We show a nearly quadratic separation between deterministic communication complexity and the logarithm of the partition number, which is essentially optimal. This improves upon a recent power 1.5 separation of Göös, Pitassi, and Watson (FOCS 2015). In query complexity, we establish a nearly quadratic separation between deterministic (and even randomized) ... more >>>

Given a Boolean function $f: \{-1,1\}^n\rightarrow \{-1,1\}$, define the Fourier distribution to be the distribution on subsets of $[n]$, where each $S\subseteq [n]$ is sampled with probability $\widehat{f}(S)^2$. The Fourier Entropy-Influence (FEI) conjecture of Friedgut and Kalai [FK96] seeks to relate two fundamental measures associated with the Fourier distribution: does ... more >>>