Related papers: Improved Approximation of Linear Threshold Functio…
We give a "regularity lemma" for degree-d polynomial threshold functions (PTFs) over the Boolean cube {-1,1}^n. This result shows that every degree-d PTF can be decomposed into a constant number of subfunctions such that almost all of the…
We study the computational power of polynomial threshold functions, that is, threshold functions of real polynomials over the boolean cube. We provide two new results bounding the computational power of this model. Our first result shows…
The \emph{Chow parameters} of a Boolean function $f: \{-1,1\}^n \to \{-1,1\}$ are its $n+1$ degree-0 and degree-1 Fourier coefficients. It has been known since 1961 (Chow, Tannenbaum) that the (exact values of the) Chow parameters of any…
The influence of the $k$'th coordinate on a Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is the probability that flipping $x_k$ changes the value $f(x)$. The total influence $I(f)$ is the sum of influences of the coordinates. The…
We give the first non-trivial upper bounds on the average sensitivity and noise sensitivity of polynomial threshold functions. More specifically, for a Boolean function f on n variables equal to the sign of a real, multivariate polynomial…
The {\em Total Influence} ({\em Average Sensitivity) of a discrete function is one of its fundamental measures. We study the problem of approximating the total influence of a monotone Boolean function \ifnum\plusminus=1 $f: \{\pm1\}^n…
We study the complexity of learning and approximation of self-bounding functions over the uniform distribution on the Boolean hypercube ${0,1}^n$. Informally, a function $f:{0,1}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is self-bounding if for every $x…
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 $\frac{1 - 2\sqrt{\epsilon}}{2} \rho_f N = \frac{1 - 2\sqrt{\epsilon}}{2} \bar{S}_f$…
The sensitivity of a Boolean function f is the maximum over all inputs x, of the number of sensitive coordinates of x. The well-known sensitivity conjecture of Nisan (see also Nisan and Szegedy) states that every sensitivity-s Boolean…
The approximate degree of a Boolean function is the least degree of a real multilinear polynomial approximating it in the $\ell_\infty$-norm over the Boolean hypercube. We show that the approximate degree of the Bipartite Perfect Matching…
The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f \colon \{-1, 1\}^n \rightarrow \{-1, 1\}$ is the least degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ pointwise to error at most $1/3$. We introduce a generic method for increasing the…
The Fourier-Walsh expansion of a Boolean function $f \colon \{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is its unique representation as a multilinear polynomial. The Kindler-Safra theorem (2002) asserts that if in the expansion of $f$, the total weight…
We investigate the approximability of several classes of real-valued functions by functions of a small number of variables ({\em juntas}). Our main results are tight bounds on the number of variables required to approximate a function…
We prove a Lusin approximation of functions of bounded variation. If $f$ is a function of bounded variation on an open set $\Omega\subset X$, where $X=(X,d,\mu)$ is a given complete doubling metric measure space supporting a $1$-Poincar\'e…
We study the approximation of measurable functions on the hypercube by functions arising from affine neural networks. Our main achievement is an approximation of any measurable function $f \colon W_n \to [-1,1]$ up to a prescribed precision…
The $\epsilon$-approximate degree of a Boolean function $f: \{-1, 1\}^n \to \{-1, 1\}$ is the minimum degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ to within $\epsilon$ in the $\ell_\infty$ norm. We prove several lower bounds on this…
For $S \subseteq \{0,1\}^n$ a Boolean function $f \colon S \to \{-1,1\}$ is a polynomial threshold function (PTF) of degree $d$ and weight $W$ if there is a polynomial $p$ with integer coefficients of degree $d$ and with sum of absolute…
We study function estimation in the empirical Bayes setting for Poisson and normal means. Specifically, given observations $Y_i\sim f(\cdot; \theta_i)$ with latent parameters $\theta_i\sim \pi$, the goal is to estimate…
Every Boolean function can be uniquely represented as a multilinear polynomial. The entropy and the total influence are two ways to measure the concentration of its Fourier coefficients, namely the monomial coefficients in this…
In this report, we show that all n-variable Boolean function can be represented as polynomial threshold functions (PTF) with at most $0.75 \times 2^n$ non-zero integer coefficients and give an upper bound on the absolute value of these…