This work shows that the following problems are equivalent, both in theory and in practice: - median filtering: given an $n$-element vector, compute the sliding window median with window size $k$, - piecewise sorting: given an $n$-element vector,
divide it in $n/k$ blocks of length $k$ and sort each block. By prior work, median filtering is known to be at least as hard as piecewise sorting: with a single median filter operation we can sort $Theta(n/k)$ blocks of length $Theta(k)$. The present work shows that median filtering is also as easy as piecewise sorting: we can do median filtering with one piecewise sorting operation and linear-time postprocessing. In particular, median filtering can directly benefit from the vast literature on sorting algorithms---for example, adaptive sorting algorithms imply adaptive median filtering algorithms. The reduction is very efficient in practice---for random inputs the performance of the new sorting-based algorithm is on a par with the fastest heap-based algorithms, and for benign data distributions it typically outperforms prior algorithms. The key technical idea is that we can represent the sliding window with a pair of sorted doubly-linked lists: we delete items from one list and add items to the other list. Deletions are easy; additions can be done efficiently if we reverse the time twice: First we construct the full list and delete the items in the reverse order. Then we undo each deletion with Knuths dancing links technique.
Linials seminal result shows that any deterministic distributed algorithm that finds a $3$-colouring of an $n$-cycle requires at least $log^*(n)/2 - 1$ communication rounds. We give a new simpler proof of this theorem.
We show that there is no deterministic local algorithm (constant-time distributed graph algorithm) that finds a $(7-epsilon)$-approximation of a minimum dominating set on planar graphs, for any positive constant $epsilon$. In prior work, the best low
er bound on the approximation ratio has been $5-epsilon$; there is also an upper bound of $52$.
We present a local algorithm (constant-time distributed algorithm) for finding a 3-approximate vertex cover in bounded-degree graphs. The algorithm is deterministic, and no auxiliary information besides port numbering is required.
