Probabilistic Polynomials and Hamming Nearest Neighbors

We show how to compute any symmetric Boolean function on $n$ variables over any field (as well as the integers) with a probabilistic polynomial of degree $O(\sqrt{n \log(1/\epsilon)})$ and error at most $\epsilon$. The degree dependence on $n$ and $\epsilon$ 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 $c(n) : \mathbb{N} \rightarrow \mathbb{N}$. Suppose we are given a database $D$ of $n$ vectors in $\{0,1\}^{c(n) \log n}$ and a collection of $n$ query vectors $Q$ in the same dimension. For all $u \in Q$, we wish to compute a $v \in D$ with minimum Hamming distance from $u$. We solve this problem in $n^{2-1/O(c(n) \log^2 c(n))}$ randomized time. Hence, the problem is in "truly subquadratic" time for $O(\log n)$ dimensions, and in subquadratic time for $d = o((\log^2 n)/(\log \log n)^2)$. We apply the algorithm to computing pairs with maximum inner product, closest pair in $\ell_1$ for vectors with bounded integer entries, and pairs with maximum Jaccard coefficients.