Related papers: A tighter bound on the number of relevant variable…

We prove that there is a constant $C\leq 6.614$ such that every Boolean function of degree at most $d$ (as a polynomial over $\mathbb{R}$) is a $C\cdot 2^d$-junta, i.e. it depends on at most $C\cdot 2^d$ variables. This improves the $d\cdot…

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 spectrum of a complex-valued function $f$ on $\mathbb{Z}_{q}^n$ is the set $\{|u|:u\in \mathbb{Z}_q^n~\mathrm{and}~\widehat{f}(u)\neq 0\}$, where $|u|$ is the Hamming weight of $u$ and $\widehat{f}$ is the Fourier transform of $f$. Let…

We generalize and extend the ideas in a recent paper of Chiarelli, Hatami and Saks to prove new bounds on the number of relevant variables for boolean functions in terms of a variety of complexity measures. Our approach unifies and refines…

Nisan and Szegedy (CC 1994) showed that any Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ that depends on all its input variables, when represented as a real-valued multivariate polynomial $P(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$, has degree at least $\log…

A simple way to generate a Boolean function is to take the sign of a real polynomial in $n$ variables. Such Boolean functions are called polynomial threshold functions. How many low-degree polynomial threshold functions are there? The…

Let $f\colon \{-1,1\}^n \to [-1,1]$ have degree $d$ as a multilinear polynomial. It is well-known that the total influence of $f$ is at most $d$. Aaronson and Ambainis asked whether the total $L_1$ influence of $f$ can also be bounded as a…

We show that a Boolean degree $d$ function on the slice $\binom{[n]}{k}$ is a junta if $k \geq 2d$, and that this bound is sharp. We prove a similar result for $A$-valued degree $d$ functions for arbitrary finite $A$, and for functions on…

The study of proper rational mappings between balls in complex Euclidean spaces naturally leads to the relationship between the degree and imbedding dimension of such a mapping. The special case for monomial mappings is equivalent to the…

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…

Recently, Forbes, Kumar and Saptharishi [CCC, 2016] proved that there exists an explicit $d^{O(1)}$-variate and degree $d$ polynomial $P_{d}\in VNP$ such that if any depth four circuit $C$ of bounded formal degree $d$ which computes a…

Let $f$ be a real-valued, degree-$d$ Boolean function defined on the $n$-dimensional Boolean cube $\{\pm 1\}^{n}$, and $f(x) = \sum_{S \subset \{1,\ldots,d\}} \widehat{f}(S) \prod_{k \in S} x_k$ its Fourier-Walsh expansion. The main result…

The logarithm of the number of binary n-variable bent functions is asymptotically less than $11(2^n)/32$ as n tends to infinity. Keywords: boolean function, Walsh--Hadamard transform, plateaued function, bent function, upper bound

We consider various definitions of degrees of discrete functions and establish relations between the number of relevant (essential) variables and degrees of two- and three-valued functions. Keywords: relevant variable, sensitivity, degree…

We show that a Boolean degree $d$ function on the slice $\binom{[n]}{k} = \{ (x_1,\ldots,x_n) \in \{0,1\} : \sum_{i=1}^n x_i = k \}$ is a junta, assuming that $k,n-k$ are large enough. This generalizes a classical result of Nisan and…

The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f(x_{1},x_{2},\ldots,x_{n})$ is the minimum degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ pointwise within $1/3$. Upper bounds on approximate degree have a variety of applications in…

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…

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 give an upper bound in O(d ^((n+1)/2)) for the number of critical points of a normal random polynomial with degree d and at most n variables. Using the large deviation principle for the spectral value of large random matrices we obtain…

In 1981 Beck and Fiala proved an upper bound for the discrepancy of a set system of degree d that is independent of the size of the ground set. In the intervening years the bound has been decreased from 2d-2 to 2d-4. We improve the bound to…