Related papers: Inapproximability of a Pair of Forms Defining a Pa…
The theorem states that: Every Boolean function can be $\epsilon -approximated$ by a Disjunctive Normal Form (DNF) of size $O_{\epsilon}(2^{n}/\log{n})$. This paper will demonstrate this theorem in detail by showing how this theorem is…
The 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 error $1/3$ in the $\ell_\infty$ norm. In an influential result, Aaronson and Shi (J. ACM…
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…
We consider the problem of linearizing a pseudo-Boolean function $f : \{0,1\}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ by means of $k$ Boolean functions. Such a linearization yields an integer linear programming formulation with only $k$ auxiliary variables. This…
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…
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…
We give two approximation algorithms solving the Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation (SBFE) problem for symmetric Boolean functions. The first is an $O(\log n)$-approximation algorithm, based on the submodular goal-value approach of…
We study approximation of Boolean functions by low-degree polynomials over the ring $\mathbb{Z}/2^k\mathbb{Z}$. More precisely, given a Boolean function $F:\{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$, define its $k$-lift to be $F_k:\{0,1\}^n \rightarrow…
The minimization of propositional formulae is a classical problem in logic, whose first algorithms date back at least to the 1950s with the works of Quine and Karnaugh. Most previous work in the area has focused on obtaining minimal, or…
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…
We show an equivalence between 1-query quantum algorithms and representations by degree-2 polynomials. Namely, a partial Boolean function $f$ is computable by a 1-query quantum algorithm with error bounded by $\epsilon<1/2$ iff $f$ can be…
This paper considers the problem of approximating a Boolean function $f$ using another Boolean function from a specified class. Two classes of approximating functions are considered: $k$-juntas, and linear Boolean functions. The $n$ input…
There are a number of approximation algorithms for NP-hard versions of low rank approximation, such as finding a rank-$k$ matrix $B$ minimizing the sum of absolute values of differences to a given $n$-by-$n$ matrix $A$,…
We study the close connection between rational functions that approximate a given Boolean function, and quantum algorithms that compute the same function using postselection. We show that the minimal degree of the former equals (up to a…
Given an $n*n$ sparse symmetric matrix with $m$ nonzero entries, performing Gaussian elimination may turn some zeroes into nonzero values. To maintain the matrix sparse, we would like to minimize the number $k$ of these changes, hence…
This paper studies simple bilevel problems, where a convex upper-level function is minimized over the optimal solutions of a convex lower-level problem. We first show the fundamental difficulty of simple bilevel problems, that the…
The approximate degree of a Boolean function is the minimum degree of real polynomial that approximates it pointwise. For any Boolean function, its approximate degree serves as a lower bound on its quantum query complexity, and generically…
We consider Boolean functions f:{-1,1}^n->{-1,1} that are close to a sum of independent functions on mutually exclusive subsets of the variables. We prove that any such function is close to just a single function on a single subset. We also…
We prove various theorems on approximation using polynomials with integer coefficients in the Bernstein basis of any given order. In the extreme, we draw the coefficients from $\{ \pm 1\}$ only. A basic case of our results states that for…
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…