1,769 research outputs found
Learning circuits with few negations
Monotone Boolean functions, and the monotone Boolean circuits that compute
them, have been intensively studied in complexity theory. In this paper we
study the structure of Boolean functions in terms of the minimum number of
negations in any circuit computing them, a complexity measure that interpolates
between monotone functions and the class of all functions. We study this
generalization of monotonicity from the vantage point of learning theory,
giving near-matching upper and lower bounds on the uniform-distribution
learnability of circuits in terms of the number of negations they contain. Our
upper bounds are based on a new structural characterization of negation-limited
circuits that extends a classical result of A. A. Markov. Our lower bounds,
which employ Fourier-analytic tools from hardness amplification, give new
results even for circuits with no negations (i.e. monotone functions)
The Inverse Shapley Value Problem
For a weighted voting scheme used by voters to choose between two
candidates, the \emph{Shapley-Shubik Indices} (or {\em Shapley values}) of
provide a measure of how much control each voter can exert over the overall
outcome of the vote. Shapley-Shubik indices were introduced by Lloyd Shapley
and Martin Shubik in 1954 \cite{SS54} and are widely studied in social choice
theory as a measure of the "influence" of voters. The \emph{Inverse Shapley
Value Problem} is the problem of designing a weighted voting scheme which
(approximately) achieves a desired input vector of values for the
Shapley-Shubik indices. Despite much interest in this problem no provably
correct and efficient algorithm was known prior to our work.
We give the first efficient algorithm with provable performance guarantees
for the Inverse Shapley Value Problem. For any constant \eps > 0 our
algorithm runs in fixed poly time (the degree of the polynomial is
independent of \eps) and has the following performance guarantee: given as
input a vector of desired Shapley values, if any "reasonable" weighted voting
scheme (roughly, one in which the threshold is not too skewed) approximately
matches the desired vector of values to within some small error, then our
algorithm explicitly outputs a weighted voting scheme that achieves this vector
of Shapley values to within error \eps. If there is a "reasonable" voting
scheme in which all voting weights are integers at most \poly(n) that
approximately achieves the desired Shapley values, then our algorithm runs in
time \poly(n) and outputs a weighted voting scheme that achieves the target
vector of Shapley values to within error $\eps=n^{-1/8}.
Learning DNF Expressions from Fourier Spectrum
Since its introduction by Valiant in 1984, PAC learning of DNF expressions
remains one of the central problems in learning theory. We consider this
problem in the setting where the underlying distribution is uniform, or more
generally, a product distribution. Kalai, Samorodnitsky and Teng (2009) showed
that in this setting a DNF expression can be efficiently approximated from its
"heavy" low-degree Fourier coefficients alone. This is in contrast to previous
approaches where boosting was used and thus Fourier coefficients of the target
function modified by various distributions were needed. This property is
crucial for learning of DNF expressions over smoothed product distributions, a
learning model introduced by Kalai et al. (2009) and inspired by the seminal
smoothed analysis model of Spielman and Teng (2001).
We introduce a new approach to learning (or approximating) a polynomial
threshold functions which is based on creating a function with range [-1,1]
that approximately agrees with the unknown function on low-degree Fourier
coefficients. We then describe conditions under which this is sufficient for
learning polynomial threshold functions. Our approach yields a new, simple
algorithm for approximating any polynomial-size DNF expression from its "heavy"
low-degree Fourier coefficients alone. Our algorithm greatly simplifies the
proof of learnability of DNF expressions over smoothed product distributions.
We also describe an application of our algorithm to learning monotone DNF
expressions over product distributions. Building on the work of Servedio
(2001), we give an algorithm that runs in time \poly((s \cdot
\log{(s/\eps)})^{\log{(s/\eps)}}, n), where is the size of the target DNF
expression and \eps is the accuracy. This improves on \poly((s \cdot
\log{(ns/\eps)})^{\log{(s/\eps)} \cdot \log{(1/\eps)}}, n) bound of Servedio
(2001).Comment: Appears in Conference on Learning Theory (COLT) 201
Learning Coverage Functions and Private Release of Marginals
We study the problem of approximating and learning coverage functions. A
function is a coverage function, if
there exists a universe with non-negative weights for each
and subsets of such that . Alternatively, coverage functions can be described
as non-negative linear combinations of monotone disjunctions. They are a
natural subclass of submodular functions and arise in a number of applications.
We give an algorithm that for any , given random and uniform
examples of an unknown coverage function , finds a function that
approximates within factor on all but -fraction of the
points in time . This is the first fully-polynomial
algorithm for learning an interesting class of functions in the demanding PMAC
model of Balcan and Harvey (2011). Our algorithms are based on several new
structural properties of coverage functions. Using the results in (Feldman and
Kothari, 2014), we also show that coverage functions are learnable agnostically
with excess -error over all product and symmetric
distributions in time . In contrast, we show that,
without assumptions on the distribution, learning coverage functions is at
least as hard as learning polynomial-size disjoint DNF formulas, a class of
functions for which the best known algorithm runs in time
(Klivans and Servedio, 2004).
As an application of our learning results, we give simple
differentially-private algorithms for releasing monotone conjunction counting
queries with low average error. In particular, for any , we obtain
private release of -way marginals with average error in time
Uncertainty in Crowd Data Sourcing under Structural Constraints
Applications extracting data from crowdsourcing platforms must deal with the
uncertainty of crowd answers in two different ways: first, by deriving
estimates of the correct value from the answers; second, by choosing crowd
questions whose answers are expected to minimize this uncertainty relative to
the overall data collection goal. Such problems are already challenging when we
assume that questions are unrelated and answers are independent, but they are
even more complicated when we assume that the unknown values follow hard
structural constraints (such as monotonicity).
In this vision paper, we examine how to formally address this issue with an
approach inspired by [Amsterdamer et al., 2013]. We describe a generalized
setting where we model constraints as linear inequalities, and use them to
guide the choice of crowd questions and the processing of answers. We present
the main challenges arising in this setting, and propose directions to solve
them.Comment: 8 pages, vision paper. To appear at UnCrowd 201
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