Questions tagged [lower-bounds]
questions about lowerbounds on functions, usually the complexity of an algorithm or a problem
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Lower bounds for Nondeterministic Multiparty Communication
This is a continuation of my previous question on communication lower bounds for partial boolean functions.
Can someone suggest any reference on lower bounds for nondeterministic multiparty ...
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Communication lower bounds for partial boolean functions
There are well known techniques for proving lower bounds on the communication complexity of boolean functions, like fooling sets, the rank of the communication matrix, and discepancy.
1) How do we ...
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Fourier coefficients Boolean Functions described by Bounded Depth Circuits with AND OR and XOR gates
Let $f$ be a Boolean function and let's think about f as a function from $\{-1,1\}^n$ to $\{ -1,1 \}$. In this language the Fourier expansion of f is simply the expansion of f in terms of square free ...
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Proving lower bounds by proving upper bounds
The recent breakthrough circuit complexity lower-bound result of Ryan Williams provides a proof technique that uses upper-bound result to prove complexity lower-bounds. Suresh Venkat in his answer to ...
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Separation of classes with different amounts of advice?
The time hierarchy theorem lets one show that, for example, there are problems in P that cannot be solved in time less than const*n^2 by a Turing machine. But give the Turing machine some advice and ...
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Parity and $AC^0$
Parity and $AC^0$ are like inseparable twins. Or so it has seemed for the last 30 years. In the light of Ryan's result, there will be renewed interest in the small classes.
Furst Saxe Sipser to Yao ...
5
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What is the running time of taking a limit?
I'm interested in finding the running time(s) for determining mathematical limits.
For instance, $\lim_{x \to 2} \frac{1}{x} = \frac{1}{2}$.
I'd like to know more about algorithms for determining ...
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Simple proof of Ω(n lg n) worst-case bound for uniqueness/distinctness?
There are several proofs for the loglinear lower bound for the element uniqueness/distinctness problem (based on algebraic computation trees or adversarial arguments), but I'm looking for one that's ...
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What are the current best known upper and lower bounds on the (un)satisfiability threshold for random k-sat and/or 3-sat?
I would like to know the current state of the phase transition for random k-sat, given n variables and m clauses, what is the best known c=m/n for upper and lower bounds.
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Circuit lower bounds over arbitrary sets of gates
In the 1980s, Razborov famously showed that there are explicit monotone Boolean functions (such as the CLIQUE function) that require exponentially many AND and OR gates to compute. However, the basis ...
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Separating Logspace from Polynomial time
It is clear that any problem that is decidable in deterministic logspace ($L$) runs in at most polynomial time ($P$). There is a wealth of complexity classes between $L$ and $P$. Examples include $NL$,...
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Lower bound of checking graph connectivity on stream
I would like to check the status of the space lower bound for solving connectivity problem on stream in $p$ passes. The $\Omega(n/p)$ was stated in the literature but it seems to be for a slightly ...
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References on Circuit Lower Bounds
Preamble
Interactive proof systems and Arthur-Merlin protocols were introduced by Goldwasser, Micali and Rackoff and Babai back in 1985. At first, it was thought that the former is more powerful than ...
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What is/are the lower bounds for finding a something akin to complex residue?
Given a function $\sum_{i=-N}^N{c_i x^i}$:
$f(x) \equiv \sum_{i=-N}^N{c_i x^i}$ where $c_i$ is an integer; $0 \le c_i \le a$ for some $a$.
The constant $c_0$ is desired, and we start with only $f(x)...
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Do the proofs that permanent is not in uniform $\mathsf{TC^0}$ relativize?
This is a follow up to this question, and is related to this question of Shiva Kinali.
It seems that the proofs in these papers (Allender, Caussinus-McKenzie-Therien-Vollmer, Koiran-Perifel) use ...
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Problems that can be used to show polynomial-time hardness results
When designing an algorithm for a new problem, if I can't find a polynomial time algorithm after a while, I might try to prove it is NP-hard instead. If I succeed, I've explained why I couldn't find ...
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Using Kolmogorov complexity to establish proof complexity lower bounds?
The motivation for this question is the fact that most n-bit strings are incompressible. Intuitively, we can propose by analogy that most proofs for Tautologies are incompressible to polynomial size. ...
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Optimal greedy algorithms for NP-hard problems
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. One of the first algorithmic paradigms taught in introductory algorithms course is the greedy approach. Greedy approach results in simple and intuitive ...
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Lower bounds on #SAT?
The problem #SAT is the canonical #P-complete problem. It's a function problem rather than a decision problem. It asks, given a boolean formula $F$ in propositional logic, how many satisfying ...
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Lower bounds for linear satisfiability problem
In SODA 1995, Jeff Erickson showed lower bounds for linear satisfiability (checking if a some $r$-subset of $n$ real numbers satisfies a linear equation on $r$ variables). The proof method uses ...
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Major conjectures used to prove complexity lower bounds?
Complexity theory uses a large number of unproven conjectures. There are several hardness conjectures in David Johnson's NP-Completeness Column 25. What are the other major conjectures not mentioned ...
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What are the best known upper bounds and lower bounds for computing O(log n)-Clique?
Input: a graph with n nodes,
Output: A clique of size $O(\log n)$,
Providing links to references would be great
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Examples of the price of abstraction?
Theoretical computer science has provided some examples of "the price of abstraction." The two most prominent are for Gaussian elimination and sorting. Namely:
It is known that Gaussian ...
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Reference to lower bound on separator in a grid?
It is easy to verify that given the d dimensional grid of the integer points $\{1,\ldots,n\}^d$, with the regular adjacency, one can find a separator of size $n^{d-1}$ (just pick any middle hyperplane,...
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1
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Explain Gurvits's tensor-rank interpretation of Deolalikar's paper
[Note: I believe this question in no way hinges on the correctness or incorrectness of Deolalikar's paper.]
On Scott Aaronson's blog Shtetl Optimized, in the discussion about Deolalikar's recent ...
18
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Lower bounds on Gaussian complexity
Define the Gaussian complexity of an $n \times n$ matrix to be the minimal number of elementary row and column operations required to bring the matrix into upper-triangular form. This is a quantity ...
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How does the Mulmuley-Sohoni geometric approach to producing lower bounds avoid producing natural proofs (in the Razborov-Rudich sense)?
The exact phrasing of the title is due to Anand Kulkarni (who proposed this site be created). This question was asked as an example question, but I’m insanely curious. I know very little about ...
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Lower bounds for constant-depth formulae?
We know a lot about the limitations of (polynomial size) constant-depth circuits. Since (polynomial size) constant-depth formulae are an even more restricted model of computation, all problems known ...
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What are the best current lower bounds on 3SAT?
What are the best current lower bounds for time and circuit depth for 3SAT?