22 research outputs found
A note on a problem in communication complexity
In this note, we prove a version of Tarui's Theorem in communication
complexity, namely . Consequently, every
measure for leads to a measure for , subsuming a result of
Linial and Shraibman that problems with high mc-rigidity lie outside the
polynomial hierarchy. By slightly changing the definition of mc-rigidity
(arbitrary instead of uniform distribution), it is then evident that the class
of problems with low mc-rigidity equals . As , this rules out the possibility, that had been
left open, that even polynomial space is contained in
Unbounded-Error Classical and Quantum Communication Complexity
Since the seminal work of Paturi and Simon \cite[FOCS'84 & JCSS'86]{PS86},
the unbounded-error classical communication complexity of a Boolean function
has been studied based on the arrangement of points and hyperplanes. Recently,
\cite[ICALP'07]{INRY07} found that the unbounded-error {\em quantum}
communication complexity in the {\em one-way communication} model can also be
investigated using the arrangement, and showed that it is exactly (without a
difference of even one qubit) half of the classical one-way communication
complexity. In this paper, we extend the arrangement argument to the {\em
two-way} and {\em simultaneous message passing} (SMP) models. As a result, we
show similarly tight bounds of the unbounded-error two-way/one-way/SMP
quantum/classical communication complexities for {\em any} partial/total
Boolean function, implying that all of them are equivalent up to a
multiplicative constant of four. Moreover, the arrangement argument is also
used to show that the gap between {\em weakly} unbounded-error quantum and
classical communication complexities is at most a factor of three.Comment: 11 pages. To appear at Proc. ISAAC 200
Distribution-Independent Evolvability of Linear Threshold Functions
Valiant's (2007) model of evolvability models the evolutionary process of
acquiring useful functionality as a restricted form of learning from random
examples. Linear threshold functions and their various subclasses, such as
conjunctions and decision lists, play a fundamental role in learning theory and
hence their evolvability has been the primary focus of research on Valiant's
framework (2007). One of the main open problems regarding the model is whether
conjunctions are evolvable distribution-independently (Feldman and Valiant,
2008). We show that the answer is negative. Our proof is based on a new
combinatorial parameter of a concept class that lower-bounds the complexity of
learning from correlations.
We contrast the lower bound with a proof that linear threshold functions
having a non-negligible margin on the data points are evolvable
distribution-independently via a simple mutation algorithm. Our algorithm
relies on a non-linear loss function being used to select the hypotheses
instead of 0-1 loss in Valiant's (2007) original definition. The proof of
evolvability requires that the loss function satisfies several mild conditions
that are, for example, satisfied by the quadratic loss function studied in
several other works (Michael, 2007; Feldman, 2009; Valiant, 2010). An important
property of our evolution algorithm is monotonicity, that is the algorithm
guarantees evolvability without any decreases in performance. Previously,
monotone evolvability was only shown for conjunctions with quadratic loss
(Feldman, 2009) or when the distribution on the domain is severely restricted
(Michael, 2007; Feldman, 2009; Kanade et al., 2010
Using Elimination Theory to construct Rigid Matrices
The rigidity of a matrix A for target rank r is the minimum number of entries
of A that must be changed to ensure that the rank of the altered matrix is at
most r. Since its introduction by Valiant (1977), rigidity and similar
rank-robustness functions of matrices have found numerous applications in
circuit complexity, communication complexity, and learning complexity. Almost
all nxn matrices over an infinite field have a rigidity of (n-r)^2. It is a
long-standing open question to construct infinite families of explicit matrices
even with superlinear rigidity when r = Omega(n).
In this paper, we construct an infinite family of complex matrices with the
largest possible, i.e., (n-r)^2, rigidity. The entries of an n x n matrix in
this family are distinct primitive roots of unity of orders roughly exp(n^2 log
n). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first family of concrete (but not
entirely explicit) matrices having maximal rigidity and a succinct algebraic
description.
Our construction is based on elimination theory of polynomial ideals. In
particular, we use results on the existence of polynomials in elimination
ideals with effective degree upper bounds (effective Nullstellensatz). Using
elementary algebraic geometry, we prove that the dimension of the affine
variety of matrices of rigidity at most k is exactly n^2-(n-r)^2+k. Finally, we
use elimination theory to examine whether the rigidity function is
semi-continuous.Comment: 25 Pages, minor typos correcte
Matrix discrepancy and the log-rank conjecture
Given an binary matrix with (where
denotes the number of 1 entries), define the discrepancy of as
\mbox{disc}(M)=\displaystyle\max_{X\subset [m], Y\subset [n]}\big||M[X\times
Y]|-p|X|\cdot |Y|\big|. Using semidefinite programming and spectral
techniques, we prove that if \mbox{rank}(M)\leq r and , then
\mbox{disc}(M)\geq \Omega(mn)\cdot
\min\left\{p,\frac{p^{1/2}}{\sqrt{r}}\right\}.
We use this result to obtain a modest improvement of Lovett's best known
upper bound on the log-rank conjecture. We prove that any binary
matrix of rank at most contains an sized all-1 or all-0 submatrix, which implies that
the deterministic communication complexity of any Boolean function of rank
is at most .Comment: 9 page
Sign rank versus VC dimension
This work studies the maximum possible sign rank of sign
matrices with a given VC dimension . For , this maximum is {three}. For
, this maximum is . For , similar but
slightly less accurate statements hold. {The lower bounds improve over previous
ones by Ben-David et al., and the upper bounds are novel.}
The lower bounds are obtained by probabilistic constructions, using a theorem
of Warren in real algebraic topology. The upper bounds are obtained using a
result of Welzl about spanning trees with low stabbing number, and using the
moment curve.
The upper bound technique is also used to: (i) provide estimates on the
number of classes of a given VC dimension, and the number of maximum classes of
a given VC dimension -- answering a question of Frankl from '89, and (ii)
design an efficient algorithm that provides an multiplicative
approximation for the sign rank.
We also observe a general connection between sign rank and spectral gaps
which is based on Forster's argument. Consider the adjacency
matrix of a regular graph with a second eigenvalue of absolute value
and . We show that the sign rank of the signed
version of this matrix is at least . We use this connection to
prove the existence of a maximum class with VC
dimension and sign rank . This answers a question
of Ben-David et al.~regarding the sign rank of large VC classes. We also
describe limitations of this approach, in the spirit of the Alon-Boppana
theorem.
We further describe connections to communication complexity, geometry,
learning theory, and combinatorics.Comment: 33 pages. This is a revised version of the paper "Sign rank versus VC
dimension". Additional results in this version: (i) Estimates on the number
of maximum VC classes (answering a question of Frankl from '89). (ii)
Estimates on the sign rank of large VC classes (answering a question of
Ben-David et al. from '03). (iii) A discussion on the computational
complexity of computing the sign-ran
Sign Rank vs Discrepancy
Sign-rank and discrepancy are two central notions in communication complexity. The seminal work of Babai, Frankl, and Simon from 1986 initiated an active line of research that investigates the gap between these two notions. In this article, we establish the strongest possible separation by constructing a boolean matrix whose sign-rank is only 3, and yet its discrepancy is 2^{-?(n)}. We note that every matrix of sign-rank 2 has discrepancy n^{-O(1)}.
Our result in particular implies that there are boolean functions with O(1) unbounded error randomized communication complexity while having ?(n) weakly unbounded error randomized communication complexity
Lower Bounds for the Approximate Degree of Block-Composed Functions
We describe a new hardness amplification result for point-wise approximation of Boolean functions by low-degree polynomials.
Specifically, for any function f on N bits, define F(x_1,...,x_M) = OMB(f(x_1),...,f(x_M)) to be the function on M*N bits obtained by block-composing f with a function known as ODD-MAX-BIT. We show that, if f requires large degree to approximate to error 2/3 in a certain one-sided sense (captured by a complexity measure known as positive one-sided approximate degree), then F requires large degree to approximate even to error 1-2^{-M}. This generalizes a result of Beigel (Computational Complexity, 1994), who proved an identical result for the special case f=OR.
Unlike related prior work, our result implies strong approximate degree lower bounds even for many functions F that have low threshold degree. Our proof is constructive: we exhibit a solution to the dual of an appropriate linear program capturing the approximate degree of any function. We describe several applications, including improved separations between the complexity classes P^{NP} and PP in both the query and communication complexity settings. Our separations improve on work of Beigel (1994) and Buhrman, Vereshchagin, and de Wolf (CCC, 2007)