Oblivious Bounds on the Probability of Boolean Functions

This paper develops upper and lower bounds for the probability of Boolean functions by treating multiple occurrences of variables as independent and assigning them new individual probabilities. We call this approach dissociation and give an exact characterization of optimal oblivious bounds, i.e. when the new probabilities are chosen independent of the probabilities of all other variables. Our motivation comes from the weighted model counting problem (or, equivalently, the problem of computing the probability of a Boolean function), which is #P-hard in general. By performing several dissociations, one can transform a Boolean formula whose probability is difficult to compute, into one whose probability is easy to compute, and which is guaranteed to provide an upper or lower bound on the probability of the original formula by choosing appropriate probabilities for the dissociated variables. Our new bounds shed light on the connection between previous relaxation-based and model-based approximations and unify them as concrete choices in a larger design space. We also show how our theory allows a standard relational database management system (DBMS) to both upper and lower bound hard probabilistic queries in guaranteed polynomial time.Comment: 34 pages, 14 figures, supersedes: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.281

Tight polynomial worst-case bounds for loop programs

In 2008, Ben-Amram, Jones and Kristiansen showed that for a simple programming language - representing non-deterministic imperative programs with bounded loops, and arithmetics limited to addition and multiplication - it is possible to decide precisely whether a program has certain growth-rate properties, in particular whether a computed value, or the program's running time, has a polynomial growth rate. A natural and intriguing problem was to move from answering the decision problem to giving a quantitative result, namely, a tight polynomial upper bound. This paper shows how to obtain asymptotically-tight, multivariate, disjunctive polynomial bounds for this class of programs. This is a complete solution: whenever a polynomial bound exists it will be found. A pleasant surprise is that the algorithm is quite simple; but it relies on some subtle reasoning. An important ingredient in the proof is the forest factorization theorem, a strong structural result on homomorphisms into a finite monoid

Construction of aggregation operators with noble reinforcement

This paper examines disjunctive aggregation operators used in various recommender systems. A specific requirement in these systems is the property of noble reinforcement: allowing a collection of high-valued arguments to reinforce each other while avoiding reinforcement of low-valued arguments. We present a new construction of Lipschitz-continuous aggregation operators with noble reinforcement property and its refinements. <br /

Symmetric Disjunctive List-Decoding Codes

A binary code is said to be a disjunctive list-decoding $s_L$-code (LD $s_L$-code), $s \ge 2$, $L \ge 1$, if the code is identified by the incidence matrix of a family of finite sets in which the union (or disjunctive sum) of any $s$ sets can cover not more than $L-1$ other sets of the family. In this paper, we consider a similar class of binary codes which are based on a {\em symmetric disjunctive sum} (SDS) of binary symbols. By definition, the symmetric disjunctive sum (SDS) takes values from the ternary alphabet $\{0, 1, *\}$, where the symbol~$*$ denotes "erasure". Namely: SDS is equal to $0$ ($1$) if all its binary symbols are equal to $0$ ($1$), otherwise SDS is equal to~$*$. List decoding codes for symmetric disjunctive sum are said to be {\em symmetric disjunctive list-decoding $s_L$-codes} (SLD $s_L$-codes). In the given paper, we remind some applications of SLD $s_L$-codes which motivate the concept of symmetric disjunctive sum. We refine the known relations between parameters of LD $s_L$-codes and SLD $s_L$-codes. For the ensemble of binary constant-weight codes we develop a random coding method to obtain lower bounds on the rate of these codes. Our lower bounds improve the known random coding bounds obtained up to now using the ensemble with independent symbols of codewords.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, conference pape

Reliability of systems with dependent components based on lattice polynomial description

Reliability of a system is considered where the components' random lifetimes may be dependent. The structure of the system is described by an associated "lattice polynomial" function. Based on that descriptor, general framework formulas are developed and used to obtain direct results for the cases where a) the lifetimes are "Bayes-dependent", that is, their interdependence is due to external factors (in particular, where the factor is the "preliminary phase" duration) and b) where the lifetimes' dependence is implied by upper or lower bounds on lifetimes of components in some subsets of the system. (The bounds may be imposed externally based, say, on the connections environment.) Several special cases are investigated in detail