Streaming Space Complexity of Nearly All Functions of One Variable on   Frequency Vectors
  A central problem in the theory of algorithms for data streams is to determine which functions on a stream can be approximated in sublinear, and especially sub-polynomial or poly-logarithmic, space. Given a function $g$, we study the space complexity of approximating $\sum_{i=1}^n g(|f_i|)$, where $f\in\mathbb{Z}^n$ is the frequency vector of a turnstile stream. This is a generalization of the well-known frequency moments problem, and previous results apply only when $g$ is monotonic or has a special functional form. Our contribution is to give a condition such that, except for a narrow class of functions $g$, there is a space-efficient approximation algorithm for the sum if and only if $g$ satisfies the condition. The functions $g$ that we are able to characterize include all convex, concave, monotonic, polynomial, and trigonometric functions, among many others, and is the first such characterization for non-monotonic functions. Thus, for nearly all functions of one variable, we answer the open question from the celebrated paper of Alon, Matias and Szegedy (1996). 
Vladimir Braverman, Stephen R. Chestnut, David P. Woodruff, Lin F.   Yang
cs.DS