Theoretical computer scientists have been debating the role of
oracles since the 1970's. This paper illustrates both that oracles
can give us nontrivial insights about the barrier problems in
circuit complexity, and that they need not prevent us from trying to
solve those problems.

First, we ... more >>>

The communication complexity of $F$ with unbounded error is the limit of the $\epsilon$-error randomized complexity of $F$ as $\epsilon\to1/2.$ Communication complexity with weakly bounded error is defined similarly but with an additive penalty term that depends on $1/2-\epsilon$. Explicit functions are known whose two-party communication complexity with unbounded error ... more >>>

In both query and communication complexity, we give separations between the class NISZK, containing those problems with non-interactive statistical zero knowledge proof systems, and the class UPP, containing those problems with randomized algorithms with unbounded error. These results significantly improve on earlier query separations of Vereschagin [Ver95] and Aaronson [Aar12] ... more >>>

We study the approximation of halfspaces $h:\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ in the infinity norm by polynomials and rational functions of any given degree. Our main result is an explicit construction of the "hardest" halfspace, for which we prove polynomial and rational approximation lower bounds that match the trivial upper bounds achievable for all ... more >>>

We give a corrected proof that if PP $\subseteq$ BQP/qpoly, then the Counting Hierarchy collapses, as originally claimed by [Aaronson, CCC 2006]. This recovers the related unconditional claim that PP does not have circuits of any fixed size $n^k$ even with quantum advice. We do so by proving that YQP*, ... more >>>