Alpha-stable random walk has massive thorns

We introduce and study a class of random walks defined on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z} ^d$ -- a discrete space and time counterpart of the symmetric $\alpha$-stable process in $\mathbb{R} ^d$. When $0< \alpha <2$ any coordinate axis in $\mathbb{Z} ^d$, $d\geq 3$, is a non-massive set whereas any cone is massive. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the thorn to be a massive set.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure

Between here and there: Immigrant fertility patterns in Germany

This paper focuses on the role of the home country’s birth rates in shaping immigrant fertility. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to study completed fertility of first generation immigrants who arrived from different countries and at different time. We apply generalized Poisson regression to account for the underdispersion of the dependent variable. The results favor the socialization hypothesis holding that immigrants follow childbearing norms dominant in their home countries. We find that women from countries where the average birth rate is high tend to have significantly more children themselves. In addition, this relationship is the stronger, the later in life migration occurred.migration, fertility, socialization, underdispersion

Improved approximation for 3-dimensional matching via bounded pathwidth local search

One of the most natural optimization problems is the k-Set Packing problem, where given a family of sets of size at most k one should select a maximum size subfamily of pairwise disjoint sets. A special case of 3-Set Packing is the well known 3-Dimensional Matching problem. Both problems belong to the Karp`s list of 21 NP-complete problems. The best known polynomial time approximation ratio for k-Set Packing is (k + eps)/2 and goes back to the work of Hurkens and Schrijver [SIDMA`89], which gives (1.5 + eps)-approximation for 3-Dimensional Matching. Those results are obtained by a simple local search algorithm, that uses constant size swaps. The main result of the paper is a new approach to local search for k-Set Packing where only a special type of swaps is considered, which we call swaps of bounded pathwidth. We show that for a fixed value of k one can search the space of r-size swaps of constant pathwidth in c^r poly(|F|) time. Moreover we present an analysis proving that a local search maximum with respect to O(log |F|)-size swaps of constant pathwidth yields a polynomial time (k + 1 + eps)/3-approximation algorithm, improving the best known approximation ratio for k-Set Packing. In particular we improve the approximation ratio for 3-Dimensional Matching from 3/2 + eps to 4/3 + eps.Comment: To appear in proceedings of FOCS 201

On recurrence of the multidimensional Lindley process

A Lindley process arises from classical studies in queueing theory and it usually reflects waiting times of customers in single server models. In this note we study recurrence of its higher dimensional counterpart under some mild assumptions on the tail behaviour of the underlying random walk. There are several links between the Lindley process and the associated random walk and we build upon such relations. We apply a method related to discrete subordination for random walks on the integer lattice together with various facts from the theory of fluctuations of random walks

Steiner Forest Orientation Problems

We consider connectivity problems with orientation constraints. Given a directed graph $D$ and a collection of ordered node pairs $P$ let P[D]=\{(u,v) \in P: D {contains a} uv{-path}}. In the {\sf Steiner Forest Orientation} problem we are given an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ with edge-costs and a set $P \subseteq V \times V$ of ordered node pairs. The goal is to find a minimum-cost subgraph $H$ of $G$ and an orientation $D$ of $H$ such that $P[D]=P$. We give a 4-approximation algorithm for this problem. In the {\sf Maximum Pairs Orientation} problem we are given a graph $G$ and a multi-collection of ordered node pairs $P$ on $V$. The goal is to find an orientation $D$ of $G$ such that $|P[D]|$ is maximum. Generalizing the result of Arkin and Hassin [DAM'02] for $|P|=2$, we will show that for a mixed graph $G$ (that may have both directed and undirected edges), one can decide in $n^{O(|P|)}$ time whether $G$ has an orientation $D$ with $P[D]=P$ (for undirected graphs this problem admits a polynomial time algorithm for any $P$, but it is NP-complete on mixed graphs). For undirected graphs, we will show that one can decide whether $G$ admits an orientation $D$ with $|P[D]| \geq k$ in $O(n+m)+2^{O(k\cdot \log \log k)}$ time; hence this decision problem is fixed-parameter tractable, which answers an open question from Dorn et al. [AMB'11]. We also show that {\sf Maximum Pairs Orientation} admits ratio $O(\log |P|/\log\log |P|)$, which is better than the ratio $O(\log n/\log\log n)$ of Gamzu et al. [WABI'10] when $|P|<n$. Finally, we show that the following node-connectivity problem can be solved in polynomial time: given a graph $G=(V,E)$ with edge-costs, $s,t \in V$, and an integer $\ell$, find a min-cost subgraph $H$ of $G$ with an orientation $D$ such that $D$ contains $\ell$ internally-disjoint $st$-paths, and $\ell$ internally-disjoint $ts$-paths.Comment: full version of ESA 2012 publicatio