2,545 research outputs found
DNF Sparsification and a Faster Deterministic Counting Algorithm
Given a DNF formula on n variables, the two natural size measures are the
number of terms or size s(f), and the maximum width of a term w(f). It is
folklore that short DNF formulas can be made narrow. We prove a converse,
showing that narrow formulas can be sparsified. More precisely, any width w DNF
irrespective of its size can be -approximated by a width DNF with
at most terms.
We combine our sparsification result with the work of Luby and Velikovic to
give a faster deterministic algorithm for approximately counting the number of
satisfying solutions to a DNF. Given a formula on n variables with poly(n)
terms, we give a deterministic time algorithm
that computes an additive approximation to the fraction of
satisfying assignments of f for \epsilon = 1/\poly(\log n). The previous best
result due to Luby and Velickovic from nearly two decades ago had a run-time of
.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity, 201
The quantum adversary method and classical formula size lower bounds
We introduce two new complexity measures for Boolean functions, or more
generally for functions of the form f:S->T. We call these measures sumPI and
maxPI. The quantity sumPI has been emerging through a line of research on
quantum query complexity lower bounds via the so-called quantum adversary
method [Amb02, Amb03, BSS03, Zha04, LM04], culminating in [SS04] with the
realization that these many different formulations are in fact equivalent.
Given that sumPI turns out to be such a robust invariant of a function, we
begin to investigate this quantity in its own right and see that it also has
applications to classical complexity theory.
As a surprising application we show that sumPI^2(f) is a lower bound on the
formula size, and even, up to a constant multiplicative factor, the
probabilistic formula size of f. We show that several formula size lower bounds
in the literature, specifically Khrapchenko and its extensions [Khr71, Kou93],
including a key lemma of [Has98], are in fact special cases of our method.
The second quantity we introduce, maxPI(f), is always at least as large as
sumPI(f), and is derived from sumPI in such a way that maxPI^2(f) remains a
lower bound on formula size. While sumPI(f) is always a lower bound on the
quantum query complexity of f, this is not the case in general for maxPI(f). A
strong advantage of sumPI(f) is that it has both primal and dual
characterizations, and thus it is relatively easy to give both upper and lower
bounds on the sumPI complexity of functions. To demonstrate this, we look at a
few concrete examples, for three functions: recursive majority of three, a
function defined by Ambainis, and the collision problem.Comment: Appears in Conference on Computational Complexity 200
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
Dp-minimality: basic facts and examples
We study the notion of dp-minimality, beginning by providing several
essential facts, establishing several equivalent definitions, and comparing
dp-minimality to other minimality notions. The rest of the paper is dedicated
to examples. We establish via a simple proof that any weakly o-minimal theory
is dp-minimal and then give an example of a weakly o-minimal group not obtained
by adding traces of externally definable sets. Next we give an example of a
divisible ordered Abelian group which is dp-minimal and not weakly o-minimal.
Finally we establish that the field of p-adic numbers is dp-minimal.Comment: 19 pages; simplified proof for the p-adic
The non-locality of Markov chain approximations to two-dimensional diffusions
In this short paper, we consider discrete-time Markov chains on lattices as
approximations to continuous-time diffusion processes. The approximations can
be interpreted as finite difference schemes for the generator of the process.
We derive conditions on the diffusion coefficients which permit transition
probabilities to match locally first and second moments. We derive a novel
formula which expresses how the matching becomes more difficult for larger
(absolute) correlations and strongly anisotropic processes, such that
instantaneous moves to more distant neighbours on the lattice have to be
allowed. Roughly speaking, for non-zero correlations, the distance covered in
one timestep is proportional to the ratio of volatilities in the two
directions. We discuss the implications to Markov decision processes and the
convergence analysis of approximations to Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations in
the Barles-Souganidis framework.Comment: Corrected two errata from previous and journal version: definition of
R in (5) and summations in (7
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