1,720,964 research outputs found
Connecting Perebor Conjectures: Towards a Search to Decision Reduction for Minimizing Formulas
Get PDFA longstanding open question is whether there is an equivalence between the computational task of determining the minimum size of any circuit computing a given function and the task of producing a minimum-sized circuit for a given function. While it is widely conjectured that both tasks require "perebor," or brute-force search, researchers have not yet ruled out the possibility that the search problem requires exponential time but the decision problem has a linear time algorithm.
In this paper, we make progress in connecting the search and decision complexity of minimizing formulas. Let MFSP denote the problem that takes as input the truth table of a Boolean function f and an integer size parameter s and decides whether there is a formula for f of size at most s. Let Search- denote the corresponding search problem where one has to output some optimal formula for computing f.
Our main result is that given an oracle to MFSP, one can solve Search-MFSP in time polynomial in the length N of the truth table of f and the number t of "near-optimal" formulas for f, in particular O(N⁶t²)-time. While the quantity t is not well understood, we use this result (and some extensions) to prove that given an oracle to MFSP:
- there is a deterministic 2^O(N/(log log N))-time oracle algorithm for solving Search-MFSP on all but a o(1)-fraction of instances, and
- there is a randomized O(2^.67N)-time oracle algorithm for solving Search-MFSP on all instances. Intriguingly, the main idea behind our algorithms is in some sense a "reverse application" of the gate elimination technique
Approaching MCSP from Above and Below: Hardness for a Conditional Variant and AC^0[p]
Get PDFThe Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) asks whether a given Boolean function has a circuit of at most a given size. MCSP has been studied for over a half-century and has deep connections throughout theoretical computer science including to cryptography, computational learning theory, and proof complexity. For example, we know (informally) that if MCSP is easy to compute, then most cryptography can be broken. Despite this cryptographic hardness connection and extensive research, we still know relatively little about the hardness of MCSP unconditionally. Indeed, until very recently it was unknown whether MCSP can be computed in AC^0[2] (Golovnev et al., ICALP 2019).
Our main contribution in this paper is to formulate a new "oracle" variant of circuit complexity and prove that this problem is NP-complete under randomized reductions. In more detail, we define the Minimum Oracle Circuit Size Problem (MOCSP) that takes as input the truth table of a Boolean function f, a size threshold s, and the truth table of an oracle Boolean function O, and determines whether there is a circuit with O-oracle gates and at most s wires that computes f. We prove that MOCSP is NP-complete under randomized polynomial-time reductions.
We also extend the recent AC^0[p] lower bound against MCSP by Golovnev et al. to a lower bound against the circuit minimization problem for depth-d formulas, (AC^0_d)-MCSP. We view this result as primarily a technical contribution. In particular, our proof takes a radically different approach from prior MCSP-related hardness results
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Hardness of Constant-Round Communication Complexity
Get PDFHow difficult is it to compute the communication complexity of a two-argument total Boolean function f:[N]×[N] → {0,1}, when it is given as an N×N binary matrix? In 2009, Kushilevitz and Weinreb showed that this problem is cryptographically hard, but it is still open whether it is NP-hard.
In this work, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate the size (number of leaves) of the smallest constant-round protocol for a two-argument total Boolean function f:[N]×[N] → {0,1}, when it is given as an N×N binary matrix. Along the way to proving this, we show a new deterministic variant of the round elimination lemma, which may be of independent interest
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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