English

Sublinear-query relative-error testing of halfspaces

Data Structures and Algorithms 2026-04-03 v1 Computational Complexity

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 ff that is being tested to a function gg is defined as Vol(fg)/Vol(f)\mathrm{Vol}(f \mathop{\triangle} g)/\mathrm{Vol}(f), where the numerator is the fraction of inputs on which ff and gg disagree and the denominator is the fraction of inputs that satisfy ff. Recent work [CDHNSY26] has shown that over the Boolean domain {0,1}n\{0,1\}^n, any relative-error testing algorithm for the fundamental class of halfspaces (i.e. linear threshold functions) must make Ω(logn)\Omega(\log n) oracle calls. In this paper we complement the [CDHNSY26] lower bound by showing that halfspaces can be relative-error tested over Rn\mathbb{R}^n under the standard N(0,In)N(0,I_n) 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}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:50:11.870Z