An Optimal Algorithm for Triangle Counting

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Rajesh Jayaram, John Kallaugher

Published: 2021, Last Modified: 21 Dec 2025CoRR 2021EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: We present a new algorithm for approximating the number of triangles in a graph $G$ whose edges arrive as an arbitrary order stream. If $m$ is the number of edges in $G$, $T$ the number of triangles, $Δ_E$ the maximum number of triangles which share a single edge, and $Δ_V$ the maximum number of triangles which share a single vertex, then our algorithm requires space: \[ \widetilde{O}\left(\frac{m}{T}\cdot \left(Δ_E + \sqrt{Δ_V}\right)\right) \] Taken with the $Ω\left(\frac{m Δ_E}{T}\right)$ lower bound of Braverman, Ostrovsky, and Vilenchik (ICALP 2013), and the $Ω\left( \frac{m \sqrt{Δ_V}}{T}\right)$ lower bound of Kallaugher and Price (SODA 2017), our algorithm is optimal up to log factors, resolving the complexity of a classic problem in graph streaming.