Related papers: Beyond Talagrand Functions: New Lower Bounds for T…
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…
This note is concerned with an extension, at second order, of an inequality on the discrete cube $C_n=\{-1,1\}$ (equipped with the uniform measure) due to Talagrand (\cite{TalL1L2}). As an application, the main result of this note is a…
Monotone Boolean functions, and the monotone Boolean circuits that compute them, have been intensively studied in complexity theory. In this paper we study the structure of Boolean functions in terms of the minimum number of negations in…
The multilinear framework has achieved the breakthrough $1-1/e$ approximation for maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a matroid constraint. This framework has a continuous optimization part and a rounding part. We extend…
A function f : {0, 1}^n -> {0, 1} is said to be k-monotone if it flips between 0 and 1 at most k times on every ascending chain. Such functions represent a natural generalization of (1-)monotone functions, and have been recently studied in…
Let $X$ be a set of items of size $n$ , which may contain some defective items denoted by $I$, where $I \subseteq X$. In group testing, a {\it test} refers to a subset of items $Q \subset X$. The test outcome is $1$ (positive) if $Q$…
We study the problem of {\sl certification}: given queries to a function $f : \{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\}$ with certificate complexity $\le k$ and an input $x^\star$, output a size-$k$ certificate for $f$'s value on $x^\star$. This abstractly…
We show that any quantum algorithm deciding whether an input function $f$ from $[n]$ to $[n]$ is 2-to-1 or almost 2-to-1 requires $\Theta(n)$ queries to $f$. The same lower bound holds for determining whether or not a function $f$ from…
We show that a large fraction of the data-structure lower bounds known today in fact follow by reduction from the communication complexity of lopsided (asymmetric) set disjointness. This includes lower bounds for: * high-dimensional…
Given query access to a monotone function $f\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ with certificate complexity $C(f)$ and an input $x^{\star}$, we design an algorithm that outputs a size-$C(f)$ subset of $x^{\star}$ certifying the value of…
We argue that proven exponential upper bounds on runtimes, an established area in classic algorithms, are interesting also in heuristic search and we prove several such results. We show that any of the algorithms randomized local search,…
The Knaster-Tarski theorem, also known as Tarski's theorem, guarantees that every monotone function defined on a complete lattice has a fixed point. We analyze the query complexity of finding such a fixed point on the $k$-dimensional grid…
A Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n\to \{0,1\}$ is $k$-linear if it returns the sum (over the binary field $F_2$) of $k$ coordinates of the input. In this paper, we study property testing of the classes $k$-Linear, the class of all $k$-linear…
Top monotonicity is a relaxation of various well-known domain restrictions such as single-peaked and single-crossing for which negative impossibility results are circumvented and for which the median-voter theorem still holds. We examine…
Let a Boolean function be available as a black-box (oracle) and one likes to devise an algorithm to test whether it has certain property or it is $\epsilon$-far from having that property. The efficiency of the algorithm is judged by the…
We show how to distinguish circuits with $\log k$ negations (a.k.a $k$-monotone functions) from uniformly random functions in $\exp\left(\tilde{O}\left(n^{1/3}k^{2/3}\right)\right)$ time using random samples. The previous best…
Efficiently counting or detecting defective items is a crucial task in various fields ranging from biological testing to quality control to streaming algorithms. The \emph{group testing estimation problem} concerns estimating the number of…
We derive a new upper bound on the reliability function for channel coding over discrete memoryless channels. Our bounding technique relies on two main elements: (i) adding an auxiliary genie-receiver that reveals to the original receiver a…
A unified framework is proposed for tests of unobserved heterogeneity in parametric statistic models based on Neyman's $C(\alpha)$ approach. Such tests are irregular in the sense that the first order derivative of the log likelihood with…
A test of the null hypothesis that a hazard rate is monotone nondecreasing, versus the alternative that it is not, is proposed. Both the test statistic and the means of calibrating it are new. Unlike previous approaches, neither is based on…