We show that any deterministic data-stream algorithm that makes a constant number of passes over the input and gives a constant factor approximation of the length of the longest increasing subsequence in a sequence of length n must use space \Omega \left( {\sqrt n } \right). This proves a conjecture made by Gopalan, Jayram, Krauthgamer and Kumar [10] who proved a matching upper bound. Our results yield asymptotically tight lower bounds for all approximation factors, thus resolving the main open problem from their paper. Our proof is based on analyzing a related communication problem and proving a direct sum type property for it.
Citation:
Anna Gál, Parikshit Gopalan, "Lower Bounds on Streaming Algorithms for Approximating the Length of the Longest Increasing Subsequence," focs, pp.294-304, 48th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS'07), 2007