A celebrated 1976 theorem of Aumann asserts that honest, rational
Bayesian agents with common priors will never "agree to disagree": if
their opinions about any topic are common knowledge, then those
opinions must be equal. Economists have written numerous papers
examining the assumptions behind this theorem. But two key questions
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We introduce a simple model illustrating the role of context in communication and the challenge posed by uncertainty of knowledge of context. We consider a variant of distributional communication complexity where Alice gets some information $x$ and Bob gets $y$, where $(x,y)$ is drawn from a known distribution, and Bob ... more >>>

We show that high dimensional expanders imply derandomized direct product tests, with a number of subsets that is *linear* in the size of the universe.

Direct product tests belong to a family of tests called agreement tests that are important components in PCP constructions and include, for example, low degree ... more >>>

Given a function $f:[N]^k\rightarrow[M]^k$, the Z-test is a three query test for checking if a function $f$ is a direct product, namely if there are functions $g_1,\dots g_k:[N]\to[M]$ such that $f(x_1,\ldots,x_k)=(g_1(x_1),\dots g_k(x_k))$ for every input $x\in [N]^k$.

This test was introduced by Impagliazzo et. al. (SICOMP 2012), who ... more >>>

Agreement tests are a generalization of low degree tests that capture a local-to-global phenomenon, which forms the combinatorial backbone of most PCP constructions. In an agreement test, a function is given by an ensemble of local restrictions. The agreement test checks that the restrictions agree when they overlap, and the ... more >>>

We study the stability of covers of simplicial complexes. Given a map f:Y?X that satisfies almost all of the local conditions of being a cover, is it close to being a genuine cover of X? Complexes X for which this holds are called cover-stable. We show that this is equivalent ... more >>>

Given a family X of subsets of [n] and an ensemble of local functions $\{f_s:s\to\Sigma \;|\; s\in X\}$, an agreement test is a randomized property tester that is supposed to test whether there is some global function $G:[n]\to\Sigma$ such that $f_s=G|_s$ for many sets $s$. For example, the V-test chooses ... more >>>

We solve the derandomized direct product testing question in the low acceptance regime, by constructing new high dimensional expanders that have no small connected covers. We show that our complexes have swap cocycle expansion, which allows us to deduce the agreement theorem by relying on previous work.

Derandomized direct product ... more >>>