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We study the probabilistic degree over reals of the OR function on $n$ variables. For an error parameter $epsilon$ in (0,1/3), the $epsilon$-error probabilistic degree of any Boolean function $f$ over reals is the smallest non-negative integer $d$ such that the following holds: there exists a distribution $D$ of polynomials entirely supported on polynomials of degree at most $d$ such that for all $z in {0,1}^n$, we have $Pr_{P sim D} [P(z) = f(z) ] geq 1- epsilon$. It is known from the works of Tarui ({Theoret. Comput. Sci.} 1993) and Beigel, Reingold, and Spielman ({ Proc. 6th CCC} 1991), that the $epsilon$-error probabilistic degree of the OR function is at most $O(log n.log 1/epsilon)$. Our first observation is that this can be improved to $O{log {{n}choose{leq log 1/epsilon}}}$, which is better for small values of $epsilon$. In all known constructions of probabilistic polynomials for the OR function (including the above improvement), the polynomials $P$ in the support of the distribution $D$ have the following special structure:$P = 1 - (1-L_1).(1-L_2)...(1-L_t)$, where each $L_i(x_1,..., x_n)$ is a linear form in the variables $x_1,...,x_n$, i.e., the polynomial $1-P(x_1,...,x_n)$ is a product of affine forms. We show that the $epsilon$-error probabilistic degree of OR when restricted to polynomials of the above form is $Omega ( log a/log^2 a )$ where $a = log {{n}choose{leq log 1/epsilon}}$. Thus matching the above upper bound (up to poly-logarithmic factors).
We prove that 3-query linear locally correctable codes over the Reals of dimension $d$ require block length $n>d^{2+lambda}$ for some fixed, positive $lambda >0$. Geometrically, this means that if $n$ vectors in $R^d$ are such that each vector is spanned by a linear number of disjoint triples of others, then it must be that $n > d^{2+lambda}$. This improves the known quadratic lower bounds (e.g. {KdW04, Wood07}). While a modest improvement, we expect that the new techniques introduced in this work will be useful for further progress on lower bounds of locally correctable and decodable codes with more than 2 queries, possibly over other fields as well. Our proof introduces several new ideas to existing lower bound techniques, several of which work over every field. At a high level, our proof has two parts, {it clustering} and {it random restriction}. The clustering step uses a powerful theorem of Barthe from convex geometry. It can be used (after preprocessing our LCC to be {it balanced}), to apply a basis change (and rescaling) of the vectors, so that the resulting unit vectors become {it nearly isotropic}. This together with the fact that any LCC must have many `correlated pairs of points, lets us deduce that the vectors must have a surprisingly strong geometric clustering, and hence also combinatorial clustering with respect to the spanning triples. In the restriction step, we devise a new variant of the dimension reduction technique used in previous lower bounds, which is able to take advantage of the combinatorial clustering structure above. The analysis of our random projection method reduces to a simple (weakly) random graph process, and works over any field.
We study how well functions over the boolean hypercube of the form $f_k(x)=(|x|-k)(|x|-k-1)$ can be approximated by sums of squares of low-degree polynomials, obtaining good bounds for the case of approximation in $ell_{infty}$-norm as well as in $ell_1$-norm. We describe three complexity-theoretic applications: (1) a proof that the recent breakthrough lower bound of Lee, Raghavendra, and Steurer on the positive semidefinite extension complexity of the correlation and TSP polytopes cannot be improved further by showing better sum-of-squares degree lower bounds on $ell_1$-approximation of $f_k$; (2) a proof that Grigorievs lower bound on the degree of Positivstellensatz refutations for the knapsack problem is optimal, answering an open question from his work; (3) bounds on the query complexity of quantum algorithms whose expected output approximates such functions.
This paper is concerned with exact real solving of well-constrained, bivariate polynomial systems. The main problem is to isolate all common real roots in rational rectangles, and to determine their intersection multiplicities. We present three algorithms and analyze their asymptotic bit complexity, obtaining a bound of $sOB(N^{14})$ for the purely projection-based method, and $sOB(N^{12})$ for two subresultant-based methods: this notation ignores polylogarithmic factors, where $N$ bounds the degree and the bitsize of the polynomials. The previous record bound was $sOB(N^{14})$. Our main tool is signed subresultant sequences. We exploit recent advances on the complexity of univariate root isolation, and extend them to sign evaluation of bivariate polynomials over two algebraic numbers, and real root counting for polynomials over an extension field. Our algorithms apply to the problem of simultaneous inequalities; they also compute the topology of real plane algebraic curves in $sOB(N^{12})$, whereas the previous bound was $sOB(N^{14})$. All algorithms have been implemented in MAPLE, in conjunction with numeric filtering. We compare them against FGB/RS, system solvers from SYNAPS, and MAPLE libraries INSULATE and TOP, which compute curve topology. Our software is among the most robust, and its runtimes are comparable, or within a small constant factor, with respect to the C/C++ libraries. Key words: real solving, polynomial systems, complexity, MAPLE software
We propose models for lobbying in a probabilistic environment, in which an actor (called The Lobby) seeks to influence voters preferences of voting for or against multiple issues when the voters preferences are represented in terms of probabilities. In particular, we provide two evaluation criteria and two bribery methods to formally describe these models, and we consider the resulting forms of lobbying with and without issue weighting. We provide a formal analysis for these problems of lobbying in a stochastic environment, and determine their classical and parameterized complexity depending on the given bribery/evaluation criteria and on various natural parameterizations. Specifically, we show that some of these problems can be solved in polynomial time, some are NP-complete but fixed-parameter tractable, and some are W[2]-complete. Finally, we provide approximability and inapproximability results for these problems and several variants.
We show that for any odd $k$ and any instance of the Max-kXOR constraint satisfaction problem, there is an efficient algorithm that finds an assignment satisfying at least a $frac{1}{2} + Omega(1/sqrt{D})$ fraction of constraints, where $D$ is a bound on the number of constraints that each variable occurs in. This improves both qualitatively and quantitatively on the recent work of Farhi, Goldstone, and Gutmann (2014), which gave a emph{quantum} algorithm to find an assignment satisfying a $frac{1}{2} + Omega(D^{-3/4})$ fraction of the equations. For arbitrary constraint satisfaction problems, we give a similar result for triangle-free instances; i.e., an efficient algorithm that finds an assignment satisfying at least a $mu + Omega(1/sqrt{D})$ fraction of constraints, where $mu$ is the fraction that would be satisfied by a uniformly random assignment.