We give a simple combinatorial proof of the Chernoff-Hoeffding concentration bound~\cite{Chernoff, Hof63}, which says that the sum of independent $\{0,1\}$-valued random variables is highly concentrated around the expected value. Unlike the standard proofs,
our proof does not use the method of higher moments, but rather uses a simple ... more >>>

Cohen, Peri and Ta-Shma (STOC'21) considered the following question: Assume the vertices of an expander graph are labelled by $\pm 1$. What "test" functions $f : \{\pm 1\}^t \to \{\pm1 \}$ can or cannot distinguish $t$ independent samples from those obtained by a random walk? [CPTS'21] considered only balanced labelling, ... more >>>

We study the pseudorandomness of random walks on expander graphs against tests computed by symmetric functions and permutation branching programs. These questions are motivated by applications of expander walks in the coding theory and derandomization literatures. We show that expander walks fool symmetric functions up to a $O(\lambda)$ error in ... more >>>

We construct a family of binary codes of relative distance $\frac{1}{2}-\varepsilon$ and rate $\varepsilon^{2} \cdot 2^{-\log^{\alpha}(1/\varepsilon)}$ for $\alpha \approx \frac{1}{2}$ that are decodable, probabilistically, in near linear time. This improves upon the rate of the state-of-the-art near-linear time decoding near the GV bound due to Jeronimo, Srivastava, and Tulsiani, who ... more >>>

We prove that the sum of $t$ boolean-valued random variables sampled by a random walk on a regular expander converges in total variation distance to a discrete normal distribution at a rate of $O(\lambda/t^{1/2-o(1)})$, where $\lambda$ is the second largest eigenvalue of the random walk matrix in absolute value. To ... more >>>