Sublinear Time Algorithms

Sublinear Time Algorithms Sublinear time is a daunting goal since it allows one to read only a miniscule fraction of the input. There are problems for which deterministic exact sublinear time algorithms are known. However, for most natural problems the algorithm must use randomization and must give an answer which is in some sense approximate. There is a growing body of work aimed at finding sublinear time algorithms for various problems. Recent results have shown that there are classical optimization problems whose values can be approximated in sublinear time. In addition, property testing , an alternative notion of approximation for decision problems, has been applied to give sublinear algorithms for a wide variety of problems. One can also test various properties of distributions, where access to the distribution is given through samples generated according to the distribution, in time sublinear in the size of the support of the distribution. Many examples of problems that can be ... Read full article.