The Euclidean $k$-median problem is defined in the following manner: given a set $\mathcal{X}$ of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$, and an integer $k$, find a set $C \subset \mathbb{R}^{d}$ of $k$ points (called centers) such that the cost function $Φ(C,\mathcal{X}) \equiv \sum_{x \in \mathcal{X}} \min_{c \in C} \|x-c\|_{2}$ is minimized. The Euclidean $k$-means problem is defined similarly by replacing the distance with squared distance in the cost function. Various hardness of approximation results are known for the Euclidean $k$-means problem. However, no hardness of approximation results were known for the Euclidean $k$-median problem. In this work, assuming the unique games conjecture (UGC), we provide the first hardness of approximation result for the Euclidean $k$-median problem. Furthermore, we study the hardness of approximation for the Euclidean $k$-means/$k$-median problems in the bi-criteria setting where an algorithm is allowed to choose more than $k$ centers. That is, bi-criteria approximation algorithms are allowed to output $βk$ centers (for constant $β>1$) and the approximation ratio is computed with respect to the optimal $k$-means/$k$-median cost. In this setting, we show the first hardness of approximation result for the Euclidean $k$-median problem for any $β< 1.015$, assuming UGC. We also show a similar bi-criteria hardness of approximation result for the Euclidean $k$-means problem with a stronger bound of $β< 1.28$, again assuming UGC.

We generalise the results of Bhattacharya et al. [Bhattacharya et al., 2018] for the list-k-means problem defined as - for a (unknown) partition X₁, ..., X_k of the dataset X ⊆ ℝ^d, find a list of k-center-sets (each element in the list is a set of k centers) such that at least one of k-center-sets {c₁, ..., c_k} in the list gives an (1+ε)-approximation with respect to the cost function min_{permutation π} [∑_{i = 1}^{k} ∑_{x ∈ X_i} ||x - c_{π(i)}||²]. The list-k-means problem is important for the constrained k-means problem since algorithms for the former can be converted to {PTAS} for various versions of the latter. The algorithm for the list-k-means problem by Bhattacharya et al. is a D²-sampling based algorithm that runs in k iterations. Making use of a constant factor solution for the (classical or unconstrained) k-means problem, we generalise the algorithm of Bhattacharya et al. in two ways - (i) for any fixed set X_{j₁}, ..., X_{j_t} of t ≤ k clusters, the algorithm produces a list of (k/(ε))^{O(t/(ε))} t-center sets such that (w.h.p.) at least one of them is good for X_{j₁}, ..., X_{j_t}, and (ii) the algorithm runs in a single iteration. Following are the consequences of our generalisations: 1) Faster PTAS under stability and a parameterised reduction: Property (i) of our generalisation is useful in scenarios where finding good centers becomes easier once good centers for a few "bad" clusters have been chosen. One such case is clustering under stability of Awasthi et al. [Awasthi et al., 2010] where the number of such bad clusters is a constant. Using property (i), we significantly improve the running time of their algorithm from O(dn³) (k log{n})^{poly(1/(β), 1/(ε))} to O (dn³ (k/(ε)) ^{O(1/βε²)}). Another application is a parameterised reduction from the outlier version of k-means to the classical one where the bad clusters are the outliers. 2) Streaming algorithms: The sampling algorithm running in a single iteration (i.e., property (ii)) allows us to design a constant-pass, logspace streaming algorithm for the list-k-means problem. This can be converted to a constant-pass, logspace streaming PTAS for various constrained versions of the k-means problem. In particular, this gives a 3-pass, polylog-space streaming PTAS for the constrained binary k-means problem which in turn gives a 4-pass, polylog-space streaming PTAS for the generalised binary 𝓁₀-rank-r approximation problem. This is the first constant pass, polylog-space streaming algorithm for either of the two problems. Coreset based techniques, which is another approach for designing streaming algorithms in general, is not known to work for the constrained binary k-means problem to the best of our knowledge.

The Metric $k$-median problem over a metric space $(\mathcal{X}, d)$ is defined as follows: given a set $L \subseteq \mathcal{X}$ of facility locations and a set $C \subseteq \mathcal{X}$ of clients, open a set $F \subseteq L$ of $k$ facilities such that the total service cost, defined as $Φ(F, C) \equiv \sum_{x \in C} \min_{f \in F} d(x, f)$, is minimised. The metric $k$-means problem is defined similarly using squared distances. In many applications there are additional constraints that any solution needs to satisfy. This gives rise to different constrained versions of the problem such as $r$-gather, fault-tolerant, outlier $k$-means/$k$-median problem. Surprisingly, for many of these constrained problems, no constant-approximation algorithm is known. We give FPT algorithms with constant approximation guarantee for a range of constrained $k$-median/means problems. For some of the constrained problems, ours is the first constant factor approximation algorithm whereas for others, we improve or match the approximation guarantee of previous works. We work within the unified framework of Ding and Xu that allows us to simultaneously obtain algorithms for a range of constrained problems. In particular, we obtain a $(3+\varepsilon)$-approximation and $(9+\varepsilon)$-approximation for the constrained versions of the $k$-median and $k$-means problem respectively in FPT time. In many practical settings of the $k$-median/means problem, one is allowed to open a facility at any client location, i.e., $C \subseteq L$. For this special case, our algorithm gives a $(2+\varepsilon)$-approximation and $(4+\varepsilon)$-approximation for the constrained versions of $k$-median and $k$-means problem respectively in FPT time. Since our algorithm is based on simple sampling technique, it can also be converted to a constant-pass log-space streaming algorithm.

In this paper, we present the exact method for an integer-wise comparison technique in FHE domain using polynomial interpolaion and analyze the performance against bit-wise comparison techniques. We observe that even though the integer-wise comparison requires only one ciphertext unit for integer in contrast to l ciphertext units for an l-bit integer for bit-wise comparison, bit-wise comparison schemes have better performance due to less multiplicative depth of the comparison circuit. Our analysis shows that bit-wise comparison based on depth optimized circuits have O(log(l)) multiplicative depth, where as the integer-wise comparison has O(l) multiplicative depth and bit-wise comparison based on two's complement arithmetic techniques has O(l) multiplicative depth. We have evaluated the performance of odd-even merge sort and direct sort by considering all the three above stated comparison techniques on FHE data using HElib library and analyzed their complexities.