23 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)
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, establishing nearly 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)
Monotone Boolean Functions with s Zeros Farthest from Threshold Functions
Let denote the -threshold function on the -cube: if , and otherwise. Define the distance between Boolean functions and , , to be the number of points on which and disagree. We consider the following extremal problem: Over a monotone Boolean function on the -cube with zeros, what is the maximum of ? We show that the following monotone function maximizes the distance: For , if and only if , where is the integer whose -bit binary representation is . Our result generalizes the previous work for the case and by Blum, Burch, and Langford [BBL98-FOCS98], who considered the problem to analyze the behavior of a learning algorithm for monotone Boolean functions, and the previous work for the same and by Amano and Maruoka [AM02-ALT02]
A Complete Characterization of Statistical Query Learning with Applications to Evolvability
Statistical query (SQ) learning model of Kearns (1993) is a natural
restriction of the PAC learning model in which a learning algorithm is allowed
to obtain estimates of statistical properties of the examples but cannot see
the examples themselves. We describe a new and simple characterization of the
query complexity of learning in the SQ learning model. Unlike the previously
known bounds on SQ learning our characterization preserves the accuracy and the
efficiency of learning. The preservation of accuracy implies that that our
characterization gives the first characterization of SQ learning in the
agnostic learning framework. The preservation of efficiency is achieved using a
new boosting technique and allows us to derive a new approach to the design of
evolutionary algorithms in Valiant's (2006) model of evolvability. We use this
approach to demonstrate the existence of a large class of monotone evolutionary
learning algorithms based on square loss performance estimation. These results
differ significantly from the few known evolutionary algorithms and give
evidence that evolvability in Valiant's model is a more versatile phenomenon
than there had been previous reason to suspect.Comment: Simplified Lemma 3.8 and it's application
Approximate resilience, monotonicity, and the complexity of agnostic learning
A function is -resilient if all its Fourier coefficients of degree at
most are zero, i.e., is uncorrelated with all low-degree parities. We
study the notion of of Boolean
functions, where we say that is -approximately -resilient if
is -close to a -valued -resilient function in
distance. We show that approximate resilience essentially characterizes the
complexity of agnostic learning of a concept class over the uniform
distribution. Roughly speaking, if all functions in a class are far from
being -resilient then can be learned agnostically in time and
conversely, if contains a function close to being -resilient then
agnostic learning of in the statistical query (SQ) framework of Kearns has
complexity of at least . This characterization is based on the
duality between approximation by degree- polynomials and
approximate -resilience that we establish. In particular, it implies that
approximation by low-degree polynomials, known to be sufficient for
agnostic learning over product distributions, is in fact necessary.
Focusing on monotone Boolean functions, we exhibit the existence of
near-optimal -approximately
-resilient monotone functions for all
. Prior to our work, it was conceivable even that every monotone
function is -far from any -resilient function. Furthermore, we
construct simple, explicit monotone functions based on and that are close to highly resilient functions. Our constructions are
based on a fairly general resilience analysis and amplification. These
structural results, together with the characterization, imply nearly optimal
lower bounds for agnostic learning of monotone juntas
On the nonlinearity of monotone Boolean functions
We first prove the truthfulness of a conjecture on the nonlinearity of monotone Boolean functions in even dimension, proposed in the recent paper ``Cryptographic properties of monotone Boolean functions , by D. Joyner, P. Stanica, D. Tang and the author, to appear in the Journal of Mathematical Cryptology. We prove then an upper bound on such nonlinearity, which is asymptotically much stronger than the conjectured upper bound and than the upper bound proved for odd dimension in this same paper. This bound shows a deep weakness of monotone Boolean functions; they are too closely approximated by affine functions for being usable as nonlinear components in cryptographic applications. We deduce a necessary criterion to be satisfied by a Boolean (resp. vectorial) function for being nonlinear