We provide and study several algorithms for sorting an array of n comparable distinct elements subject to probabilistic comparison errors. In this model, the comparison of two elements returns the wrong answer according to a fixed probability, p_e < 1/2, and otherwise returns the correct answer. The dislocation of an element is the distance between its position in a given (current or output) array and its position in a sorted array. There are various algorithms that can be utilized for sorting or near-sorting elements subject to probabilistic comparison errors, but these algorithms are not data oblivious because they all make heavy use of noisy binary searching. In this paper, we provide new methods for sorting with comparison errors that are data oblivious while avoiding the use of noisy binary search methods. In addition, we experimentally compare our algorithms and other sorting algorithms.

Complex networks are at the core of an intense research activity. However, in most cases, intricate and costly measurement procedures are needed to explore their structure. In some cases, these measurements rely on link queries: given two nodes, it is possible to test the existence of a link between them. These tests may be costly, and thus minimizing their number while maximizing the number of discovered links is a key issue. This paper studies this problem: we observe that properties classically observed on real-world complex networks give hints for their efficient measurement; we derive simple principles and several measurement strategies based on this, and experimentally evaluate their efficiency on real-world cases. In order to do so, we introduce methods to evaluate the efficiency of strategies. We also explore the bias that different measurement strategies may induce.

The completeness of road network data is significant in the quality of various routing services and applications. We introduce an efficient randomized algorithm for exact learning of road networks using simple distance queries, which can find missing roads and improve the quality of routing services. The efficiency of our algorithm depends on a cluster degree parameter, d_max, which is an upper bound on the degrees of vertex clusters defined during our algorithm. Unfortunately, we leave open the problem of theoretically bounding d_max, although we conjecture that d_max is small for road networks and other similar types of graphs. We support this conjecture by experimentally evaluating our algorithm on road network data for the U.S. and 5 European countries of various sizes. This analysis provides experimental evidence that our algorithm issues a quasilinear number of queries in expectation for road networks and similar graphs.

Motivated from parallel network mapping, we provide efficient query complexity and round complexity bounds for graph reconstruction using distance queries, including a bound that improves a previous sequential complexity bound. Our methods use a high-probability parametric parallelization of a graph clustering technique of Thorup and Zwick, which may be of independent interest.

In this paper, we study the parallel query complexity of reconstructing biological and digital phylogenetic trees from simple queries involving their nodes. This is motivated from computational biology, data protection, and computer security settings, which can be abstracted in terms of two parties, a responder, Alice, who must correctly answer queries of a given type regarding a degree-d tree, T, and a querier, Bob, who issues batches of queries, with each query in a batch being independent of the others, so as to eventually infer the structure of T. We show that a querier can efficiently reconstruct an n-node degree-d tree, T, with a logarithmic number of rounds and quasilinear number of queries, with high probability, for various types of queries, including relative-distance queries and path queries. Our results are all asymptotically optimal and improve the asymptotic (sequential) query complexity for one of the problems we study. Moreover, through an experimental analysis using both real-world and synthetic data, we provide empirical evidence that our algorithms provide significant parallel speedups while also improving the total query complexities for the problems we study.

We study the parallel query complexity of reconstructing binary trees from simple queries involving their nodes. We show that a querier can efficiently reconstruct a binary tree with a logarithmic number of rounds and quasilinear number of queries, with high probability, for various types of queries.