18,863 research outputs found
String Matching: Communication, Circuits, and Learning
String matching is the problem of deciding whether a given n-bit string contains a given k-bit pattern. We study the complexity of this problem in three settings.
- Communication complexity. For small k, we provide near-optimal upper and lower bounds on the communication complexity of string matching. For large k, our bounds leave open an exponential gap; we exhibit some evidence for the existence of a better protocol.
- Circuit complexity. We present several upper and lower bounds on the size of circuits with threshold and DeMorgan gates solving the string matching problem. Similarly to the above, our bounds are near-optimal for small k.
- Learning. We consider the problem of learning a hidden pattern of length at most k relative to the classifier that assigns 1 to every string that contains the pattern. We prove optimal bounds on the VC dimension and sample complexity of this problem
Super-Linear Gate and Super-Quadratic Wire Lower Bounds for Depth-Two and Depth-Three Threshold Circuits
In order to formally understand the power of neural computing, we first need
to crack the frontier of threshold circuits with two and three layers, a regime
that has been surprisingly intractable to analyze. We prove the first
super-linear gate lower bounds and the first super-quadratic wire lower bounds
for depth-two linear threshold circuits with arbitrary weights, and depth-three
majority circuits computing an explicit function.
We prove that for all , the
linear-time computable Andreev's function cannot be computed on a
-fraction of -bit inputs by depth-two linear threshold
circuits of gates, nor can it be computed with
wires. This establishes an average-case
``size hierarchy'' for threshold circuits, as Andreev's function is computable
by uniform depth-two circuits of linear threshold gates, and by
uniform depth-three circuits of majority gates.
We present a new function in based on small-biased sets, which
we prove cannot be computed by a majority vote of depth-two linear threshold
circuits with gates, nor with
wires.
We give tight average-case (gate and wire) complexity results for
computing PARITY with depth-two threshold circuits; the answer turns out to be
the same as for depth-two majority circuits.
The key is a new random restriction lemma for linear threshold functions. Our
main analytical tool is the Littlewood-Offord Lemma from additive
combinatorics
A Nearly Optimal Lower Bound on the Approximate Degree of AC
The approximate degree of a Boolean function is the least degree of a real polynomial that
approximates pointwise to error at most . We introduce a generic
method for increasing the approximate degree of a given function, while
preserving its computability by constant-depth circuits.
Specifically, we show how to transform any Boolean function with
approximate degree into a function on variables with approximate degree at least . In particular, if , then
is polynomially larger than . Moreover, if is computed by a
polynomial-size Boolean circuit of constant depth, then so is .
By recursively applying our transformation, for any constant we
exhibit an AC function of approximate degree . This
improves over the best previous lower bound of due to
Aaronson and Shi (J. ACM 2004), and nearly matches the trivial upper bound of
that holds for any function. Our lower bounds also apply to
(quasipolynomial-size) DNFs of polylogarithmic width.
We describe several applications of these results. We give:
* For any constant , an lower bound on the
quantum communication complexity of a function in AC.
* A Boolean function with approximate degree at least ,
where is the certificate complexity of . This separation is optimal
up to the term in the exponent.
* Improved secret sharing schemes with reconstruction procedures in AC.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figur
Spectral Norm of Symmetric Functions
The spectral norm of a Boolean function is the sum
of the absolute values of its Fourier coefficients. This quantity provides
useful upper and lower bounds on the complexity of a function in areas such as
learning theory, circuit complexity, and communication complexity. In this
paper, we give a combinatorial characterization for the spectral norm of
symmetric functions. We show that the logarithm of the spectral norm is of the
same order of magnitude as where ,
and and are the smallest integers less than such that
or is constant for all with . We mention some applications to the decision tree and communication
complexity of symmetric functions
Quantum and Classical Strong Direct Product Theorems and Optimal Time-Space Tradeoffs
A strong direct product theorem says that if we want to compute k independent
instances of a function, using less than k times the resources needed for one
instance, then our overall success probability will be exponentially small in
k. We establish such theorems for the classical as well as quantum query
complexity of the OR function. This implies slightly weaker direct product
results for all total functions. We prove a similar result for quantum
communication protocols computing k instances of the Disjointness function.
Our direct product theorems imply a time-space tradeoff T^2*S=Omega(N^3) for
sorting N items on a quantum computer, which is optimal up to polylog factors.
They also give several tight time-space and communication-space tradeoffs for
the problems of Boolean matrix-vector multiplication and matrix multiplication.Comment: 22 pages LaTeX. 2nd version: some parts rewritten, results are
essentially the same. A shorter version will appear in IEEE FOCS 0
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