Lower bounds for local monotonicity reconstruction from transitive-closure spanners

Given a directed graph G=(V,E) and an integer k≥1, a k-transitive-closure-spanner ( k-TC-spanner) of G is a directed graph H=(V, E_H ) that has (1) the same transitive-closure as G and (2) diameter at most k. Transitive-closure spanners are a common abstraction for applications in access control, property testing and data structures. We show a connection between 2-TC-spanners and local monotonicity reconstructors. A local monotonicity reconstructor, introduced by Saks and Seshadhri (SIAM Journal on Computing, 2010), is a randomized algorithm that, given access to an oracle for an almost monotone function f : [m]^d → ℝ, can quickly evaluate a related function g : [m]^d → ℝ which is guaranteed to be monotone. Furthermore, the reconstructor can be implemented in a distributed manner. We show that an efficient local monotonicity reconstructor implies a sparse 2-TC-spanner of the directed hypergrid (hypercube), providing a new technique for proving lower bounds for local monotonicity reconstructors. Our connection is, in fact, more general: an efficient local monotonicity reconstructor for functions on any partially ordered set (poset) implies a sparse 2-TC-spanner of the directed acyclic graph corresponding to the poset. We present tight upper and lower bounds on the size of the sparsest 2-TC-spanners of the directed hypercube and hypergrid. These bounds imply tighter lower bounds for local monotonicity reconstructors that nearly match the known upper bounds.