Proximity in the age of distraction: Robust approximate nearest neighbor search

Sariel Har-Peled, Sepideh Mahabadi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We introduce a new variant of the nearest neighbor search problem, which allows for some coordinates of the dataset to be arbitrarily corrupted or unknown. Formally, given a dataset of n points P = fx1; : : : ; xng in high-dimensions, and a parameter k, the goal is to preprocess the dataset, such that given a query point q, one can compute quickly a point x ∈ P, such that the distance of the query to the point x is minimized, when ignoring the optimal k coordinates. Note, that the coordinates being ignored are a function of both the query point and the point returned. We present a general reduction from this problem to answering ANN queries, which is similar in spirit to LSH (locality sensitive hashing) [19]. Specifically, we give a sampling technique which achieves a bi-criterion approximation for this problem. If the distance to the nearest neighbor after ignoring k coordinates is r, the data-structure returns a point that is within a distance of O(r) after ignoring O(k) coordinates. We also present other applications and further extensions and refinements of the above result. The new data-structures are simple and (arguably) elegant, and should be practical { specifically, all bounds are polynomial in all relevant parameters (including the dimension of the space, and the robustness parameter k).

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication28th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2017
EditorsPhilip N. Klein
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages1-15
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781611974782
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
Event28th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2017 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: Jan 16 2017Jan 19 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms
Volume0

Conference

Conference28th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2017
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period1/16/171/19/17

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • General Mathematics

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