Discrepancy and Sparsity

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between combinatorial discrepancy and graph degeneracy, providing new bounds, characterizations of graph classes, and algorithms related to discrepancy and bounded expansion classes.

Contribution

It establishes bounds linking discrepancy and degeneracy, characterizes bounded expansion and nowhere dense classes via discrepancy, and introduces pointer structures and algorithms for these graph classes.

Findings

Discrepancy bounds are linked to graph degeneracy.

Bounded expansion classes are characterized by bounded hereditary discrepancy.

Polynomial-time algorithms for discrepancy approximations in bounded expansion classes.

Abstract

We study the connections between the notions of combinatorial discrepancy and graph degeneracy. In particular, we prove that the maximum discrepancy over all subgraphs $H$ of a graph $G$ of the neighborhood set system of $H$ is sandwiched between $\Omega(\log\mathrm{deg}(G))$ and $\mathcal{O}(\mathrm{deg}(G))$, where $\mathrm{deg}(G)$ denotes the degeneracy of $G$. We extend this result to inequalities relating weak coloring numbers and discrepancy of graph powers and deduce a new characterization of bounded expansion classes. Then, we switch to a model theoretical point of view, introduce pointer structures, and study their relations to graph classes with bounded expansion. We deduce that a monotone class of graphs has bounded expansion if and only if all the set systems definable in this class have bounded hereditary discrepancy. Using known bounds on the VC-density of set systems definable in nowhere dense classes we also give a characterization of nowhere dense classes in terms of discrepancy. As consequences of our results, we obtain a corollary on the discrepancy of neighborhood set systems of edge colored graphs, a polynomial-time algorithm to compute $\varepsilon$-approximations of size $\mathcal{O}(1/\varepsilon)$ for set systems definable in bounded expansion classes, an application to clique coloring, and even the non-existence of a quantifier elimination scheme for nowhere dense classes.