What problems can one solve on a tournament if only its score sequence is known? Tournaments are oriented complete graphs that form an extensively-studied class of directed graphs (digraphs), both from combinatorial and algorithmic perspectives. Over the years, researchers have identified multiple classical digraph problems that can be solved on a tournament from only its score sequence (indegree sequence). These problems include acyclicity testing and topological sorting [Chakrabarti, Ghosh, McGregor, and Vorotnikova; SODA'20], s,t-reachability, strong connectivity, and decomposition into strongly connected components (SCC) [Ghosh and Kuchlous; ESA'24], and vertex-ordering problems such as cutwidth and optimal linear arrangement [Barbero, Paul, and Pilipczuk; ICALP'17]. These prior works showed the sufficiency of the score sequence by designing distinct algorithms for the individual problems. In this work, we give a simple unified framework that solves all these problems using only indegrees and, in fact, completely characterises the class of problems that is determined by the indegree information: problems whose answers are invariant under cycle reversals. As a byproduct of our results, we obtain algorithms for a variety of connectivity-based, cut-based, and vertex-ordering problems on tournaments and almost-tournaments in the streaming, the two-player communication, and the cut-query models of computation. Some of these algorithms match existing optimal bounds and others provide new bounds improving the state of the art. Specifically, our polynomial-time algorithms for almost-tournaments improve upon the exponential-time algorithms of Ghosh and Kuchlous and have much simpler analysis. The said characterisation is a special case of a much more general result that we establish: for any arbitrary digraph, the knowledge of its skeleton (underlying undirected graph) and the vertex indegrees completely determines its properties that are invariant under cycle reversal. In particular, this gives us an O(n²)-cut-query algorithm to solve directed minimum cut on n-node graphs in polynomial time, a significant result that has been observed in the literature but not concretely stated in this form. Our results also unveil interesting general connections between two well-studied sublinear models for graph problems: semi-streaming and cut-query.

The following question arises naturally in the study of graph streaming algorithms: Is there any graph problem which is "not too hard", in that it can be solved efficiently with total communication (nearly) linear in the number n of vertices, and for which, nonetheless, any streaming algorithm with Õ(n) space (i.e., a semi-streaming algorithm) needs a polynomial n^Ω(1) number of passes? Assadi, Chen, and Khanna [STOC 2019] were the first to prove that this is indeed the case. However, the lower bounds that they obtained are for rather non-standard graph problems. Our first main contribution is to present the first polynomial-pass lower bounds for natural "not too hard" graph problems studied previously in the streaming model: k-cores and degeneracy. We devise a novel communication protocol for both problems with near-linear communication, thus showing that k-cores and degeneracy are natural examples of "not too hard" problems. Indeed, previous work have developed single-pass semi-streaming algorithms for approximating these problems. In contrast, we prove that any semi-streaming algorithm for exactly solving these problems requires (almost) Ω(n^{1/3}) passes. The lower bound follows by a reduction from a generalization of the hidden pointer chasing (HPC) problem of Assadi, Chen, and Khanna, which is also the basis of their earlier semi-streaming lower bounds. Our second main contribution is improved round-communication lower bounds for the underlying communication problems at the basis of these reductions: - We improve the previous lower bound of Assadi, Chen, and Khanna for HPC to achieve optimal bounds for this problem. - We further observe that all current reductions from HPC can also work with a generalized version of this problem that we call MultiHPC, and prove an even stronger and optimal lower bound for this generalization. These two results collectively allow us to improve the resulting pass lower bounds for semi-streaming algorithms by a polynomial factor, namely, from n^{1/5} to n^{1/3} passes.

We study fundamental directed graph (digraph) problems in the streaming model. An initial investigation by Chakrabarti, Ghosh, McGregor, and Vorotnikova [SODA'20] on streaming digraphs showed that while most of these problems are provably hard in general, some of them become tractable when restricted to the well-studied class of tournament graphs where every pair of nodes shares exactly one directed edge. Thus, we focus on tournaments and improve the state of the art for multiple problems in terms of both upper and lower bounds. Our primary upper bound is a deterministic single-pass semi-streaming algorithm (using $\tilde{O}(n)$ space for $n$-node graphs, where $\tilde{O}(.)$ hides polylog$(n)$ factors) for decomposing a tournament into strongly connected components (SCC). it improves upon the previously best-known algorithm by Baweja, Jia, and Woodruff [ITCS'22] in terms of both space and passes: for $p\geq 1$, they used $(p+1)$-passes and $\tilde{O}(n^{1+1/p})$-space. We further extend our algorithm to digraphs that are close to tournaments and establish tight bounds demonstrating that the problem's complexity grows smoothly with the "distance" from tournaments. Applying our framework, we obtain improved tournament algorithms for $s,t$-reachability, strong connectivity, Hamiltonian paths and cycles, and feedback arc set. On the other hand, we prove the first $Ω(n^2)$-space lower bounds for this class, exhibiting that some well-studied problems -- such as (exact) feedback arc set on tournaments (FAST) and $s,t$-distance -- remain hard here. We obtain a generalized lower bound on space-approximation tradeoffs for FAST: any single-pass $(1\pm \varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm requires $Ω(n/\sqrt{\varepsilon})$ space. As a whole, our collection of results contributes significantly to the growing literature on streaming digraphs.

For edge coloring, the online and the W-streaming models seem somewhat orthogonal: the former needs edges to be assigned colors immediately after insertion, typically without any space restrictions, while the latter limits memory to sublinear in the input size but allows an edge's color to be announced any time after its insertion. We aim for the best of both worlds by designing small-space online algorithms for edge coloring. We study the problem under both (adversarial) edge arrivals and vertex arrivals. Our results significantly improve upon the memory used by prior online algorithms while achieving an $O(1)$-competitive ratio. In particular, for $n$-node graphs with maximum vertex-degree $Δ$ under edge arrivals, we obtain an online $O(Δ)$-coloring in $\tilde{O}(n\sqrtΔ)$ space. This is also the first W-streaming edge-coloring algorithm using $O(Δ)$ colors (in sublinear memory). All prior works either used linear memory or $ω(Δ)$ colors. We also achieve a smooth color-space tradeoff: for any $t=O(Δ)$, we get an $O(Δt (\log^2 Δ))$-coloring in $\tilde{O}(n\sqrt{Δ/t})$ space, improving upon the state of the art that used $\tilde{O}(nΔ/t)$ space for the same number of colors (the $\tilde{O}(.)$ notation hides polylog$(n)$ factors). The improvements stem from extensive use of random permutations that enable us to avoid previously used colors. Most of our algorithms can be derandomized and extended to multigraphs, where edge coloring is known to be considerably harder than for simple graphs.

We present novel lower bounds in the Merlin-Arthur (MA) communication model and the related annotated streaming or stream verification model. The MA communication model extends the classical communication model by introducing an all-powerful but untrusted player, Merlin, who knows the inputs of the usual players, Alice and Bob, and attempts to convince them about the output. We focus on the online MA (OMA) model where Alice and Merlin each send a single message to Bob, who needs to catch Merlin if he is dishonest and announce the correct output otherwise. Most known functions have OMA protocols with total communication significantly smaller than what would be needed without Merlin. In this work, we introduce the notion of non-trivial-OMA complexity of a function. This is the minimum total communication required when we restrict ourselves to only non-trivial protocols where Alice sends Bob fewer bits than what she would have sent without Merlin. We exhibit the first explicit functions that have this complexity superlinear - even exponential - in their classical one-way complexity: this means the trivial protocol, where Merlin communicates nothing and Alice and Bob compute the function on their own, is exponentially better than any non-trivial protocol in terms of total communication. These OMA lower bounds also translate to the annotated streaming model, the MA analogue of single-pass data streaming. We show large separations between the classical streaming complexity and the non-trivial annotated streaming complexity (for the analogous notion in this setting) of fundamental problems such as counting distinct items, as well as of graph problems such as connectivity and k-connectivity in a certain edge update model called the support graph turnstile model that we introduce here.

Graph coloring is a fundamental problem with wide reaching applications in various areas including ata mining and databases, e.g., in parallel query optimization. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in solving various graph coloring problems in the streaming model. The initial algorithms in this line of work are all crucially randomized, raising natural questions about how important a role randomization plays in streaming graph coloring. A couple of very recent works prove that deterministic or even adversarially robust coloring algorithms (that work on streams whose updates may depend on the algorithm's past outputs) are considerably weaker than standard randomized ones. However, there is still a significant gap between the upper and lower bounds for the number of colors needed (as a function of the maximum degree Δ) for robust coloring and multipass deterministic coloring. We contribute to this line of work by proving the following results.

A streaming algorithm is considered to be adversarially robust if it provides correct outputs with high probability even when the stream updates are chosen by an adversary who may observe and react to the past outputs of the algorithm. We grow the burgeoning body of work on such algorithms in a new direction by studying robust algorithms for the problem of maintaining a valid vertex coloring of an $n$-vertex graph given as a stream of edges. Following standard practice, we focus on graphs with maximum degree at most $Δ$ and aim for colorings using a small number $f(Δ)$ of colors. A recent breakthrough (Assadi, Chen, and Khanna; SODA~2019) shows that in the standard, non-robust, streaming setting, $(Δ+1)$-colorings can be obtained while using only $\widetilde{O}(n)$ space. Here, we prove that an adversarially robust algorithm running under a similar space bound must spend almost $Ω(Δ^2)$ colors and that robust $O(Δ)$-coloring requires a linear amount of space, namely $Ω(nΔ)$. We in fact obtain a more general lower bound, trading off the space usage against the number of colors used. From a complexity-theoretic standpoint, these lower bounds provide (i)~the first significant separation between adversarially robust algorithms and ordinary randomized algorithms for a natural problem on insertion-only streams and (ii)~the first significant separation between randomized and deterministic coloring algorithms for graph streams, since deterministic streaming algorithms are automatically robust. We complement our lower bounds with a suite of positive results, giving adversarially robust coloring algorithms using sublinear space. In particular, we can maintain an $O(Δ^2)$-coloring using $\widetilde{O}(n \sqrtΔ)$ space and an $O(Δ^3)$-coloring using $\widetilde{O}(n)$ space.

Computing a dense subgraph is a fundamental problem in graph mining, with a diverse set of applications ranging from electronic commerce to community detection in social networks. In many of these applications, the underlying context is better modelled as a weighted hypergraph that keeps evolving with time.

We study graph computations in an enhanced data streaming setting, where a space-bounded client reading the edge stream of a massive graph may delegate some of its work to a cloud service. We seek algorithms that allow the client to verify a purported proof sent by the cloud service that the work done in the cloud is correct. A line of work starting with Chakrabarti et al. (ICALP 2009) has provided such algorithms, which we call schemes, for several statistical and graph-theoretic problems, many of which exhibit a tradeoff between the length of the proof and the space used by the streaming verifier. This work designs new schemes for a number of basic graph problems---including triangle counting, maximum matching, topological sorting, and single-source shortest paths---where past work had either failed to obtain smooth tradeoffs between these two key complexity measures or only obtained suboptimal tradeoffs. Our key innovation is having the verifier compute certain nonlinear sketches of the input stream, leading to either new or improved tradeoffs. In many cases, our schemes in fact provide optimal tradeoffs up to logarithmic factors. Specifically, for most graph problems that we study, it is known that the product of the verifier's space cost $v$ and the proof length $h$ must be at least $Ω(n^2)$ for $n$-vertex graphs. However, matching upper bounds are only known for a handful of settings of $h$ and $v$ on the curve $h \cdot v=\tildeΘ(n^2)$. For example, for counting triangles and maximum matching, schemes with costs lying on this curve are only known for $(h=\tilde{O}(n^2), v=\tilde{O}(1))$, $(h=\tilde{O}(n), v=\tilde{O}(n))$, and the trivial $(h=\tilde{O}(1), v=\tilde{O}(n^2))$. A major message of this work is that by exploiting nonlinear sketches, a significant ``portion'' of costs on the tradeoff curve $h \cdot v = n^2$ can be achieved.

We study the general problem of computing frequency-based functions, i.e., the sum of any given function of data stream frequencies. Special cases include fundamental data stream problems such as computing the number of distinct elements (F₀), frequency moments (F_k), and heavy-hitters. It can also be applied to calculate the maximum frequency of an element (F_{∞}). Given that exact computation of most of these special cases provably do not admit any sublinear space algorithm, a natural approach is to consider them in an enhanced data streaming model, where we have a computationally unbounded but untrusted prover that can send proofs or help messages to ease the computation. Think of a memory-restricted client delegating the computation to a powerful cloud service. The client does not blindly trust the cloud, and with its limited memory, it wants to verify the proof that the cloud sends. Chakrabarti et al. (ICALP '09) introduced this model as the annotated data streaming model and showed that multiple problems including exact computation of frequency-based functions - that have no sublinear algorithms in basic streaming - do have algorithms, also called schemes, in the annotated streaming model with both space and proof-length sublinear in the input size. We give a general scheme for computing any frequency-based function with both space usage and proof-size of O(n^{2/3}log n) bits, where n is the size of the universe. This improves upon the best known bound of O(n^{2/3}log^{4/3} n) given by the seminal paper of Chakrabarti et al. and as a result, also improves upon the best known bounds for the important special cases of computing F₀ and F_{∞}. We emphasize that while being quantitatively better, our scheme is also qualitatively better in the sense that it is simpler than the previously best scheme that uses intricate data structures and elaborate subroutines. Our scheme uses a simple technique tailored for this model: the verifier solves the problem partially by running an algorithm known to be helpful for it in the basic (sans prover) streaming model and then takes the prover’s help to solve the remaining part.

We study the problem of coloring a given graph using a small number of colors in several well-established models of computation for big data. These include the data streaming model, the general graph query model, the massively parallel communication (MPC) model, and the CONGESTED-CLIQUE and the LOCAL models of distributed computation. On the one hand, we give algorithms with sublinear complexity, for the appropriate notion of complexity in each of these models. Our algorithms color a graph G using κ(G)⋅(1+o(1)) colors, where κ(G) is the degeneracy of G: this parameter is closely related to the arboricity α(G). As a function of κ(G) alone, our results are close to best possible, since the optimal number of colors is κ(G)+1. For several classes of graphs, including real-world "big graphs," our results improve upon the number of colors used by the various (Δ(G)+1)-coloring algorithms known for these models, where Δ(G) is the maximum degree in G, since Δ(G) ⩾ κ(G) and can in fact be arbitrarily larger than κ(G). On the other hand, we establish certain lower bounds indicating that sublinear algorithms probably cannot go much further. In particular, we prove that any randomized coloring algorithm that uses at most κ(G)+O(1) colors would require Ω(n²) storage in the one pass streaming model, and Ω(n²) many queries in the general graph query model, where n is the number of vertices in the graph. These lower bounds hold even when the value of κ(G) is known in advance; at the same time, our upper bounds do not require κ(G) to be given in advance.

We consider directed graph algorithms in a streaming setting, focusing on problems concerning orderings of the vertices. This includes such fundamental problems as topological sorting and acyclicity testing. We also study the related problems of finding a minimum feedback arc set (edges whose removal yields an acyclic graph), and finding a sink vertex. We are interested in both adversarially-ordered and randomly-ordered streams. For arbitrary input graphs with edges ordered adversarially, we show that most of these problems have high space complexity, precluding sublinear-space solutions. Some lower bounds also apply when the stream is randomly ordered: e.g., in our most technical result we show that testing acyclicity in the p-pass random-order model requires roughly n1+1/p space. For other problems, random ordering can make a dramatic difference: e.g., it is possible to find a sink in an acyclic tournament in the onepass random-order model using polylog(n) space whereas under adversarial ordering roughly n1/p space is necessary and sufficient given Θ(p) passes. We also design sublinear algorithms for the feedback arc set problem in tournament graphs; for random graphs; and for randomly ordered streams. In some cases, we give lower bounds establishing that our algorithms are essentially space-optimal. Together, our results complement the much maturer body of work on algorithms for undirected graph streams.

We give new algorithms in the annotated data streaming setting - also known as verifiable data stream computation - for certain graph problems. This setting is meant to model outsourced computation, where a space-bounded verifier limited to sequential data access seeks to overcome its computational limitations by engaging a powerful prover, without needing to trust the prover. As is well established, several problems that admit no sublinear-space algorithms under traditional streaming do allow protocols using a sublinear amount of prover/verifier communication and sublinear-space verification. We give algorithms for many well-studied graph problems including triangle counting, its generalization to subgraph counting, maximum matching, problems about the existence (or not) of short paths, finding the shortest path between two vertices, and testing for an independent set. While some of these problems have been studied before, our results achieve new tradeoffs between space and communication costs that were hitherto unknown. In particular, two of our results disprove explicit conjectures of Thaler (ICALP, 2016) by giving triangle counting and maximum matching algorithms for n-vertex graphs, using o(n) space and o(n^2) communication.