Arboricity and Random Edge Queries Matter for Triangle Counting using Sublinear Queries

TL;DR

This paper introduces a randomized algorithm for estimating the number of triangles in a graph using sublinear queries, leveraging arboricity and RandomEdge queries, and provides matching lower bounds.

Contribution

It presents a new triangle counting algorithm that incorporates arboricity and RandomEdge queries, along with tight upper and lower bounds on query complexity.

Findings

Algorithm achieves $(1±\varepsilon)$ approximation with high probability.

Query complexity depends on arboricity, number of edges, and triangle count.

Lower bounds match the upper bounds on key parameters.

Abstract

Given a simple, unweighted, undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ with $|V|=n$ and $|E|=m$, and parameters $0 < \varepsilon, \delta <1$, along with \texttt{Degree}, \texttt{Neighbour}, \texttt{Edge} and \texttt{RandomEdge} query access to $G$, we provide a query based randomized algorithm to generate an estimate $\widehat{T}$ of the number of triangles $T$ in $G$, such that $\widehat{T} \in [(1-\varepsilon)T , (1+\varepsilon)T]$ with probability at least $1-\delta$. The query complexity of our algorithm is $\widetilde{O}\left({m \alpha \log(1/\delta)}/{\varepsilon^3 T}\right)$, where $\alpha$ is the arboricity of $G$. Our work can be seen as a continuation in the line of recent works [Eden et al., SIAM J Comp., 2017; Assadi et al., ITCS 2019; Eden et al. SODA 2020] that considered subgraph or triangle counting with or without the use of \texttt{RandomEdge} query. Of these works, Eden et al. [SODA 2020] considers the role of arboricity. Our work considers how \texttt{RandomEdge} query can leverage the notion of arboricity. Furthermore, continuing in the line of work of Assadi et al. [APPROX/RANDOM 2022], we also provide a lower bound of $\widetilde{\Omega}\left({m \alpha \log(1/\delta)}/{\varepsilon^2 T}\right)$ that matches the upper bound exactly on arboricity and the parameter $\delta$ and almost on $\varepsilon$.