Probabilistic Rank and Matrix Rigidity

We consider a notion of probabilistic rank and probabilistic sign-rank of a matrix, which measures the extent to which a matrix can be probabilistically represented by low-rank matrices. We demonstrate several connections with matrix rigidity, communication complexity, and circuit lower bounds, including: The Walsh-Hadamard Transform is Not Very Rigid. We give surprising upper bounds on the rigidity of a family of matrices whose rigidity has been extensively studied, and was conjectured to be highly rigid. For the $2^n \times 2^n$ Walsh-Hadamard transform $H_n$ (a.k.a. Sylvester matrices, or the communication matrix of Inner Product mod 2), we show how to modify only $2^{\epsilon n}$ entries in each row and make the rank drop below $2^{n(1-\Omega(\epsilon^2/\log(1/\epsilon)))}$, for all $\epsilon > 0$, over any field. That is, it is not possible to prove arithmetic circuit lower bounds on Hadamard matrices, via L. Valiant's matrix rigidity approach. We also show non-trivial rigidity upper bounds for $H_n$ with smaller target rank. Matrix Rigidity and Threshold Circuit Lower Bounds. We give new consequences of rigid matrices for Boolean circuit complexity. We show that explicit $n \times n$ Boolean matrices which maintain rank at least $2^{(\log n)^{1-\delta}}$ after $n^2/2^{(\log n)^{\delta/2}}$ modified entries would yield a function lacking sub-quadratic-size $AC^0$ circuits with two layers of arbitrary linear threshold gates. We also prove that explicit 0/1 matrices over $\mathbb{R}$ which are modestly more rigid than the best known rigidity lower bounds for sign-rank would imply strong lower bounds for the infamously difficult class $THR\circ THR$.