Data Streams with Bounded Deletions

Abstract: Two prevalent models in the data stream literature are the insertion-only and turnstile models. Unfortunately, many important streaming problems require a $\Theta(\log(n))$ multiplicative factor more space for turnstile streams than for insertion-only streams. This complexity gap often arises because the underlying frequency vector $f$ is very close to $0$, after accounting for all insertions and deletions to items. Signal detection in such streams is difficult, given the large number of deletions. In this work, we propose an intermediate model which, given a parameter $\alpha \geq 1$, lower bounds the norm $|f|p$ by a $1/\alpha$-fraction of the $L_p$ mass of the stream had all updates been positive. Here, for a vector $f$, $|f|_p = \left (\sum{i=1}^n |f_i|^p \right )^{1/p}$, and the value of $p$ we choose depends on the application. This gives a fluid medium between insertion only streams (with $\alpha = 1$), and turnstile streams (with $\alpha = \text{poly}(n)$), and allows for analysis in terms of $\alpha$. We show that for streams with this $\alpha$-property, for many fundamental streaming problems we can replace a $O(\log(n))$ factor in the space usage for algorithms in the turnstile model with a $O(\log(\alpha))$ factor. This is true for identifying heavy hitters, inner product estimation, $L_0$ estimation, $L_1$ estimation, $L_1$ sampling, and support sampling. For each problem, we give matching or nearly matching lower bounds for $\alpha$-property streams. We note that in practice, many important turnstile data streams are in fact $\alpha$-property streams for small values of $\alpha$. For such applications, our results represent significant improvements in efficiency for all the aforementioned problems.