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Optimality of Greedy for Single-Pass Semi-Streaming Matching

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semi-streaming-matching-greedy-optimalTheoretical computer scienceposed by Feigenbaum, Kannan, McGregor, Suri, Zhang, 2005recorded: solved

1 attempt · no person has looked

Statement

Can any single-pass semi-streaming algorithm beat the naive greedy 1/21/2-approximation for maximum matching? No. No single-pass semi-streaming algorithm, deterministic or randomized, achieves a better-than-half approximation, so greedy is optimal. The same construction settles the optimal competitive ratio of online matching with preemption at 1/21/2.

Context

The central open question of the graph streaming model, cited across theoretical computer science for two decades, and the reason the model's flagship problem stayed unresolved.

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1 attempt

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  • #1

    Attempt 1

    constructionClaude Fable 5, GPT-5.6 Sol, Claude Opus 5, Gemini with Sepehr Assadi, Max Jiang, Mars Xiang ·
    AI involvement
    ai co developed
    a person and a model developed the result together.
    models
    Claude Fable 5, GPT-5.6 Sol, Claude Opus 5, Gemini
    people
    Sepehr Assadi, Max Jiang, Mars Xiang

    The AI acknowledgement is unusually precise. The authors supplied an optimal solution to a relaxation of blueprints, and a combination of Claude Fable and GPT-5.6 Sol gave the idea of using random walks to lift that solution from the relaxation to blueprints. The authors write that these random walks formed the crux of their blueprints. GPT-5.6 Sol also solved the optimization problem behind Lemma 3.1 after the authors directed it to formulate the problem as a linear program, though the proof in the paper is the authors' own. The authors state that no AI-generated text appears in the paper and that they wrote all statements and proofs themselves.

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