Finding the root in random nearest neighbor trees

TL;DR

This paper investigates algorithms for identifying the root node in random nearest neighbor trees generated in high-dimensional tori, providing bounds on the confidence set size for root inference.

Contribution

It introduces efficient algorithms for root finding in geometric random trees and establishes bounds on confidence set sizes, including matching bounds in one dimension.

Findings

Efficient root finding algorithms exist for embedded and metric trees.

Upper bounds on confidence set size are subpolynomial in 1/ε.

Lower bounds are polylogarithmic in 1/ε, with exact bounds in 1D.

Abstract

We study the inference of network archaeology in growing random geometric graphs. We consider the root finding problem for a random nearest neighbor tree in dimension $d \in \mathbb{N}$, generated by sequentially embedding vertices uniformly at random in the $d$-dimensional torus and connecting each new vertex to the nearest existing vertex. More precisely, given an error parameter $\varepsilon > 0$ and the unlabeled tree, we want to efficiently find a small set of candidate vertices, such that the root is included in this set with probability at least $1 - \varepsilon$. We call such a candidate set a $\textit{confidence set}$. We define several variations of the root finding problem in geometric settings -- embedded, metric, and graph root finding -- which differ based on the nature of the type of metric information provided in addition to the graph structure (torus embedding, edge lengths, or no additional information, respectively). We show that there exist efficient root finding algorithms for embedded and metric root finding. For embedded root finding, we derive upper and lower bounds (uniformly bounded in $n$) on the size of the confidence set: the upper bound is subpolynomial in $1/\varepsilon$ and stems from an explicit efficient algorithm, and the information-theoretic lower bound is polylogarithmic in $1/\varepsilon$. In particular, in $d=1$, we obtain matching upper and lower bounds for a confidence set of size $\Theta\left(\frac{\log(1/\varepsilon)}{\log \log(1/\varepsilon)} \right)$.