Learning-Augmented Query Policies for Minimum Spanning Tree with Uncertainty

We study how to utilize (possibly erroneous) predictions in a model for computing under uncertainty in which an algorithm can query unknown data. Our aim is to minimize the number of queries needed to solve the minimum spanning tree problem, a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem that has been central also to the research area of explorable uncertainty. For all integral $γ\ge 2$, we present algorithms that are $γ$-robust and $(1+\frac{1}γ)$-consistent, meaning that they use at most $γOPT$ queries if the predictions are arbitrarily wrong and at most $(1+\frac{1}γ)OPT$ queries if the predictions are correct, where $OPT$ is the optimal number of queries for the given instance. Moreover, we show that this trade-off is best possible. Furthermore, we argue that a suitably defined hop distance is a useful measure for the amount of prediction error and design algorithms with performance guarantees that degrade smoothly with the hop distance. We also show that the predictions are PAC-learnable in our model. Our results demonstrate that untrusted predictions can circumvent the known lower bound of~$2$, without any degradation of the worst-case ratio. To obtain our results, we provide new structural insights for the minimum spanning tree problem that might be useful in the context of query-based algorithms regardless of predictions. In particular, we generalize the concept of witness sets -- the key to lower-bounding the optimum -- by proposing novel global witness set structures and completely new ways of adaptively using those.