork, McSherry, Nissim and Smith, TCC 2006). We give a differentially private mechanism, based on local filters, for releasing a function f when a Lipschitz constant of f is provided by a distrusted client. We show that when no reliable Lipschitz constant of f is given, previously known differentially private mechanisms either have a substantially higher running time or have a higher expected error for a large class of symmetric functions f.

Change-Point (CP) detection has attracted considerable attention in the fields of data mining and statistics; it is very meaningful to discuss how to quickly and efficiently detect abrupt change from large-scale bioelectric signals. Currently, most of the existing methods, like Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) statistic and so forth, are time-consuming, especially for large-scale datasets. In this paper, we propose a fast framework for abrupt change detection based on binary search trees (BSTs) and a modified KS statistic, named BSTKS (binary search trees and Kolmogorov statistic). In this method, first, two binary search trees, termed as BSTcA and BSTcD, are constructed by multilevel Haar Wavelet Transform (HWT); second, three search criteria are introduced in terms of the statistic and variance fluctuations in the diagnosed time series; last, an optimal search path is detected from the root to leaf nodes of two BSTs. The studies on both the synthetic time series samples and the real electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings indicate that the proposed BSTKS can detect abrupt change more quickly and efficiently than KS, t-statistic (t), and Singular-Spectrum Analyses (SSA) methods, with the shortest computation time, the highest hit rate, the smallest error, and the highest accuracy out of four methods. This study suggests that the proposed BSTKS is very helpful for useful information inspection on all kinds of bioelectric time series signals.

We consider the problem of distribution-free testing of the class of monotone monomials and the class of monomials over n variables.0 While there are very efficient algorithms for testing a variety of functions classes when the underlying distribution is uniform, designing distribution-free algorithms (which must work under any arbitrary and unknown distribution), tends to be a more challenging task. When the underlying distribution is uniform, Parnas et al. (SIAM Journal on Discrete Math, 2002) give an algorithm for testing (monotone) monomials whose query complexity does not depends on n, and whose dependence on the distance parameter is (inverse) linear. In contrast, Glasner and Servedio (in Proceedings of RANDOM, 2007) prove that every distribution-free testing algorithm for monotone monomials as well as for general monomials must have query complexity Ω(n1/5) (for a constant distance parameter e). In this paper we present distribution-free testing algorithms for these classes where the query complexity of the algorithms is O(n1/2/e). We note that as opposed to previous results for distribution-free testing, our algorithms do not build on the algorithms that work under the uniform distribution. Rather, we define and exploit certain structural properties of monomials (and functions that differ from them in a nonnegligible manner), which were not used in previous work on property testing.

Binary search trees built from the postorder traversal sequence of other binary search trees are characterized in terms of their binary tree structure. A connection is established between this structure and the Eulerian numbers. This yields considerable information concerning the “average” binary search tree with a given number of nodes. Periodicity is established for the process of repeatedly taking postorder sequences and building binary search trees. Finally, the average depth of a node in a postorder tree withn nodes is determined.

We present a provably linearizable and lock-free relaxed AVL tree called the non-blocking ravl tree. At any time, the height of a non-blocking ravl tree is upper bounded by log_d (2m) + c, where d is the golden ratio, m is the total number of successful INSERT operations performed so far and c is the number of active concurrent processes that have inserted new keys and are still rebalancing the tree at this time. The most significant feature of the non-blocking ravl tree is that it does not rebalance itself after DELETE operations. Instead, it performs rebalancing only after INSERT operations. Thus, the non-blocking ravl tree is much simpler to implement than other self-balancing concurrent binary search trees (BSTs) which typically introduce a large number of rebalancing cases after DELETE operations, while still providing a provable non-trivial bound on its height. We further conduct experimental studies to compare our solution with other state-of-the-art concurrent BSTs using randomly generated data sequences under uniform distributions, and find that our solution achieves the best performance among concurrent self-balancing BSTs. As the keys in access sequences are likely to be partially sorted in system software, we also conduct experiments using data sequences with various degrees of presortedness to better simulate applications in practice. Our experimental results show that, when there are enough degrees of presortedness, our solution achieves the best performance among all the concurrent BSTs used in our studies, including those that perform self-balancing operations and those that do not, and thus is potentially the best candidate for many real-world applications.

In this chapter, we will explain the following: The difference between a tree and a binary tree How to perform pre-order, in-order, and post-order traversals of a binary tree How to represent a binary tree in a computer program How to build a binary tree from given data What a binary search tree is and how to build one How to write a program to do a word-frequency count of words in a passage How to use an array as a binary tree representation How to write some recursive functions to obtain information about a binary tree How to delete a node from a binary search tree

We design an efficient sublinear time parallel construction of optimal binary search trees. The efficiency of the parallel algorithm corresponds to its total work (the product time × processors). Our algorithm works in O(n1−ɛ log n) time with the total work O(n2−2ɛ), for an arbitrarily small constant 0 < e ≤ 1/2. This is optimal within a factor n2ɛ with respect to the best known sequential algorithm given by Knuth, which needs only O(n2) time due to a monotonicity property of optimal binary search trees, see [6]). It is unknown how to explore this property in an efficient NC construction of binary search trees. Here we show that it can be effectively used in sublinear time parallel computation. Our improvement also relies on the use (in independently processed small subcomputations) of the parallelism present in Knuth's algorithm. The best known sublinear time algorithms for the construction of binary search trees (as an instance of a more general problem) have O(n3) work for time larger than n3/4, see [3] and [7]. For time √n these algorithms need n4 work, while our algorithm needs for this time only n3 work, thus improving the known algorithms by a linear factor. Also if time is O(n1−ɛ) and e is very small our improvement is close to O(n). Such improvement is similar to the one implied by the monotonicity property in sequential computations (from n3 sequential time for a more general dynamic programming problem to n2 time for the special case of optimal binary search trees).

We describe algorithms for constructing optimal binary search trees, in which the access cost of a key depends on the k preceding keys, which were reached in the path to it. This problem has applications to searching on secondary memory and robotics. Two kinds of optimal trees are considered, namely optimal worst case trees and weighted average case trees. The time and space complexity of both algorithms are O(n k+2) and O(n k+1), respectively. The algorithms are based on a convenient decomposition and characterizations of sequences of keys, which are paths of special kinds in binary search trees. Finally, using generating functions, the exact number of steps performed by the algorithms has been calculated. The subject will be introduced by a general discussion on the construction of optimal binary search trees.

Kakkot Tree is a Binary Searching Tree with the caching concept added. It is used to speed up the searching process that is carried on a Binary Search Tree. The time complexity of BST varies between O(n) and O(log n) depends upon the number of nodes that are present in left and right children. Kakkot Tree is a new data structure which is a variant of BST with some initial nodes which act like caching.

A few years ago, Blais, Brody, and Matulef: Comput. Complex. 21(2), 311–358 (2012) presented a methodology for proving lower bounds for property testing problems by reducing them from problems in communication complexity. Recently, Bhrushundi, Chakraborty, and Kulkarni (2014) showed that some reductions of this type can be deconstructed to two separate reductions, from communication complexity to randomized parity decision trees and from the latter to property testing. This work follows up on these ideas. We introduce a model called linear-access algorithms, which is a generalization of randomized parity decision trees, and show several methods to reduce communication complexity problems to problems for linear-access algorithms and problems for linear-access algorithms to property testing problems. This approach yields a new interpretation for several well-known reductions, since we present these reductions as a composition of two steps with fundamentally different functionalities. Furthermore, we demonstrate the potential of proving lower bounds on property testing problems by reducing them directly from problems for linear-access algorithms. In particular, we provide an alternative and simple proof for a known lower bound of Ω(k) queries on testing “k-linearity”; that is, the property of k-sparse linear functions over $\mathbb {F}_{2}$ . This alternative proof relies on a theorem by Linial and Samorodnitsky: Combinatorica 22(4), 497–522 (2002). We then extend this result to a new lower bound of Ω(s) queries for testing s-sparse degree-d polynomials over $\mathbb {F}_{2}$ , for any $d\in \mathbb {N}$ . In addition we provide a simple proof for the hardness of testing some families of linear subcodes.

In this paper, we demonstrate that we can effectively use the results from the field of adaptive self‐organizing data structures in enhancing compression schemes. Unlike adaptive lists, which have already been used in compression, to the best of our knowledge, adaptive self‐organizing trees have not been used in this regard. To achieve this, we introduce a new data structure, the partitioning binary search tree (PBST) which, although based on the well‐known binary search tree (BST), also appropriately partitions the data elements into mutually exclusive sets. When used in conjunction with Fano encoding, the PBST leads to the so‐called Fano binary search tree (FBST), which, indeed, incorporates the required Fano coding (nearly equal probability) property into the BST. We demonstrate how both the PBST and the FBST can be maintained adaptively and in a self‐organizing manner. The updating procedure that converts a PBST into an FBST, and the corresponding new tree‐based operators, namely the shift‐to‐left and the shift‐to‐right operators, are explicitly presented. The encoding and decoding procedures that also update the FBST have been implemented and rigorously tested. Our empirical results on the files of the well‐known benchmarks, the Calgary and Canterbury Corpora, show that the adaptive Fano coding using FBSTs, the Huffman, and the greedy adaptive Fano coding achieve similar compression ratios. However, in terms of encoding/decoding speed, the new scheme is much faster than the latter two in the encoding phase, and they achieve approximately the same speed in the decoding phase. We believe that the same philosophy, namely that of using an adaptive self‐organizing BST to maintain the frequencies, can also be utilized for other data encoding mechanisms, even as the Fenwick scheme has been used in arithmetic coding. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Binary Search Tree (BST) is an important data structure for managing ordered data. Many algorithms have been proposed for concurrent manipulation of a binary search tree in an asynchronous shared memory system that supports search, insert and delete operations based on both external and internal representations of a search tree. An important step in executing an operation on a tree is to traverse the tree from top-to-down in order to locate the operation's window. A process may need to perform this traversal several times to handle failures occurring due to other processes performing concurrent updates on the tree. Most concurrent algorithms that have been proposed so far use a naive approach and simply restart the traversal from the root of the tree. In this work, we present a new approach to recover from such failures more efficiently for certain types of concurrent binary search tree algorithms using local recovery by restarting the traversal from the middle of the tree in order to locate an operation's window (tree section of interest). Our approach is sufficiently general in the sense that it can be applied to most of the existing concurrent binary search trees using internal representation based on both blocking as well as non-blocking approaches. Using experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that our local recovery approach can significantly improve the performance of a concurrent internal BST by up to 124.7% when the contention is high.