In this paper we explore some implications of view-ing graphs as geometric objects. This approach of-fers a new perspective on a number of graph-theoretic and algorithmic problems. There are several ways to model graphs geometrically and our main concern here is with geometric representations that respect the met-ric of the (possibly weighted) graph. Given a graph G we map its vertices to a normed space in an attempt to (i) Keep down the dimension of the host space and (ii) Guarantee a small distortion, i.e., make sure that distances between vertices in G closely match the dis-tances between their geometric images. In this paper we develop efficient algorithms for em-bedding graphs low-dimensionally with a small distor-tion. Further algorithmic applications include: 0 A simple, unified approach to a number of prob-lems on multicommodity flows, including the Leighton-Rae Theorem [29] and some of its ex-tensions. 0 For graphs embeddable in low-dimensional spaces with a small distortion, we can find low-diameter decompositions (in the sense of [4] and [34]). The parameters of the decomposition depend only on the dimension and the distortion and not on the size of the graph. 0 In graphs embedded this way, small balanced separators can be found efficiently. Faithful low-dimensional representations of statisti-cal data allow for meaningful and efficient cluster-ing, which is one of the most basic tasks in pattern-recognition. For the (mostly heuristic) methods used

The goal of approximating metric spaces by more simple metric spaces has led to the notion of graph spanners [PU89, PS89] and to low-distortion embeddings in low-dimensional spaces [LLR94], having many algorithmic applications. This paper provides a novel technique for the analysis of randomized algorithms for optimization problems on metric spaces, by relating the randomized performance ratio for any metric space to the randomized performance ratio for a set of "simple" metric spaces. We define a notion of a set of metric spaces that probabilistically-approximates another metric space. We prove that any metric space can be probabilistically-approximated by hierarchically well-separated trees (HST) with a polylogarithmic distortion. These metric spaces are "simple" as being: (1) tree metrics. (2) natural for applying a divide-and-conquer algorithmic approach. The technique presented is of particular interest in the context of on-line computation. A large number of on-line al...

This paper is concerned with probabilistic approximation of metric spaces. In previous work we introduced the method of ecient approximation of metrics by more simple families of metrics in a probabilistic fashion. In particular we study probabilistic approximations of arbitrary metric spaces by \hierarchically wellseparated tree" metric spaces. This has proved as a useful technique for simplifying the solutions to various problems.

In this paper, we show that any n point metric space can be embedded into a distribution over dominating tree metrics such that the expected stretch of any edge is O(log n). This improves upon the result of Bartal who gave a bound of O(log n log log n). Moreover, our result is existentially tight; there exist metric spaces where any tree embedding must have distortion#sto n)-distortion. This problem lies at the heart of numerous approximation and online algorithms including ones for group Steiner tree, metric labeling, buy-at-bulk network design and metrical task system. Our result improves the performance guarantees for all of these problems.

We give a O( log n)-approximation algorithm for sparsest cut, balanced separator, and graph conductance problems. This improves the O(log n)-approximation of Leighton and Rao (1988). We use a well-known semidefinite relaxation with triangle inequality constraints. Central to our analysis is a geometric theorem about projections of point sets in , whose proof makes essential use of a phenomenon called measure concentration.

Modern networking applications replicate data and services widely, leading to a need for location-independent routing---the ability to route queries to objects using names independent of the objects' physical locations. Two important properties of such a routing infrastructure are routing locality and rapid adaptation to arriving and departing nodes. We show how these two properties can be efficiently achieved for certain network topologies. To do this, we present a new distributed algorithm that can solve the nearest-neighbor problem for these networks. We describe our solution in the context of Tapestry, an overlay network infrastructure that employs techniques proposed by Plaxton et al. [24].

Let G = (V; E) be an undirected weighted graph with jV j = n and jEj = m. Let k 1 be an integer. We show that G = (V; E) can be preprocessed in O(kmn ) expected time, constructing a data structure of size O(kn ), such that any subsequent distance query can be answered, approximately, in O(k) time. The approximate distance returned is of stretch at most 2k \Gamma 1, i.e., the quotient obtained by dividing the estimated distance by the actual distance lies between 1 and 2k \Gamma 1. We show that a 1963 girth conjecture of Erdos, implies ) space is needed in the worst case for any real stretch strictly smaller than 2k + 1. The space requirement of our algorithm is, therefore, essentially optimal.

The doubling constant of a metric space (X; d) is thesmallest value * such that every ball in X can be covered by * balls of half the radius. The doubling dimension of X isthen defined as dim(X) = log2 *. A metric (or sequence ofmetrics) is called doubling precisely when its doubling dimension is bounded. This is a robust class of metric spaceswhich contains many families of metrics that occur in applied settings.We give tight bounds for embedding doubling metrics into (low-dimensional) normed spaces. We consider bothgeneral doubling metrics, as well as more restricted families such as those arising from trees, from graphs excludinga fixed minor, and from snowflaked metrics. Our techniques include decomposition theorems for doubling metrics, andan analysis of a fractal in the plane due to Laakso [21]. Finally, we discuss some applications and point out a centralopen question regarding dimensionality reduction in L2.

Internet coordinate schemes have been proposed as a method for estimating minimum round trip time between hosts without direct measurement. In such a scheme, each host is assigned a set of coordinates, and Euclidean distance is used to form the desired estimate. Two key questions are: How accurate are coordinate schemes across the Internet as a whole? And: are coordinate assignment schemes fast enough, and scalable enough, for large scale use? In this paper we make contributions toward answering both those questions. Whereas the coordinate assignment problem has in the past been approached by nonlinear optimization, we develop a faster method based on dimensionality reduction of the Lipschitz embedding. We show that this method is reasonably accurate, even when applied to measurements spanning the Internet, and that it naturally leads to a scalable measurement strategy based on the notion of virtual landmarks.

Contents 1 The Magical Mystery Tour 7 1.1 Some Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.1.1 Hardness results for linear transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.1.2 Error Correcting Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.1.3 De-randomizing Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.2 Magical Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1.2.1 A Super Concentrator with O(n) edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1.2.2 Error Correcting Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1.2.3 De-randomizing Random Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .