Finding Submodularity Hidden in Symmetric Difference

TL;DR

This paper characterizes when symmetric difference transformations preserve submodularity and introduces an efficient method to identify the transformation set S for strictly submodular functions using oracle calls.

Contribution

It provides a characterization of SD-transformations that preserve submodularity and offers an efficient algorithm for discovering the canonical set S in the strictly submodular case.

Findings

SD-transformations do not generally preserve submodularity

A characterization of SD-transformations that do preserve submodularity is provided

Efficient discovery of the canonical set S for strictly submodular functions using O(|V|) oracle calls

Abstract

A set function $f$ on a finite set $V$ is submodular if $f(X) + f(Y) \geq f(X \cup Y) + f(X \cap Y)$ for any pair $X, Y \subseteq V$. The symmetric difference transformation (SD-transformation) of $f$ by a canonical set $S \subseteq V$ is a set function $g$ given by $g(X) = f(X \vartriangle S)$ for $X \subseteq V$,where $X \vartriangle S = (X \setminus S) \cup (S \setminus X)$ denotes the symmetric difference between $X$ and $S$. Submodularity and SD-transformations are regarded as the counterparts of convexity and affine transformations in a discrete space, respectively. However, submodularity is not preserved under SD-transformations, in contrast to the fact that convexity is invariant under affine transformations. This paper presents a characterization of SD-stransformations preserving submodularity. Then, we are concerned with the problem of discovering a canonical set $S$, given the SD-transformation $g$ of a submodular function $f$ by $S$, provided that $g(X)$ is given by a function value oracle. A submodular function $f$ on $V$ is said to be strict if $f(X) + f(Y) > f(X \cup Y) + f(X \cap Y)$ holds whenever both $X \setminus Y$ and $Y \setminus X$ are nonempty. We show that the problem is solved by using ${\rm O}(|V|)$ oracle calls when $f$ is strictly submodular, although it requires exponentially many oracle calls in general.