Related papers: Every decision tree has an influential variable
We prove a metric space scaling limit for a critical random graph with independent and identically distributed degrees having power-law tail behaviour with exponent $\alpha+1$, where $\alpha \in (1,2)$. The limiting components are…
The optimization of high dimensional functions is a key issue in engineering problems but it frequently comes at a cost that is not acceptable since it usually involves a complex and expensive computer code. Engineers often overcome this…
We study how to utilize (possibly erroneous) predictions in a model for computing under uncertainty in which an algorithm can query unknown data. Our aim is to minimize the number of queries needed to solve the minimum spanning tree…
We establish new hardness results for decision tree optimization problems, adding to a line of work that dates back to Hyafil and Rivest in 1976. We prove, under randomized ETH, superpolynomial lower bounds for two basic problems: given an…
Influence functions approximate the effect of training samples in test-time predictions and have a wide variety of applications in machine learning interpretability and uncertainty estimation. A commonly-used (first-order) influence…
Decision trees are popular classification models, providing high accuracy and intuitive explanations. However, as the tree size grows the model interpretability deteriorates. Traditional tree-induction algorithms, such as C4.5 and CART,…
We give a "regularity lemma" for degree-d polynomial threshold functions (PTFs) over the Boolean cube {-1,1}^n. This result shows that every degree-d PTF can be decomposed into a constant number of subfunctions such that almost all of the…
Given a rooted tree and a ranking of its leaves, what is the minimum number of inversions of the leaves that can be attained by ordering the tree? This variation of the problem of counting inversions in arrays originated in mathematical…
It is widely believed that the prediction accuracy of decision tree models is invariant under any strictly monotone transformation of the individual predictor variables. However, this statement may be false when predicting new observations…
We study depth lower bounds against non-monotone circuits, parametrized by a new measure of non-monotonicity: the orientation of a function $f$ is the characteristic vector of the minimum sized set of negated variables needed in any…
In several applications of automatic diagnosis and active learning a central problem is the evaluation of a discrete function by adaptively querying the values of its variables until the values read uniquely determine the value of 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…
We consider the decentralized binary hypothesis testing problem on trees of bounded degree and increasing depth. For a regular tree of depth t and branching factor k>=2, we assume that the leaves have access to independent and identically…
We revisit the problem of broadcasting on $d$-ary trees: starting from a Bernoulli$(1/2)$ random variable $X_0$ at a root vertex, each vertex forwards its value across binary symmetric channels $\mathrm{BSC}_\delta$ to $d$ descendants. The…
We consider the problem of PAC-learning decision trees, i.e., learning a decision tree over the n-dimensional hypercube from independent random labeled examples. Despite significant effort, no polynomial-time algorithm is known for learning…
We study algorithms using randomized value functions for exploration in reinforcement learning. This type of algorithms enjoys appealing empirical performance. We show that when we use 1) a single random seed in each episode, and 2) a…
For positive integers $n, d$, consider the hypergrid $[n]^d$ with the coordinate-wise product partial ordering denoted by $\prec$. A function $f: [n]^d \mapsto \mathbb{N}$ is monotone if $\forall x \prec y$, $f(x) \leq f(y)$. A function $f$…
Relations between the decision tree complexity and various other complexity measures of Boolean functions is a thriving topic of research in computational complexity. It is known that decision tree complexity is bounded above by the cube of…
We study the computational complexity of the infinite-horizon discounted-reward Markov Decision Problem (MDP) with a finite state space $|\mathcal{S}|$ and a finite action space $|\mathcal{A}|$. We show that any randomized algorithm needs a…
We study bootstrap percolation with the threshold parameter $\theta \geq 2$ and the initial probability $p$ on infinite periodic trees that are defined as follows. Each node of a tree has degree selected from a finite predefined set of…