Sublinear-query relative-error testing of halfspaces
Abstract
The relative-error property testing model was introduced in [CDHLNSY24] to facilitate the study of property testing for "sparse" Boolean-valued functions, i.e. ones for which only a small fraction of all input assignments satisfy the function. In this framework, the distance from the unknown target function that is being tested to a function is defined as , where the numerator is the fraction of inputs on which and disagree and the denominator is the fraction of inputs that satisfy . Recent work [CDHNSY26] has shown that over the Boolean domain , any relative-error testing algorithm for the fundamental class of halfspaces (i.e. linear threshold functions) must make oracle calls. In this paper we complement the [CDHNSY26] lower bound by showing that halfspaces can be relative-error tested over under the standard Gaussian distribution using a sublinear number of oracle calls -- in particular, substantially fewer than would be required for learning. Our results use a wide range of tools including Hermite analysis, Gaussian isoperimetric inequalities, and geometric results on noise sensitivity and surface area.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.01557,
title = {Sublinear-query relative-error testing of halfspaces},
author = {Xi Chen and Anindya De and Yizhi Huang and Shivam Nadimpalli and Rocco A. Servedio and Tianqi Yang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.01557},
year = {2026}
}