Ramsey partitions and proximity data structures

This paper addresses two problems lying at the intersection of geometric analysis and theoretical computer science: The non-linear isomorphic Dvoretzky theorem and the design of good approximate distance oracles for large distortion. We introduce the notion of Ramsey partitions of a finite metric space, and show that the existence of good Ramsey partitions implies a solution to the metric Ramsey problem for large distortion (also known as the non-linear version of the isomorphic Dvoretzky theorem, as introduced by Bourgain, Figiel, and Milman in [8]). We then proceed to construct optimal Ramsey partitions, and use them to show that for every ε ∈ (0, 1), every n-point metric space has a subset of size n^1-ε which embeds into Hubert space with distortion O(1/ε). This result is best possible and improves part of the metric Ramsey theorem of Bartal, Linial, Mendel and Naor [5], in addition to considerably simplifying its proof. We use our new Ramsey partitions to design approximate distance oracles with a universal constant query time, closing a gap left open by Thorup and Zwick in [32]. Namely, we show that for every n-point metric space X, and k ≥ 1, there exists an O(k)-approximate distance oracle whose storage requirement is 0(n^1+1/k), and whose query time is a universal constant. We also discuss applications of Ramsey partitions to various other geometric data structure problems, such as the design of efficient data structures for approximate ranking.