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 ...
Marcos Villagra's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
685 views

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 ...
Marcos Villagra's user avatar
30 votes
1 answer
2k views

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 ...
Gil Kalai's user avatar
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29 votes
7 answers
3k views

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 ...
Mohammad Al-Turkistany's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
208 views

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 ...
matt hastings's user avatar
20 votes
4 answers
1k views

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 ...
V Vinay's user avatar
  • 3,853
5 votes
1 answer
504 views

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 ...
Matt Groff's user avatar
  • 2,100
13 votes
2 answers
5k views

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 ...
Magnus Lie Hetland's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
1k views

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.
Tayfun Pay's user avatar
  • 2,589
40 votes
3 answers
2k views

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 ...
Scott Aaronson's user avatar
26 votes
4 answers
2k views

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 $NL$,...
Shiva Kintali's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

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 ...
Danu's user avatar
  • 763
22 votes
6 answers
2k views

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 ...
Sadeq Dousti's user avatar
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6 votes
5 answers
284 views

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)...
16 votes
1 answer
606 views

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 ...
Kaveh's user avatar
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65 votes
5 answers
2k views

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 ...
Robin Kothari's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
683 views

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. ...
Mohammad Al-Turkistany's user avatar
39 votes
9 answers
4k views

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 ...
Shiva Kintali's user avatar
18 votes
2 answers
1k views

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 ...
Giorgio Camerani's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
437 views

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 ...
Jagadish's user avatar
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1 vote
3 answers
610 views

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 ...
7 votes
4 answers
1k views

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
Mohammad Al-Turkistany's user avatar
123 votes
18 answers
9k views

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 ...
14 votes
1 answer
345 views

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,...
Sariel Har-Peled's user avatar
20 votes
1 answer
436 views

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 ...
Joshua Grochow's user avatar
18 votes
2 answers
925 views

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 ...
Moritz's user avatar
  • 1,714
22 votes
2 answers
1k views

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 ...
Ross Snider's user avatar
  • 2,035
22 votes
2 answers
603 views

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 ...
Robin Kothari's user avatar
51 votes
4 answers
5k views

What are the best current lower bounds on 3SAT?

What are the best current lower bounds for time and circuit depth for 3SAT?
Joe Fitzsimons's user avatar

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