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Revision #1 to TR22-001 | 24th September 2022 19:31

On (Simple) Decision Tree Rank

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Revision #1
Authors: Yogesh Dahiya, Meena Mahajan
Accepted on: 24th September 2022 19:31
Downloads: 248
Keywords: 


Abstract:

In the decision tree computation model for Boolean functions, the depth corresponds to query complexity, and size corresponds to storage
space. The depth measure is the most well-studied one, and is known to be polynomially related to several non-computational complexity measures of functions such as certificate complexity. The size measure is also studied, but to a lesser extent. Another decision tree measure that has received very little attention is the minimal rank of the
decision tree, first introduced by Ehrenfeucht and Haussler in 1989. This measure is closely related to the logarithm of the size, but is not polynomially related to depth, and hence it can reveal additional information about the complexity of a function. It is characterised by the value of a Prover-Delayer game first proposed by Pudl{\'a}k and Impagliazzo in the context of tree-like resolution proofs.

In this paper we study this measure further. We obtain an upper bound on depth in terms of rank and Fourier sparsity. We obtain upper and lower bounds on rank in terms of (variants of) certificate complexity. We also obtain upper
and lower bounds on the rank for composed functions in terms of the depth of the outer function and the rank of the inner function. This allow us to easily recover known asympotical lower bounds on logarithm of the size for Iterated AND-OR and Iterated 3-bit Majority. We compute the rank exactly for several natural functions and use them to show that all the bounds we have obtained are tight. We also show that rank in the simple decision tree model can be used to bound query complexity, or depth, in the more general conjunctive decision tree model.
Finally, we improve upon the known size lower bound for the Tribes function and conclude that in the size-rank relationship for decision trees, obtained by Ehrenfeucht and Haussler, the upper bound for Tribes is asymptotically tight.



Changes to previous version:

Following are the changes from the previous version:
1. Relationship between rank, depth and Fourier sparsity.
2. Size(rank) lower bounds for the iterated composed functions
3. Relationship of rank with the query complexity in the conjuctive(query is a AND of literals) decision trees.


Paper:

TR22-001 | 28th December 2021 18:03

On (Simple) Decision Tree Rank





TR22-001
Authors: Yogesh Dahiya, Meena Mahajan
Publication: 2nd January 2022 07:57
Downloads: 551
Keywords: 


Abstract:

In the decision tree computation model for Boolean functions, the depth corresponds to query complexity, and size corresponds to storage space. The depth measure is the most well-studied one, and is known to be polynomially related to several non-computational complexity measures of functions such as certificate complexity. The size measure is also studied, but to a lesser extent. Another decision tree measure that has received very little attention is the minimal rank of the decision tree, first introduced by Ehrenfeucht and Haussler in 1989. This measure is not polynomially related to depth, and hence it can reveal additional information about the complexity of a function. It is characterised by the value of a Prover-Delayer game first proposed by Pudl{\'a}k and Impagliazzo in the context of tree-like resolution proofs. In this paper we study this measure further. We obtain upper and lower bounds on rank in terms of (variants of) certificate complexity. We also obtain upper and lower bounds on the rank for composed functions in terms of the depth of the outer function and the rank of the inner function. We compute the rank exactly for several natural functions and use them to show that all the bounds we have obtained are tight. We also observe that the size-rank relationship for decision trees, obtained by Ehrenfeucht and Haussler, is tight upto constant factors.



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