A View of Exact Inference in Graphs from the Degree-4 Sum-of-Squares Hierarchy

Kevin Bello, Chuyang Ke, Jean Honorio
Proceedings of The 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, PMLR 151:640-654, 2022.

Abstract

Performing inference in graphs is a common task within several machine learning problems, e.g., image segmentation, community detection, among others. For a given undirected connected graph, we tackle the statistical problem of exactly recovering an unknown ground-truth binary labeling of the nodes from a single corrupted observation of each edge. Such problem can be formulated as a quadratic combinatorial optimization problem over the boolean hypercube, where it has been shown before that one can (with high probability and in polynomial time) exactly recover the ground-truth labeling of graphs that have an isoperimetric number that grows with respect to the number of nodes (e.g., complete graphs, regular expanders). In this work, we apply a powerful hierarchy of relaxations, known as the sum-of-squares (SoS) hierarchy, to the combinatorial problem. Motivated by empirical evidence on the improvement in exact recoverability, we center our attention on the degree-4 SoS relaxation and set out to understand the origin of such improvement from a graph theoretical perspective. We show that the solution of the dual of the relaxed problem is related to finding edge weights of the Johnson and Kneser graphs, where the weights fulfill the SoS constraints and intuitively allow the input graph to increase its algebraic connectivity. Finally, as byproduct of our analysis, we derive a novel Cheeger-type lower bound for the algebraic connectivity of graphs with signed edge weights.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v151-bello22a, title = { A View of Exact Inference in Graphs from the Degree-4 Sum-of-Squares Hierarchy }, author = {Bello, Kevin and Ke, Chuyang and Honorio, Jean}, booktitle = {Proceedings of The 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics}, pages = {640--654}, year = {2022}, editor = {Camps-Valls, Gustau and Ruiz, Francisco J. R. and Valera, Isabel}, volume = {151}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {28--30 Mar}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v151/bello22a/bello22a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v151/bello22a.html}, abstract = { Performing inference in graphs is a common task within several machine learning problems, e.g., image segmentation, community detection, among others. For a given undirected connected graph, we tackle the statistical problem of exactly recovering an unknown ground-truth binary labeling of the nodes from a single corrupted observation of each edge. Such problem can be formulated as a quadratic combinatorial optimization problem over the boolean hypercube, where it has been shown before that one can (with high probability and in polynomial time) exactly recover the ground-truth labeling of graphs that have an isoperimetric number that grows with respect to the number of nodes (e.g., complete graphs, regular expanders). In this work, we apply a powerful hierarchy of relaxations, known as the sum-of-squares (SoS) hierarchy, to the combinatorial problem. Motivated by empirical evidence on the improvement in exact recoverability, we center our attention on the degree-4 SoS relaxation and set out to understand the origin of such improvement from a graph theoretical perspective. We show that the solution of the dual of the relaxed problem is related to finding edge weights of the Johnson and Kneser graphs, where the weights fulfill the SoS constraints and intuitively allow the input graph to increase its algebraic connectivity. Finally, as byproduct of our analysis, we derive a novel Cheeger-type lower bound for the algebraic connectivity of graphs with signed edge weights. } }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T A View of Exact Inference in Graphs from the Degree-4 Sum-of-Squares Hierarchy %A Kevin Bello %A Chuyang Ke %A Jean Honorio %B Proceedings of The 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2022 %E Gustau Camps-Valls %E Francisco J. R. Ruiz %E Isabel Valera %F pmlr-v151-bello22a %I PMLR %P 640--654 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v151/bello22a.html %V 151 %X Performing inference in graphs is a common task within several machine learning problems, e.g., image segmentation, community detection, among others. For a given undirected connected graph, we tackle the statistical problem of exactly recovering an unknown ground-truth binary labeling of the nodes from a single corrupted observation of each edge. Such problem can be formulated as a quadratic combinatorial optimization problem over the boolean hypercube, where it has been shown before that one can (with high probability and in polynomial time) exactly recover the ground-truth labeling of graphs that have an isoperimetric number that grows with respect to the number of nodes (e.g., complete graphs, regular expanders). In this work, we apply a powerful hierarchy of relaxations, known as the sum-of-squares (SoS) hierarchy, to the combinatorial problem. Motivated by empirical evidence on the improvement in exact recoverability, we center our attention on the degree-4 SoS relaxation and set out to understand the origin of such improvement from a graph theoretical perspective. We show that the solution of the dual of the relaxed problem is related to finding edge weights of the Johnson and Kneser graphs, where the weights fulfill the SoS constraints and intuitively allow the input graph to increase its algebraic connectivity. Finally, as byproduct of our analysis, we derive a novel Cheeger-type lower bound for the algebraic connectivity of graphs with signed edge weights.
APA
Bello, K., Ke, C. & Honorio, J.. (2022). A View of Exact Inference in Graphs from the Degree-4 Sum-of-Squares Hierarchy . Proceedings of The 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 151:640-654 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v151/bello22a.html.

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