English

DNF formulas are efficiently testable with relative error

Computational Complexity 2026-01-23 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

We give a poly(s,1/ϵ)(s,1/\epsilon)-query algorithm for testing whether an unknown and arbitrary function f:{0,1}n{0,1}f: \{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\} is an ss-term DNF, in the challenging relative-error framework for Boolean function property testing that was recently introduced and studied in a number of works [CDH+25b, CPPS25a, CPPS25b, CDH+25a]. This gives the first example of a rich and natural class of functions which may depend on a super-constant number of variables and yet is efficiently testable in the relative-error model with constant query complexity. A crucial new ingredient enabling our approach is a novel decomposition of any ss-term DNF formula into ``local clusters'' of terms. Our results demonstrate that this new decomposition can be usefully exploited for algorithms even when the ss-term DNF is not explicitly given; we believe that this decomposition may have applications in other contexts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.16076,
  title  = {DNF formulas are efficiently testable with relative error},
  author = {Xi Chen and William Pires and Toniann Pitassi and Rocco A. Servedio},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.16076},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:16:03.065Z