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This paper concerns the approximation of smooth, high-dimensional functions from limited samples using polynomials. This task lies at the heart of many applications in computational science and engineering - notably, some of those arising…
We study when low coordinate degree functions (LCDF) -- linear combinations of functions depending on small subsets of entries of a vector -- can hypothesis test between high-dimensional probability measures. These functions are a…
A low-degree test is a collection of simple, local rules for checking the proximity of an arbitrary function to a low-degree polynomial. Each rule depends on the function's values at a small number of places. If a function satisfies many…
The low-degree polynomial framework has been highly successful in predicting computational versus statistical gaps for high-dimensional problems in average-case analysis and machine learning. This success has led to the low-degree…
We give the first non-trivial upper bounds on the average sensitivity and noise sensitivity of degree-$d$ polynomial threshold functions (PTFs). These bounds hold both for PTFs over the Boolean hypercube and for PTFs over $\R^n$ under the…
We introduce computable projection operators onto piecewise polynomial spaces, defined via sampling and discrete least-squares polynomial approximations. The resulting mappings exhibit (almost) optimal approximation properties in $L^2$ and…
We give a new fast method for evaluating sprectral approximations of nonlinear polynomial functionals. We prove that the new algorithm is convergent if the functions considered are smooth enough, under a general assumption on the spectral…
The vector space of all polynomial functions of degree $k$ on a box of dimension $n$ is of dimension ${n \choose k}$. A consequence of this fact is that a function can be approximated on vertices of the box using other vertices to higher…
This paper introduces the generalized forward-backward splitting algorithm for minimizing convex functions of the form $F + \sum_{i=1}^n G_i$, where $F$ has a Lipschitz-continuous gradient and the $G_i$'s are simple in the sense that their…
Recent research has shown that piecewise smooth (PS) functions can be approximated by piecewise linear functions with second order error in the distance to a given reference point. A semismooth Newton type algorithm based on successive…
We show strong (and surprisingly simple) lower bounds for weakly learning intersections of halfspaces in the improper setting. Strikingly little is known about this problem. For instance, it is not even known if there is a polynomial-time…
A polynomial threshold function (PTF) $f:\mathbb{R}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is a function of the form $f(x) = \mathsf{sign}(p(x))$ where $p$ is a polynomial of degree at most $d$. PTFs are a classical and well-studied complexity class…
We consider the problem of approximating a smooth function from finitely-many pointwise samples using $\ell^1$ minimization techniques. In the first part of this paper, we introduce an infinite-dimensional approach to this problem. Three…
We propose novel smooth approximations to the classical rounding function, suitable for differentiable optimization and machine learning applications. Our constructions are based on two approaches: (1) localized sigmoid window functions…
We give a polynomial-time algorithm for learning high-dimensional halfspaces with margins in $d$-dimensional space to within desired TV distance when the ambient distribution is an unknown affine transformation of the $d$-fold product of an…
We analyze the constant step size subgradient method on nonsmooth, nonconvex functions. We identify geometric assumptions on the objective function under which i) its domain admits a partition (stratification) into smooth manifolds (strata)…
The degrees of polynomials representing or approximating Boolean functions are a prominent tool in various branches of complexity theory. Sherstov recently characterized the minimal degree deg_{\eps}(f) among all polynomials (over the…
The purpose of the paper is to provide a characterization of the error of the best polynomial approximation of composite functions in weighted spaces. Such a characterization is essential for the convergence analysis of numerical methods…
Rubinfeld & Vasilyan recently introduced the framework of testable learning as an extension of the classical agnostic model. It relaxes distributional assumptions which are difficult to verify by conditions that can be checked efficiently…
We propose a stochastic optimization method for the minimization of the sum of three convex functions, one of which has Lipschitz continuous gradient as well as restricted strong convexity. Our approach is most suitable in the setting where…