Title
Polynomials that Sign Represent Parity and Descartes' Rule of Signs
Abstract
A real polynomial P(X 1, ... , X n ) sign represents f : A n 驴 {0, 1} if for every (a 1, ... , a n ) 驴 A n , the sign of P(a 1, ... ,a n ) equals $$(-1)^{f(a_{1}, \ldots ,a_{n})}$$ . Such sign representations are well-studied in computer science and have applications to computational complexity and computational learning theory. The work in this area aims to determine the minimum degree and sparsity possible for a polynomial that sign represents a function f. While the degree of such polynomials is relatively well-understood, far less is known about their sparsity. Known bounds apply only to the cases where A = {0, 1} or A = {驴1, +1}.In this work, we present a systematic study of tradeoffs between degree and sparsity of sign representations through the lens of the parity function. We attempt to prove bounds that hold for any choice of set A. We show that sign representing parity over {0,... , m 驴 1} n with the degree in each variable at most m 驴 1 requires sparsity at least m n . We show that a tradeoff exists between sparsity and degree, by exhibiting a sign representation that has higher degree but lower sparsity. We show a lower bound of n(m 驴 2) + 1 on the sparsity of polynomials of any degree representing parity over {0,... ,m 驴 1} n . We prove exact bounds on the sparsity of such polynomials for any two element subset A. The main tool used is Descartes' Rule of Signs, a classical result in algebra, relating the sparsity of a polynomial to its number of real roots. As an application, we use bounds on sparsity to derive circuit lower bounds for depth-two AND-OR-NOT circuits with a Threshold Gate at the top.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1007/s00037-008-0244-2
Computational Complexity
Keywords
Field
DocType
sign represent parity,x n,parity function,sign representation,real polynomial,real root,circuit lower bound,higher degree,minimum degree,m n,lower sparsity,computer science,mathematics,polynomials,circuits,computational modeling,computational learning theory,lower bound,inner product,algebra,computational complexity
Boolean function,Integer,Discrete mathematics,Combinatorics,Exponential function,Polynomial,Upper and lower bounds,Descartes' rule of signs,Parity (mathematics),Mathematics,Computational complexity theory
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
17
3
1420-8954
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.40
20
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Saugata Basu142964.79
Nayantara Bhatnagar29010.03
Parikshit Gopalan3118661.52
Richard J. Lipton464121796.57