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On the (In)tractability of Computing Normalizing Constants for the Product of Determinantal Point Processes
Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 119:7414-7423, 2020.
Abstract
We consider the product of determinantal point processes (DPPs), a point process whose probability mass is proportional to the product of principal minors of multiple matrices as a natural, promising generalization of DPPs. We study the computational complexity of computing its normalizing constant, which is among the most essential probabilistic inference tasks. Our complexity-theoretic results (almost) rule out the existence of efficient algorithms for this task, unless input matrices are forced to have favorable structures. In particular, we prove the following: (1) Computing $\sum_{S} \det(\mathbf{A}_{S,S})^p$ exactly for every (fixed) positive even integer $p$ is $\textsf{UP}$-hard and $\textsf{Mod}_3\textsf{P}$-hard, which gives a negative answer to an open question posed by Kulesza and Taskar (2012). (2) $\sum_{S} \det(\mathbf{A}_{S,S}) \det(\mathbf{B}_{S,S}) \det(\mathbf{C}_{S,S})$ is $\textsf{NP}$-hard to approximate within a factor of $ 2^{\mathcal{O}(|\mathcal{I}|^{1-\epsilon})} $ for any $\epsilon > 0$, where $|\mathcal{I}|$ is the input size. This result is stronger than $\sharp\textsf{P}$-hardness for the case of two matrices by Gillenwater (2014). (3) There exists a $ k^{\mathcal{O}(k)} |\mathcal{I}|^{\mathcal{O}(1)} $-time algorithm for computing $\sum_{S} \det(\mathbf{A}_{S,S}) \det(\mathbf{B}_{S,S})$, where $k$ is “the maximum rank of $\mathbf{A}$ and $\mathbf{B}$” or “the treewidth of the graph formed by nonzero entries of $\mathbf{A}$ and $\mathbf{B}$.” Such parameterized algorithms are said to be fixed-parameter tractable.