67 research outputs found
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
Near-Optimal Lower Bounds on the Threshold Degree and Sign-Rank of AC^0
The threshold degree of a Boolean function is
the minimum degree of a real polynomial that represents in sign:
A related notion is sign-rank, defined for a
Boolean matrix as the minimum rank of a real matrix with
. Determining the maximum threshold degree
and sign-rank achievable by constant-depth circuits () is a
well-known and extensively studied open problem, with complexity-theoretic and
algorithmic applications.
We give an essentially optimal solution to this problem. For any
we construct an circuit in variables that has
threshold degree and sign-rank
improving on the previous best lower bounds of
and , respectively. Our
results subsume all previous lower bounds on the threshold degree and sign-rank
of circuits of any given depth, with a strict improvement
starting at depth . As a corollary, we also obtain near-optimal bounds on
the discrepancy, threshold weight, and threshold density of ,
strictly subsuming previous work on these quantities. Our work gives some of
the strongest lower bounds to date on the communication complexity of
.Comment: 99 page
The large-error approximate degree of AC^0
https://eccc.weizmann.ac.il/report/2018/143
Complexity Theory
Computational Complexity Theory is the mathematical study of the intrinsic power and limitations of computational resources like time, space, or randomness. The current workshop focused on recent developments in various sub-areas including arithmetic complexity, Boolean complexity, communication complexity, cryptography, probabilistic proof systems, pseudorandomness and randomness extraction. Many of the developments are related to diverse mathematical fields such as algebraic geometry, combinatorial number theory, probability theory, representation theory, and the theory of error-correcting codes
Weighted Polynomial Approximations: Limits for Learning and Pseudorandomness
Polynomial approximations to boolean functions have led to many positive
results in computer science. In particular, polynomial approximations to the
sign function underly algorithms for agnostically learning halfspaces, as well
as pseudorandom generators for halfspaces. In this work, we investigate the
limits of these techniques by proving inapproximability results for the sign
function.
Firstly, the polynomial regression algorithm of Kalai et al. (SIAM J. Comput.
2008) shows that halfspaces can be learned with respect to log-concave
distributions on in the challenging agnostic learning model. The
power of this algorithm relies on the fact that under log-concave
distributions, halfspaces can be approximated arbitrarily well by low-degree
polynomials. We ask whether this technique can be extended beyond log-concave
distributions, and establish a negative result. We show that polynomials of any
degree cannot approximate the sign function to within arbitrarily low error for
a large class of non-log-concave distributions on the real line, including
those with densities proportional to .
Secondly, we investigate the derandomization of Chernoff-type concentration
inequalities. Chernoff-type tail bounds on sums of independent random variables
have pervasive applications in theoretical computer science. Schmidt et al.
(SIAM J. Discrete Math. 1995) showed that these inequalities can be established
for sums of random variables with only -wise independence,
for a tail probability of . We show that their results are tight up to
constant factors.
These results rely on techniques from weighted approximation theory, which
studies how well functions on the real line can be approximated by polynomials
under various distributions. We believe that these techniques will have further
applications in other areas of computer science.Comment: 22 page
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)
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