Related papers: The intersection of two halfspaces has high thresh…
We prove that, to compute a Boolean function $f$ on $N$ variables with error probability $\epsilon$, any quantum black-box algorithm has to query at least $\frac{1 - 2\sqrt{\epsilon}}{2} \rho_f N = \frac{1 - 2\sqrt{\epsilon}}{2} \bar{S}_f$…
Let $\mathscr{F}$ and $\mathscr{G}$ be families of $k$- and $\ell$-dimensional subspaces, respectively, of a given $n$-dimensional vector space over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. Suppose that $x \cap y \ne 0$ for all $x \in \mathscr{F}$…
The probabilistic degree of a Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is defined to be the smallest $d$ such that there is a random polynomial $\mathbf{P}$ of degree at most $d$ that agrees with $f$ at each point with high…
Polynomial representations of Boolean functions over various rings such as $\mathbb{Z}$ and $\mathbb{Z}_m$ have been studied since Minsky and Papert (1969). From then on, they have been employed in a large variety of fields including…
We consider the problem of testing whether a Boolean function has Fourier degree $\leq k$ or it is $\epsilon$-far from any Boolean function with Fourier degree $\leq k$. We improve the known lower bound of $\Omega(k)$ \cite{BBM11,CGM10}, to…
Recent work of Klivans, Stavropoulos, and Vasilyan initiated the study of testable learning with distribution shift (TDS learning), where a learner is given labeled samples from training distribution $\mathcal{D}$, unlabeled samples from…
We give the first non-trivial upper bounds on the average sensitivity and noise sensitivity of degree-$d$ polynomial threshold functions (PTFs). These bounds hold both for PTFs over the Boolean hypercube and for PTFs over $\R^n$ under the…
We design new polynomials for representing threshold functions in three different regimes: probabilistic polynomials of low degree, which need far less randomness than previous constructions, polynomial threshold functions (PTFs) with…
It has long been known that any Boolean function that depends on n input variables has both degree and exact quantum query complexity of Omega(log n), and that this bound is achieved for some functions. In this paper we study the case of…
We give new quantum algorithms for evaluating composed functions whose inputs may be shared between bottom-level gates. Let $f$ be an $m$-bit Boolean function and consider an $n$-bit function $F$ obtained by applying $f$ to conjunctions of…
The degree of a polynomial representing (or approximating) a function f is a lower bound for the number of quantum queries needed to compute f. This observation has been a source of many lower bounds on quantum algorithms. It has been an…
Let $\mathscr{F}_{n,d}$ be the class of all functions $f:\{-1,1\}^n\to[-1,1]$ on the $n$-dimensional discrete hypercube of degree at most $d$. In the first part of this paper, we prove that any (deterministic or randomized) algorithm which…
We consider the problem of representing Boolean functions exactly by "sparse" linear combinations (over $\mathbb{R}$) of functions from some "simple" class ${\cal C}$. In particular, given ${\cal C}$ we are interested in finding…
We study whether a uniformly random Boolean function $f : \{-1,1\}^p \to \{-1,1\}$ is determined by its Walsh--Fourier coefficients of degree at most $d$. We show that the threshold lies at $p/2$ up to an $O(\sqrt{p \log p})$ window: if \[…
We reprove that the approximate degree of the OR function on n bits is Omega(sqrt(n)). We consider a linear program which is feasible if and only if there is an approximate polynomial for a given function, and apply the duality theory. The…
Let $\mathcal{F}_{n}^*$ be the set of Boolean functions depending on all $n$ variables. We prove that for any $f\in \mathcal{F}_{n}^*$, $f|_{x_i=0}$ or $f|_{x_i=1}$ depends on the remaining $n-1$ variables, for some variable $x_i$. This…
Given a function f as an oracle, the collision problem is to find two distinct inputs i and j such that f(i)=f(j), under the promise that such inputs exist. Since the security of many fundamental cryptographic primitives depends on the…
We give an algorithm for PAC learning intersections of $k$ halfspaces with a $\rho$ margin to within error $\varepsilon$ that runs in time $\textsf{poly}(k, \varepsilon^{-1}, \rho^{-1}) \cdot \exp \left(O(\sqrt{n \log(1/\rho) \log…
In this paper we study the separation between two complexity measures: the degree of a Boolean function as a polynomial over the reals and its block sensitivity. We show that separation between these two measures can be improved from $…
An open problem in complexity theory is to find the minimal degree of a polynomial representing the $n$-bit OR function modulo composite $m$. This problem is related to understanding the power of circuits with $\text{MOD}_m$ gates where $m$…