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 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.
Given a classical query algorithm as a decision tree, when does there exist a quantum query algorithm with a speed-up over the classical one? We provide a general construction based on the structure of the underlying decision tree, and prove that this can give us an up-to-quadratic quantum speed-up. In particular, we obtain a bounded-error quantum query algorithm of cost O(s) to compute a Boolean function (more generally, a relation) that can be computed by a classical (even randomized) decision tree of size s .Lin and Lin [ToC'16] and Beigi and Taghavi [Quantum'20] showed results of a similar flavor, and gave upper bounds in terms of a quantity which we call the "guessing complexity" of a decision tree. We identify that the guessing complexity of a decision tree equals its rank, a notion introduced by Ehrenfeucht and Haussler [Inf. Comp.'89] in the context of learning theory. This answers a question posed by Lin and Lin, who asked whether the guessing complexity of a decision tree is related to any complexity-theoretic measure. We also show a polynomial separation between rank and randomized rank for the complete binary AND-OR tree.Beigi and Taghavi constructed span programs and dual adversary solutions for Boolean functions given classical decision trees computing them and an assignment of non-negative weights to its edges. We explore the effect of changing these weights on the resulting span program complexity and objective value of the dual adversary bound, and capture the best possible weighting scheme by an optimization program. We exhibit a solution to this program and argue its optimality from first principles. We also exhibit decision trees for which our bounds are asymptotically stronger than those of Lin and Lin, and Beigi and Taghavi. This answers a question of Beigi and Taghavi, who asked whether different weighting schemes could yield better upper bounds.
Given a classical query algorithm as a decision tree, when does there exist a quantum query algorithm with a speed-up over the classical one? We provide a general construction based on the structure of the underlying decision tree, and prove that this can give us an up-to-quadratic quantum speed-up. In particular, we obtain a bounded-error quantum query algorithm of cost O(s) to compute a Boolean function (more generally, a relation) that can be computed by a classical (even randomized) decision tree of size s. Lin and Lin [ToC'16] and Beigi and Taghavi [Quantum'20] showed results of a similar flavor, and gave upper bounds in terms of a quantity which we call the "guessing complexity" of a decision tree. We identify that the guessing complexity of a decision tree equals its rank, a notion introduced by Ehrenfeucht and Haussler [Inf. Comp.'89] in the context of learning theory. This answers a question posed by Lin and Lin, who asked whether the guessing complexity of a decision tree is related to any complexity-theoretic measure. We also show a polynomial separation between rank and randomized rank for the complete binary AND-OR tree. Beigi and Taghavi constructed span programs and dual adversary solutions for Boolean functions given classical decision trees computing them and an assignment of non-negative weights to its edges. We explore the effect of changing these weights on the resulting span program complexity and objective value of the dual adversary bound, and capture the best possible weighting scheme by an optimization program. We exhibit a solution to this program and argue its optimality from first principles. We also exhibit decision trees for which our bounds are asymptotically stronger than those of Lin and Lin, and Beigi and Taghavi. This answers a question of Beigi and Taghavi, who asked whether different weighting schemes could yield better upper bounds.
We introduce a complexity measure r for the class F of read-once formulas over the basis {AND, OR, NOT, XOR, MUX} and show that for any Boolean formula F in the class F, r(F) is a lower bound on the quantum query complexity of the Boolean function that F represents. We also show that for any Boolean function f represented by a formula in F, the deterministic query complexity of f is only quadratically larger than the quantum query complexity of f. Thus, the paper gives further evidence for the conjecture that there is an only quadratic gap for all functions.
We consider the following question in query complexity: Given a classical query algorithm in the form of a decision tree, when does there exist a quantum query algorithm with a speed-up (i.e., that makes fewer queries) over the classical one? We provide a general construction based on the structure of the underlying decision tree, and prove that this can give us an up-to-quadratic quantum speed-up in the number of queries. In particular, our results give a bounded-error quantum query algorithm of cost O(√s) to compute a Boolean function (more generally, a relation) that can be computed by a classical (even randomized) decision tree of size s. This recovers an O(√n) algorithm for the Search problem, for example. Lin and Lin [Theory of Computing'16] and Beigi and Taghavi [Quantum'20] showed results of a similar flavor. Their upper bounds are in terms of a quantity which we call the “guessing complexity” of a decision tree. We identify that the guessing complexity of a decision tree equals its rank, a notion introduced by Ehrenfeucht and Haussler [Information and Computation'89] in the context of learning theory. This answers a question posed by Lin and Lin, who asked whether the guessing complexity of a decision tree is related to any measure studied in classical complexity theory. We also show a polynomial separation between rank and its natural randomized analog for the complete binary AND-OR tree. Beigi and Taghavi constructed span programs and dual adversary solutions for Boolean functions given classical decision trees computing them and an assignment of non-negative weights to edges of the tree. We explore the effect of changing these weights on the resulting span program complexity and objective value of the dual adversary bound, and capture the best possible weighting scheme by an optimization program. We exhibit a solution to this program and argue its optimality from first principles. We also exhibit decision trees for which our bounds are strictly stronger than those of Lin and Lin, and Beigi and Taghavi. This answers a question of Beigi and Taghavi, who asked whether different weighting schemes in their construction could yield better upper bounds.
In this thesis we study various models of query complexity. A query algorithm computes a function under the restriction that the input can be accessed only by making probes to the the bits of the input. The query complexity of a function f is the minimum number of probes made by any query algorithm that computes f. In this thesis, we consider three different models of query complexity, (1) deterministic decision tree complexity (query complexity when the underlying algorithm is deterministic), (2) approximate decision tree complexity aka. property testing (query complexity when the underlying algorithm is probabilistic and only expected to ”approximately ” compute f) and quantum query complexity (query complexity when the underlying algorithm is allowed to make quantum queries). The main results in this thesis are: • We study the relation between deterministic decision tree complexity and other combinatorial measures of complexity measures like sensitivity and block sensitivity. We prove that for minterm-transitive functions the sensitivity is quadratically related to block sensitivity which is polynomially
In this paper, we introduce the hybrid query complexity, denoted as Q(f;q), which is the minimal query number needed to compute f, when a classical decision tree is allowed to call q′-query quantum subroutines for any q′≤q. We present the following results: ∙ There exists a total Boolean function f such that Q(f;1)=O(R(f)4/5). ∙Q(f;q)=Ω(bs(f)/q+bs(f)) for any Boolean function f; the lower bound is tight when f is the OR function. ∙Q(g∘XORClogn;1)=Ω(n) for some sufficiently large constant C, where g:=BOOLSIMONn is a variant of Simon's problem. Note that Q(g∘XORClogn)=O(polylogn). Therefore an exponential separation is established. Furthermore, this open the road to prove the conjecture ∀k,Q(g∘XORClogk+1n;logkn)=Ω(n), which would imply the oracle separation HP(QSIZE(nα))O⊊BQPO for any α, where HP(QSIZE(nα)) is a complexity class that contains BQTIME(nα)BPP and BPPBQTIME(nα) in any relativized world.