Biasing boolean functions and collective coin-flipping protocols over arbitrary product distributions

Yuval Filmus, Lianna Hambardzumyan, Hamed Hatami, Pooya Hatami, David Zuckerman

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

The seminal result of Kahn, Kalai and Linial shows that a coalition of O(lognn ) players can bias the outcome of any Boolean function {0, 1}n → {0, 1} with respect to the uniform measure. We extend their result to arbitrary product measures on {0, 1}n, by combining their argument with a completely different argument that handles very biased input bits. We view this result as a step towards proving a conjecture of Friedgut, which states that Boolean functions on the continuous cube [0, 1]n (or, equivalently, on {1,..., n}n) can be biased using coalitions of o(n) players. This is the first step taken in this direction since Friedgut proposed the conjecture in 2004. Russell, Saks and Zuckerman extended the result of Kahn, Kalai and Linial to multi-round protocols, showing that when the number of rounds is o(log n), a coalition of o(n) players can bias the outcome with respect to the uniform measure. We extend this result as well to arbitrary product measures on {0, 1}n. The argument of Russell et al. relies on the fact that a coalition of o(n) players can boost the expectation of any Boolean function from to 1 − with respect to the uniform measure. This fails for general product distributions, as the example of the AND function with respect to µ1−1/n shows. Instead, we use a novel boosting argument alongside a generalization of our first result to arbitrary finite ranges.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, ICALP 2019
EditorsChristel Baier, Ioannis Chatzigiannakis, Paola Flocchini, Stefano Leonardi
ISBN (Electronic)9783959771092
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jul 2019
Event46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, ICALP 2019 - Patras, Greece
Duration: 9 Jul 201912 Jul 2019

Publication series

NameLeibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs
Volume132

Conference

Conference46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming, ICALP 2019
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityPatras
Period9/07/1912/07/19

Keywords

  • Boolean function analysis
  • Coin flipping

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software

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