[Math] List of proofs where existence through probabilistic method has not been constructivised

co.combinatoricsconstructive-mathematicsextremal-combinatoricspr.probabilityprobabilistic-method

The probabilistic method as first pioneered by Erdős (although others have used this before) shows the existence of a certain object. What are some of the most important objects for which we can show the existence by such a method but constructive progress (construction in polynomial time) has been very hard to come by?

An important example is the existence of good codes in coding theory. Using algebraic geometry we can show such objects not only exist but can be constructed in polynomial time.

I am thinking that in addition to graph theoretic and direct combinatorial examples, there should be plenty of natural but very difficult examples from number theory and geometry as well.

Best Answer

There is an example of this which is important in machine learning: finding linear maps with the restricted isometry property. Given a set $S$ of $m$ points in $\mathbb{R}^N$ (with $N$ very large) and $\varepsilon > 0$, the problem is to find a linear map $L \colon \mathbb{R}^N \to \mathbb{R}^n$ such that $n << N$ and:

$$(1 - \varepsilon)\left\| x - y \right\| \leq \left\| Lx - Ly \right\| \leq (1 + \varepsilon)\left\| x - y \right\|$$

for all $x, y \in S$. Verifying that a given linear map has this property is NP-hard, but the orthogonal projection onto a random $n$-dimensional subspace (or even a $N \times n$ matrix whose entries are Gaussian random variables) has this property with high probability. This is the content of the Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma. In the full statement of the lemma the number $n$ can be chosen in a way which depends only on $m$ and $\varepsilon$ (not $N$).

See this paper for a more thorough discussion of the difficulties in finding more deterministic approaches to this specific problem. This paper also provides an attractive name for the general sort of phenomena that you're asking about: "finding hay in a haystack" (attributed to Avi Wigderson).