35 research outputs found
Public projects, Boolean functions and the borders of Border's theorem
Border's theorem gives an intuitive linear characterization of the feasible
interim allocation rules of a Bayesian single-item environment, and it has
several applications in economic and algorithmic mechanism design. All known
generalizations of Border's theorem either restrict attention to relatively
simple settings, or resort to approximation. This paper identifies a
complexity-theoretic barrier that indicates, assuming standard complexity class
separations, that Border's theorem cannot be extended significantly beyond the
state-of-the-art. We also identify a surprisingly tight connection between
Myerson's optimal auction theory, when applied to public project settings, and
some fundamental results in the analysis of Boolean functions.Comment: Accepted to ACM EC 201
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
Measuring satisfaction in societies with opinion leaders and mediators
An opinion leader-follower model (OLF) is a two-action collective decision-making model for societies, in which three kinds of actors are considered:Preprin
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}.
Testing (subclasses of) halfspaces
We address the problem of testing whether a Boolean-valued function f is a halfspace, i.e. a function of the form f(x) = sgn(w . x − θ). We consider halfspaces over the continuous domain R n (endowed with the standard multivariate Gaussian distribution) as well as halfspaces over the Boolean cube { − 1,1} n (endowed with the uniform distribution). In both cases we give an algorithm that distinguishes halfspaces from functions that are ε-far from any halfspace using only poly(1) queries, independent of the dimension n.
In contrast to the case of general halfspaces, we show that testing natural subclasses of halfspaces can be markedly harder; for the class of { − 1,1}-weight halfspaces, we show that a tester must make at least Ω(logn) queries. We complement this lower bound with an upper bound showing that O(√n) queries suffice.National Basic Research Program of China (grant 2007CB807900)National Basic Research Program of China (grant 2007CB807901)National Natural Science Foundation (China) (grant 60553001
Nearly optimal solutions for the Chow Parameters Problem and low-weight approximation of halfspaces
The \emph{Chow parameters} of a Boolean function
are its degree-0 and degree-1 Fourier coefficients. It has been known
since 1961 (Chow, Tannenbaum) that the (exact values of the) Chow parameters of
any linear threshold function uniquely specify within the space of all
Boolean functions, but until recently (O'Donnell and Servedio) nothing was
known about efficient algorithms for \emph{reconstructing} (exactly or
approximately) from exact or approximate values of its Chow parameters. We
refer to this reconstruction problem as the \emph{Chow Parameters Problem.}
Our main result is a new algorithm for the Chow Parameters Problem which,
given (sufficiently accurate approximations to) the Chow parameters of any
linear threshold function , runs in time \tilde{O}(n^2)\cdot
(1/\eps)^{O(\log^2(1/\eps))} and with high probability outputs a
representation of an LTF that is \eps-close to . The only previous
algorithm (O'Donnell and Servedio) had running time \poly(n) \cdot
2^{2^{\tilde{O}(1/\eps^2)}}.
As a byproduct of our approach, we show that for any linear threshold
function over , there is a linear threshold function which
is \eps-close to and has all weights that are integers at most \sqrt{n}
\cdot (1/\eps)^{O(\log^2(1/\eps))}. This significantly improves the best
previous result of Diakonikolas and Servedio which gave a \poly(n) \cdot
2^{\tilde{O}(1/\eps^{2/3})} weight bound, and is close to the known lower
bound of (1/\eps)^{\Omega(\log \log (1/\eps))}\} (Goldberg,
Servedio). Our techniques also yield improved algorithms for related problems
in learning theory