547 research outputs found
Probabilistic Polynomials and Hamming Nearest Neighbors
We show how to compute any symmetric Boolean function on variables over
any field (as well as the integers) with a probabilistic polynomial of degree
and error at most . The degree
dependence on and is optimal, matching a lower bound of Razborov
(1987) and Smolensky (1987) for the MAJORITY function. The proof is
constructive: a low-degree polynomial can be efficiently sampled from the
distribution.
This polynomial construction is combined with other algebraic ideas to give
the first subquadratic time algorithm for computing a (worst-case) batch of
Hamming distances in superlogarithmic dimensions, exactly. To illustrate, let
. Suppose we are given a database
of vectors in and a collection of query vectors
in the same dimension. For all , we wish to compute a
with minimum Hamming distance from . We solve this problem in randomized time. Hence, the problem is in "truly subquadratic"
time for dimensions, and in subquadratic time for . We apply the algorithm to computing pairs with maximum
inner product, closest pair in for vectors with bounded integer
entries, and pairs with maximum Jaccard coefficients.Comment: 16 pages. To appear in 56th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of
Computer Science (FOCS 2015
Distributed PCP Theorems for Hardness of Approximation in P
We present a new distributed model of probabilistically checkable proofs
(PCP). A satisfying assignment to a CNF formula is
shared between two parties, where Alice knows , Bob knows
, and both parties know . The goal is to have
Alice and Bob jointly write a PCP that satisfies , while
exchanging little or no information. Unfortunately, this model as-is does not
allow for nontrivial query complexity. Instead, we focus on a non-deterministic
variant, where the players are helped by Merlin, a third party who knows all of
.
Using our framework, we obtain, for the first time, PCP-like reductions from
the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) to approximation problems in P.
In particular, under SETH we show that there are no truly-subquadratic
approximation algorithms for Bichromatic Maximum Inner Product over
{0,1}-vectors, Bichromatic LCS Closest Pair over permutations, Approximate
Regular Expression Matching, and Diameter in Product Metric. All our
inapproximability factors are nearly-tight. In particular, for the first two
problems we obtain nearly-polynomial factors of ; only
-factor lower bounds (under SETH) were known before
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