Related papers: Testing submodularity and other properties of valu…
We define a new class of set functions that in addition to being monotone and subadditive, also admit a very limited form of submodularity defined over a permutation of the ground set. We refer to this permutation as a submodular order.…
Submodular function minimization is well studied, and existing algorithms solve it exactly or up to arbitrary accuracy. However, in many applications, such as structured sparse learning or batch Bayesian optimization, the objective function…
Submodular continuous functions are a category of (generally) non-convex/non-concave functions with a wide spectrum of applications. We characterize these functions and demonstrate that they can be maximized efficiently with approximation…
Given a small random sample of $n$-bit strings labeled by an unknown Boolean function, which properties of this function can be tested computationally efficiently? We show an equivalence between properties that are efficiently testable from…
Given two testable properties $\mathcal{P}_{1}$ and $\mathcal{P}_{2}$, under what conditions are the union, intersection or set-difference of these two properties also testable? We initiate a systematic study of these basic set-theoretic…
We characterize the set of properties of Boolean-valued functions on a finite domain $\mathcal{X}$ that are testable with a constant number of samples. Specifically, we show that a property $\mathcal{P}$ is testable with a constant number…
The aim of this expository article is to present recent developments in the centuries old discussion on the interrelations between continuous and differentiable real valued functions of one real variable. The truly new results include,…
We consider the problem of determining which classes of functions can be tested more efficiently than they can be learned, in the distribution-free sample-based model that corresponds to the standard PAC learning setting. Our main result…
This work explores the novel idea of learning a submodular scoring function to improve the specificity/selectivity of existing feature attribution methods. Submodular scores are natural for attribution as they are known to accurately model…
For a Boolean function $\Phi\colon\{0,1\}^d\to\{0,1\}$ and an assignment to its variables $\mathbf{x}=(x_1, x_2, \dots, x_d)$ we consider the problem of finding the subsets of the variables that are sufficient to determine the function…
We give a structure theorem for Boolean functions on the $p$-biased hypercube which are $\epsilon$-close to degree $d$ in $L_2$, showing that they are close to sparse juntas. Our structure theorem implies that such functions are…
The essential variables in a finite function $f$ are defined as variables which occur in $f$ and weigh with the values of that function. The number of essential variables is an important measure of complexity for discrete functions. When…
Over the last two decades, submodular function maximization has been the workhorse of many discrete optimization problems in machine learning applications. Traditionally, the study of submodular functions was based on binary function…
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…
We present an $\tilde{O}(n^{2/3}/\epsilon^2)$-query algorithm that tests whether an unknown Boolean function $f\colon\{0,1\}^n\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is unate (i.e., every variable is either non-decreasing or non-increasing) or $\epsilon$-far…
We investigate the existence of approximation algorithms for maximization of submodular functions, that run in fixed parameter tractable (FPT) time. Given a non-decreasing submodular set function $v: 2^X \to \mathbb{R}$ the goal is to…
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 study the problem of testing whether a function $f: \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ is a polynomial of degree at most $d$ in the \emph{distribution-free} testing model. Here, the distance between functions is measured with respect to an…
Maximization of {\it non-submodular} functions appears in various scenarios, and many previous works studied it based on some measures that quantify the closeness to being submodular. On the other hand, many practical non-submodular…
We study the relative-error property testing model for Boolean functions that was recently introduced in the work of Chen et al. (SODA 2025). In relative-error testing, the testing algorithm gets uniform random satisfying assignments as…