# CS359G Lecture 14: ARV Rounding

In which we begin to discuss the Arora-Rao-Vazirani rounding procedure.

Recall that, in a graph ${G=(V,E)}$ with adjacency matrix ${A}$, then ARV relaxation of the sparsest cut problem is the following semidefinite program.

$\displaystyle \begin{array}{lll} {\rm minimize} & \frac 1 {2|E|} \sum_{u,v} A_{u,v} || {\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v ||^2\\ {\rm subject\ to}\\ & \sum_{u,v} || {\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v ||^2 = {|V|^2}\\ & || {\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v||^2 \leq || {\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_w||^2 + || {\bf x}_w - {\bf x}_v||^2 & \forall u,v,w \in V\\ & \mbox{} {\bf x}_u \in {\mathbb R}^d & \forall u\in V \end{array}$

If we denote by ${ARV(G)}$ the optimum of the relaxation, then we claimed that

$\displaystyle ARV(G) \leq \phi(G) \leq O(\sqrt{\log |V|}) \cdot ARV(G)$

where the first inequality follows from the fact that ${ARV(G)}$ is a relaxation of ${\phi(G)}$, and the second inequality is the result whose proof we begin to discuss today.

1. Rounding the Arora-Rao-Vazirani Relaxation

Given the equivalence between the sparsest cut problem and the “${\ell_1}$ relaxation” of sparsest cut, it will be enough to prove the following result.

Theorem 1 (Rounding of ARV) Let ${G}$ be a graph, ${A}$ its adjacency matrix, and ${\{ {\bf x}_v \}_{v\in V}}$ be a feasible solution to the ARV relaxation.

Then there is a mapping ${f:V\rightarrow {\mathbb R}}$ such that

$\displaystyle \frac {\sum_{u,v} A_{u,v} |f(u) - f(v)|} { \sum_{u,v} |f(u)-f(v)|} \leq O(\sqrt {\log |V|} ) \cdot \frac{\sum_{u,v} A_{u,v} ||{\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v ||^2}{\sum_{u,v} ||{\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v||^2}$

As in the rounding of the Leighton-Rao relaxation via Bourgain’s theorem, we will identify a set ${S\subseteq V}$, and define

$\displaystyle f_S(v) := \min_{s\in S} || {\bf x}_s - {\bf x}_v||^2 \ \ \ \ \ (1)$

Recall that, as we saw in the proof of Bourgain’s embedding theorem, no matter how we choose the set ${S}$ we have

$\displaystyle | f_S(u) - f_S(v)| \leq ||{\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v ||^2 \ \ \ \ \ (2)$

where we are not using any facts about ${|| \cdot - \cdot||^2}$ other than the fact that, for solutions of the ARV relaxation, it is a distance function that obeys the triangle inequality.

This means that, in order to prove the theorem, we just have to find a set ${S\subseteq V}$ such that

$\displaystyle \sum_{u,v} |f_S(u) - f_S(v)| \geq \frac 1 {O(\sqrt{\log |V|})} \cdot \sum_{u,v} ||{\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v||^2 \ \ \ \ \ (3)$

and this is a considerable simplification because the above expression is completely independent of the graph! The remaining problem is purely one about geometry.

Recall that if we have a set of vectors ${\{ {\bf x}_v \}_{v\in V}}$ such that the distance function ${d(u,v):= ||{\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v||^2}$ satisfies the triangle inequality, then we say that ${d(\cdot,\cdot)}$ is a (semi-)metric of negative type.

After these preliminaries observations, our goal is to prove the following theorem.

Theorem 2 (Rounding of ARV — Revisited) If ${d(\cdot,\cdot)}$ is a semimetric of negative type over a set ${V}$, then there is a set ${S}$ such that if we define

$\displaystyle f_S(v) := \min_{s\in S} \{ d(s,v) \}$

we have

$\displaystyle \sum_{u,v} |f_S(u) - f_S(v)| \geq \frac 1 {O(\sqrt{\log |V|})} \cdot \sum_{u,v} d(u,v)$

Furthermore, the set ${S}$ can be found in randomized polynomial time with high probability given a set of vector ${\{ {\bf x}_v \}_{v\in V}}$ such that ${d(u,v) = || {\bf x}_u - {\bf x}_v||^2}$.

Since the statement is scale-invariant, we can restrict ourselves, with no loss of generality, to the case ${\sum_{u,v} d(u,v) = |V|^2}$.

Remark 1 Let us discuss some intuition before continuing with the proof.

As our experience proving Bourgain’s embedding theorem shows us, it is rather difficult to pick sets such that ${|f_S(u)-f_S(v)|}$ is not much smaller than ${d(u,v)}$. Here we have a somewhat simpler case to solve because we are not trying to preserve all distances, but only the average pairwise distance. A simple observation is that if we find a set ${S}$ which contains ${\Omega(|V|)}$ elements and such that ${\Omega(|V|)}$ elements of ${V}$ are at distance ${\Omega(\delta)}$ from ${S}$, then we immediately get ${\sum_{u,v} |f_S(u) - f_S(v)| \geq \Omega(\delta |V|^2)}$, because there will be ${\Omega(|V|^2)}$ pairs ${u,v}$ such that ${f_S(u)=0}$ and ${f_S(v) \geq \delta}$. In particular, if we could find such a set with ${\delta = 1/O(\sqrt{\log |V|})}$ then we would be done. Unfortunately this is too much to ask for in general, because we always have ${|f_S(u) - f_S(v)|\leq d(u,v)}$, which means that if we want ${\sum_{u,v} |f_S(u) - f_S(v)|}$ to have ${\Omega(V^2)}$ noticeably large terms we must also have that ${d(u,v)}$ is noticeably large for ${\Omega(|V|^2)}$ pairs of points, which is not always true.

There is, however, the following argument, which goes back to Leighton and Rao: either there are ${\Omega(|V|)}$ points concentrated in a ball whose radius is a quarter (say) of the average pairwise distance, and then we can use that ball to get an ${\ell_1}$ mapping with only constant error; or there are ${\Omega(|V|)}$ points in a ball of radius twice the average pairwise distance, such that the pairwise distances of the points in the ball account for a constant fraction of all pairwise distances. In particular, the sum of pairwise distances includes ${\Omega(|V|^2)}$ terms which are ${\Omega(1)}$.

After we do this reduction and some scaling, we are left with the task of proving the following theorem: suppose we are given an ${n}$-point negative type metric in which the points are contained in a ball of radius 1 and are such that the sum of pairwise distances is ${\Omega(n^2)}$; then there is a subset ${S}$ of size ${\Omega(n)}$ such that there are ${\Omega(n)}$ points whose distance from the set is ${1/O(\sqrt{\log n})}$. This theorem is the main result of the Arora-Rao-Vazirani paper. (Strictly speaking, this form of the theorem was proved later by Lee — Arora, Rao and Vazirani had a slightly weaker formulation.)

We begin by considering the case in which a constant fraction of the points are concentrated in a small ball.

Definition 3 (Ball) For a point ${z\in V}$ and a radius ${r>0}$, the ball of radius ${r}$ and center ${z}$ is the set

$\displaystyle B(z,r):= \left\{ v: d(z,v) \leq r \right \}$

Lemma 4 For every vertex ${z}$, if we define ${S:= B(z,1/4)}$, then

$\displaystyle \sum_{u,v} |f_S(u) - f_S(v)| \geq \frac {|S|}{2|V|} \sum_{u,v} d(u,v)$

Proof: Our first calculation is to show that the typical value of ${f_S(u)}$ is rather large. We note that for every two vertices ${u}$ and ${v}$, if we call ${a}$ a closest vertex in ${S}$ to ${u}$, and ${b}$ a closest vertex to ${v}$ in ${S}$, we have

$\displaystyle d(u,v) \leq d(u,a) + d(a,z) + d(z,b) + d(b,v)$

$\displaystyle \leq f_S(u) + f_S(v) + \frac 12$

and so

$\displaystyle |V|^2 = \sum_{u,v} d(u,v) \leq 2 |V|\cdot \sum_v f_S(v) + \frac {|V|^2}{2}$

that is,

$\displaystyle \sum_v f_S(v) \geq \frac{|V|}{2}$

Now we can get a lower bound to the sum of ${\ell_1}$ distances given by the embedding ${f_S(\cdot)}$.

$\displaystyle \sum_{u,v} |f_S(u)-f_S(v)|$

$\displaystyle \geq \sum_{u\in S,v\in V} |f_S(v)|$

$\displaystyle = |S| \sum_v f_S(v)$

$\displaystyle \geq \frac 12 |S| \cdot |V|$

$\Box$

This means that if there is a vertex ${z}$ such that ${|B(z,1/4)| = \Omega(|V|)}$, or even ${|B(z,1/4)| = \Omega(|V|/\sqrt{\log |V|})}$, then we are done.

Otherwise, we will find a set of ${\Omega(|V|)}$ vertices such that their average pairwise distances are within a constant factor of their maximum pairwise distances, and then we will work on finding an embedding for such a set of points. (The condition that the average distance is a constant fraction of the maximal distance will be very helpful in subsequent calculations.)

Lemma 5 Suppose that for every vertex ${z}$ we have ${|B(z,1/4)| \leq |V|/4}$. Then there is a vertex ${w}$ such that, if we set ${S=B(w,2)}$, we have

• ${|S|\geq \frac 12 \cdot |V|}$
• ${\sum_{u,v\in S} d(u,v) \geq \frac 1{8} |S|^2 }$

Proof: Let ${w}$ be a vertex that maximizes ${|B(w,2)|}$; then ${|B(w,2)| \geq |V|/2}$, because if we had ${|B(u,2)| < |V|/2}$ for every vertex ${u}$, then we would have

$\displaystyle \sum_{u,v} d(u,v) > \sum_u 2 \cdot (|V- B(u,2)|) > |V|^2$

Regarding the sum of pairwise distances of elements of ${S}$, we have

$\displaystyle \sum_{u,v \in S} d(u,v) > \sum_{u\in S} \frac 14 (|S - B(u,1/4)|) \geq |S| \cdot \frac 14 \cdot \frac {|S|}{2}$

$\Box$

The proof of the main theorem now reduces to proving the following geometric fact.

Theorem 6 Let ${d}$ be a negative-type metric over a set ${V}$ such that the points are contained in a unit ball and have constant average distance, that is,

• there is a vertex ${z}$ such that ${d(v,z)\leq 1}$ for every ${v\in V}$
• ${\sum_{u,v\in V} d(u,v) \geq c\cdot |V|^2}$

Then there are sets ${S,T \subseteq V}$ such that

• ${|S|, |T| \geq \Omega(|V|)}$;
• for every ${u\in S}$ and every ${v\in S}$, ${d(u,v) \geq 1/{O(\sqrt {\log |V|})}}$

where the multiplicative factors hidden in the ${O(\cdot)}$ and ${\Omega(\cdot)}$ notations depend only on ${c}$.

## 3 thoughts on “CS359G Lecture 14: ARV Rounding”

1. it’s coming

2. Hi, in this research paper there is one step in which we prove,
“There is Randomize polynomial time algorithm that finds with high probability a cut that is c’ balanced and has size 0(W*sqrt(logn)). ”

Can you please explain in that how
W >= integration over s=0 to delta |Es| and how algo produced the result with probability 1/2