Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1810.08668

Parity Decision Tree Complexity is Greater Than Granularity

Anastasiya Chistopolskaya, Vladimir V. Podolskii

Published Oct 19, 2018• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We prove a new lower bound on the parity decision tree complexity $\mathsf{D}_{\oplus}(f)$ of a Boolean function $f$. Namely, granularity of the Boolean function $f$ is the smallest $k$ such that all Fourier coefficients of $f$ are integer multiples of $1/2^k$. We show that $\mathsf{D}_{\oplus}(f)\geq k+1$. This lower bound is an improvement of lower bounds through the sparsity of $f$ and through the degree of $f$ over $\mathbb{F}_2$. Using our lower bound we determine the exact parity decision tree complexity of several important Boolean functions including majority and recursive majority. For majority the complexity is $n - \mathsf{B}(n)+1$, where $\mathsf{B}(n)$ is the number of ones in the binary representation of $n$. For recursive majority the complexity is $\frac{n+1}{2}$. Finally, we provide an example of a function for which our lower bound is not tight. Our results imply new lower bound of $n - \mathsf{B}(n)$ on the multiplicative complexity of majority.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1810.08668

Related papers

Towards Stronger Counterexamples to the Log-Approximate-Rank Conjecture

Arkadev Chattopadhyay, Ankit Garg, Suhail Sherif

We give improved separations for the query complexity analogue of the log-approximate-rank conjecture i.e. we show that there are a plethora of total Boolean functions on $n$ input bits, each of which has approximate Fourier sparsity at most $O(n^3)$ and randomized parity decision tree complexity $Θ(n)$. This improves upon the recent work of Chattopadhyay, Mande and Sherif (JACM '20) both qualitatively (in terms of designing a large number of examples) and quantitatively (improving the gap from quartic to cubic). We leave open the problem of proving a randomized communication complexity lower bound for XOR compositions of our examples. A linear lower bound would lead to new and improved refutations of the log-approximate-rank conjecture. Moreover, if any of these compositions had even a sub-linear cost randomized communication protocol, it would demonstrate that randomized parity decision tree complexity does not lift to randomized communication complexity in general (with the XOR gadget).

arXiv:2009.02717•Sep 6, 2020•1 citation

Towards Stronger Counterexamples to the Log-Approximate-Rank Conjecture

Arkadev Chattopadhyay, Ankit Garg, Suhail Sherif

We give improved separations for the query complexity analogue of the log-approximate-rank conjecture i.e. we show that there are a plethora of total Boolean functions on n input bits, each of which has approximate Fourier sparsity at most O(n³) and randomized parity decision tree complexity Θ(n). This improves upon the recent work of Chattopadhyay, Mande and Sherif [Chattopadhyay et al., 2020] both qualitatively (in terms of designing a large number of examples) and quantitatively (shrinking the gap from quartic to cubic). We leave open the problem of proving a randomized communication complexity lower bound for XOR compositions of our examples. A linear lower bound would lead to new and improved refutations of the log-approximate-rank conjecture. Moreover, if any of these compositions had even a sub-linear cost randomized communication protocol, it would demonstrate that randomized parity decision tree complexity does not lift to randomized communication complexity in general (with the XOR gadget).

Leibniz international proceedings in informatics•Jan 1, 2021•2 citations

Towards Stronger Counterexamples to the Log-Approximate-Rank Conjecture.

Arkadev Chattopadhyay, Ankit Garg, Suhail Sherif

We give improved separations for the query complexity analogue of the log-approximate-rank conjecture i.e. we show that there are a plethora of total Boolean functions on $n$ input bits, each of which has approximate Fourier sparsity at most $O(n^3)$ and randomized parity decision tree complexity $\Theta(n)$. This improves upon the recent work of Chattopadhyay, Mande and Sherif (JACM '20) both qualitatively (in terms of designing a large number of examples) and quantitatively (improving the gap from quartic to cubic). We leave open the problem of proving a randomized communication complexity lower bound for XOR compositions of our examples. A linear lower bound would lead to new and improved refutations of the log-approximate-rank conjecture. Moreover, if any of these compositions had even a sub-linear cost randomized communication protocol, it would demonstrate that randomized parity decision tree complexity does not lift to randomized communication complexity in general (with the XOR gadget).

Electronic colloquium on computational complexity•Jan 1, 2020•0 citations

Lower bounds on quantum query complexity for read-once decision trees with parity nodes

Hideaki Fukuhara, Eiji Takimoto

We introduce a complexity measure for decision trees called the soft rank, which measures how well-balanced a given tree is. The soft rank is a somehow relaxed variant of the rank. Among all decision trees of depth d, the complete binary decision tree (the most balanced tree) has maximum soft rank d, the decision list (the most unbalanced tree) has minimum soft rank √d, and any other trees have soft rank between √d and d. We show that, for any decision tree T in some class G of decision trees which includes all read-once decision trees, the soft rank of T is a lower bound on the quantum query complexity of the Boolean function that T represents. This implies that for any Boolean function f that is represented by a decision tree in G, the deterministic query complexity of f is only quadratically larger than the quantum query complexity of f.

Computing: The Australasian Theory Symposium•Jan 1, 2009•0 citations

Average-Case Lower Bounds for Noisy Boolean Decision Trees

William Evans, Nicholas J. Pippenger

We present a new method for deriving lower bounds to the expected number of queries made by noisy decision trees computing Boolean functions. The new method has the feature that expectations are taken with respect to a uniformly distributed random input, as well as with respect to the random noise, thus yielding stronger lower bounds. It also applies to many more functions than do previous results. The method yields a simple proof of the result (previously established by Reischuk and Schmeltz) that almost all Boolean functions of n arguments require $\Me(n \log n)$ queries, and strengthens this bound from the worst-case over inputs to the average over inputs. The method also yields bounds for specific Boolean functions in terms of their spectra (their Fourier transforms). The simplest instance of this spectral bound yields the result (previously established by Feige, Peleg, Raghavan, and Upfal) that the parity function of n arguments requires $\Me(n \log n)$ queries and again strengthens this bound from the worst-case over inputs to the average over inputs. In its full generality, the spectral bound applies to the "highly resilient" functions introduced by Chor, Friedman, Goldreich, Hastad, Rudich, and Smolensky, and it yields nonlinear lower bounds whenever the resiliency is asymptotic to the number of arguments.

SIAM Journal on Computing•Jan 1, 1998•17 citations

Nearly Optimal Quantum Sample Complexity of Learning Fourier-Sparse Boolean Functions

Zekun Ye

We study the number of uniform quantum examples needed to exactly learn a Boolean function with at most $k$ nonzero Fourier coefficients. We give a learner with near-optimal $\widetilde{O}(k)$ sample complexity independent of the input length $n$. The learner uses only separate measurements of individual examples. This improves the previous $O(k^{3/2}\log^2 k)$ upper bound (Arunachalam, Chakraborty, Lee, Paraashar, and de Wolf, 2021). The main ingredient is a candidate set formed by symmetric differences of subsets from independent groups of Fourier samples. A multilinear majority polynomial combines unbiased random approximations into an accurate witness whose Fourier support lies in this set. Granularity then forces the set to contain the entire Fourier support, including subsets never directly sampled. For comparison, we derive the tight classical sample complexity $Θ(nk)$ by combining known sparse-recovery and lower-bound results.

quant-pharXiv:2610.17648•Oct 14, 2026•0 citations
We prove a new lower bound on the parity decision tree complexity D⊕(f)\mathsf{D}_{\oplus}(f)D⊕​(f) of a Boolean function fff. Namely, granularity of the Boolean function fff is the smallest kkk such that all Fourier coefficients of fff are integer multiples of 1/2k1/2^k1/2k. We show that D⊕(f)≥k+1\mathsf{D}_{\oplus}(f)\geq k+1D⊕​(f)≥k+1. This lower bound is an improvement of lower bounds through the sparsity of fff and through the degree of fff over F2\mathbb{F}_2F2​. Using our lower bound we determine the exact parity decision tree complexity of several important Boolean functions including majority and recursive majority. For majority the complexity is n−B(n)+1n - \mathsf{B}(n)+1n−B(n)+1, where B(n)\mathsf{B}(n)B(n) is the number of ones in the binary representation of nnn. For recursive majority the complexity is n+12\frac{n+1}{2}2n+1​. Finally, we provide an example of a function for which our lower bound is not tight. Our results imply new lower bound of n−B(n)n - \mathsf{B}(n)n−B(n) on the multiplicative complexity of majority.
We give improved separations for the query complexity analogue of the log-approximate-rank conjecture i.e. we show that there are a plethora of total Boolean functions on nnn input bits, each of which has approximate Fourier sparsity at most O(n3)O(n^3)O(n3) and randomized parity decision tree complexity Θ(n)Θ(n)Θ(n). This improves upon the recent work of Chattopadhyay, Mande and Sherif (JACM '20) both qualitatively (in terms of designing a large number of examples) and quantitatively (improving the gap from quartic to cubic). We leave open the problem of proving a randomized communication complexity lower bound for XOR compositions of our examples. A linear lower bound would lead to new and improved refutations of the log-approximate-rank conjecture. Moreover, if any of these compositions had even a sub-linear cost randomized communication protocol, it would demonstrate that randomized parity decision tree complexity does not lift to randomized communication complexity in general (with the XOR gadget).
We give improved separations for the query complexity analogue of the log-approximate-rank conjecture i.e. we show that there are a plethora of total Boolean functions on n input bits, each of which has approximate Fourier sparsity at most O(n³) and randomized parity decision tree complexity Θ(n). This improves upon the recent work of Chattopadhyay, Mande and Sherif [Chattopadhyay et al., 2020] both qualitatively (in terms of designing a large number of examples) and quantitatively (shrinking the gap from quartic to cubic). We leave open the problem of proving a randomized communication complexity lower bound for XOR compositions of our examples. A linear lower bound would lead to new and improved refutations of the log-approximate-rank conjecture. Moreover, if any of these compositions had even a sub-linear cost randomized communication protocol, it would demonstrate that randomized parity decision tree complexity does not lift to randomized communication complexity in general (with the XOR gadget).
We give improved separations for the query complexity analogue of the log-approximate-rank conjecture i.e. we show that there are a plethora of total Boolean functions on nnn input bits, each of which has approximate Fourier sparsity at most O(n3)O(n^3)O(n3) and randomized parity decision tree complexity Θ(n)\Theta(n)Θ(n). This improves upon the recent work of Chattopadhyay, Mande and Sherif (JACM '20) both qualitatively (in terms of designing a large number of examples) and quantitatively (improving the gap from quartic to cubic). We leave open the problem of proving a randomized communication complexity lower bound for XOR compositions of our examples. A linear lower bound would lead to new and improved refutations of the log-approximate-rank conjecture. Moreover, if any of these compositions had even a sub-linear cost randomized communication protocol, it would demonstrate that randomized parity decision tree complexity does not lift to randomized communication complexity in general (with the XOR gadget).
We introduce a complexity measure for decision trees called the soft rank, which measures how well-balanced a given tree is. The soft rank is a somehow relaxed variant of the rank. Among all decision trees of depth d, the complete binary decision tree (the most balanced tree) has maximum soft rank d, the decision list (the most unbalanced tree) has minimum soft rank √d, and any other trees have soft rank between √d and d. We show that, for any decision tree T in some class G of decision trees which includes all read-once decision trees, the soft rank of T is a lower bound on the quantum query complexity of the Boolean function that T represents. This implies that for any Boolean function f that is represented by a decision tree in G, the deterministic query complexity of f is only quadratically larger than the quantum query complexity of f.
We present a new method for deriving lower bounds to the expected number of queries made by noisy decision trees computing Boolean functions. The new method has the feature that expectations are taken with respect to a uniformly distributed random input, as well as with respect to the random noise, thus yielding stronger lower bounds. It also applies to many more functions than do previous results. The method yields a simple proof of the result (previously established by Reischuk and Schmeltz) that almost all Boolean functions of n arguments require $\Me(n \log n)$ queries, and strengthens this bound from the worst-case over inputs to the average over inputs. The method also yields bounds for specific Boolean functions in terms of their spectra (their Fourier transforms). The simplest instance of this spectral bound yields the result (previously established by Feige, Peleg, Raghavan, and Upfal) that the parity function of n arguments requires $\Me(n \log n)$ queries and again strengthens this bound from the worst-case over inputs to the average over inputs. In its full generality, the spectral bound applies to the "highly resilient" functions introduced by Chor, Friedman, Goldreich, Hastad, Rudich, and Smolensky, and it yields nonlinear lower bounds whenever the resiliency is asymptotic to the number of arguments.
We study the number of uniform quantum examples needed to exactly learn a Boolean function with at most kkk nonzero Fourier coefficients. We give a learner with near-optimal O~(k)\widetilde{O}(k)O(k) sample complexity independent of the input length nnn. The learner uses only separate measurements of individual examples. This improves the previous O(k3/2log⁡2k)O(k^{3/2}\log^2 k)O(k3/2log2k) upper bound (Arunachalam, Chakraborty, Lee, Paraashar, and de Wolf, 2021). The main ingredient is a candidate set formed by symmetric differences of subsets from independent groups of Fourier samples. A multilinear majority polynomial combines unbiased random approximations into an accurate witness whose Fourier support lies in this set. Granularity then forces the set to contain the entire Fourier support, including subsets never directly sampled. For comparison, we derive the tight classical sample complexity Θ(nk)Θ(nk)Θ(nk) by combining known sparse-recovery and lower-bound results.