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 >>>

A strong direct product theorem (SDPT) states that solving $n$ instances of a problem requires $\Omega(n)$ times the resources for a single instance, even to achieve success probability $2^{-\Omega(n)}.$ We prove that quantum communication complexity obeys an SDPT whenever the communication lower bound for a single instance is proved by ... more >>>

We study the set disjointness problem in the number-on-the-forehead model.

(i) We prove that $k$-party set disjointness has randomized and nondeterministic
communication complexity $\Omega(n/4^k)^{1/4}$ and Merlin-Arthur complexity $\Omega(n/4^k)^{1/8}.$
These bounds are close to tight. Previous lower bounds (2007-2008) for $k\geq3$ parties
were weaker than $n^{1/(k+1)}/2^{k^2}$ in all ... more >>>

A $k$-LIN instance is a system of $m$ equations over $n$ variables of the form $s_{i[1]} + \dots + s_{i[k]} =$ 0 or 1 modulo 2 (each involving $k$ variables). We consider two distributions on instances in which the variables are chosen independently and uniformly but the right-hand sides are ... more >>>

Given an unpredictable Boolean function $f: \{0, 1\}^n \rightarrow \{0, 1\}$, the standard Yao's XOR lemma is a statement about the unpredictability of computing $\oplus_{i \in [k]}f(x_i)$ given $x_1, ..., x_k \in \{0, 1\}^n$, whereas the Selective XOR lemma is a statement about the unpredictability of computing $\oplus_{i \in S}f(x_i)$ ... more >>>

A major challenge in complexity theory is to explicitly construct functions that have small correlation with low-degree polynomials over $F_2$. We introduce a new technique to prove such correlation bounds with $F_2$ polynomials. Using this technique, we bound the correlation of an XOR of Majorities with constant degree polynomials. In ... more >>>

We give a strong direct sum theorem for computing $XOR \circ g$. Specifically, we show that the randomized query complexity of computing the XOR of $k$ instances of $g$ satisfies $\bar{R}_\varepsilon(XOR \circ g)=\Theta(\bar{R}_{\varepsilon/k}(g))$. This matches the naive success amplification bound and answers a question of Blais and Brody.

As a ... more >>>

In this work we prove that there is a function $f \in \textrm{E}^\textrm{NP}$ such that, for every sufficiently large $n$ and $d = \sqrt{n}/\log n$, $f_n$ ($f$ restricted to $n$-bit inputs) cannot be $(1/2 + 2^{-d})$-approximated by $\textrm{F}_2$-polynomials of degree $d$. We also observe that a minor improvement ... more >>>

We define the marginal information of a communication protocol, and use it to prove XOR lemmas for communication complexity. We show that if every $C$-bit protocol has bounded advantage for computing a Boolean function $f$, then every $\tilde \Omega(C \sqrt{n})$-bit protocol has advantage $\exp(-\Omega(n))$ for computing the $n$-fold xor $f^{\oplus ... more >>>