This paper considers various flavors of the following online problem: preprocess a text or collection of strings, so that given a query string p, all matches of p with the text can be reported quickly.In this paper we consider matches in which a bounded number of mismatches are allowed, or in which a bounded number of "don't care" characters are allowed.The specific problems we look at are: indexing, in which there is a single text t, and we seek locations where p matches a substring of t; dictionary queries, in which a collection of strings is given upfront, and we seek those strings which match p in their entirety; and dictionary matching, in which a collection of strings is given upfront, and we seek those substrings of a (long) p which match an original string in its entirety. These are all instances of an all-to-all matching problem, for which we provide a single solution.The performance bounds all have a similar character. For example, for the indexing problem with n = |t| and m = |p|, the query time for k substitutions is O(m + (c 1 log n) k k! + # matches), with a data structure of size O(n (c 2 log n) k k! ) and a preprocessing time of O(n (c 2 log n) k k!), where c1, c2 > 1 are constants. The deterministic preprocessing assumes a weakly nonuniform RAM model; this assumption is not needed if randomization is used in the preprocessing.

We present a new data structure that facilitates approximate nearest neighbor searches on a dynamic set of points in a metric space that has a bounded doubling dimension. Our data structure has linear size and supports insertions and deletions in O(log n) time, and finds a (1 + )-approximate nearest neighbor in time O(log n) + (1/ ) O(1) . The search and update times hide multiplicative factors that depend on the doubling dimension; the space does not. These performance times are independent of the aspect ratio (or spread) of the points.

For a set S of points in a metric space, a t-spanner is a graph on the points of S such that between any pair of points there is a path in the spanner whose total length is at most t times the actual distance between the points. In this paper, we consider points residing in a metric space of doubling dimension λ, and show how to construct a dynamic (1 + ε)-spanner with constant degree and O(log n) update time (when λ and ε are taken as constants). Our update time is optimal up to a constant.

Recent advances in large-margin classification of data residing in general metric spaces (rather than Hilbert spaces) enable classification under various natural metrics, such as string edit and earthmover distance. A general framework developed for this purpose by von Luxburg and Bousquet [JMLR, 2004] left open the questions of computational efficiency and of providing direct bounds on generalization error.We design a new algorithm for classification in general metric spaces, whose runtime and accuracy depend on the doubling dimension of the data points, and can thus achieve superior classification performance in many common scenarios. The algorithmic core of our approach is an approximate (rather than exact) solution to the classical problems of Lipschitz extension and of Nearest Neighbor Search. The algorithm's generalization performance is guaranteed via the fat-shattering dimension of Lipschitz classifiers, and we present experimental evidence of its superiority to some common kernel methods. As a by-product, we offer a new perspective on the nearest neighbor classifier, which yields significantly sharper risk asymptotics than the classic analysis of Cover and Hart [IEEE Trans. Info. Theory, 1967].