Counting and Covering in Nearest-Neighbour Representations of Boolean Functions

📅 2026-09-19
📈 Citations: 0
Influential: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
研究了使用最近邻分类表示布尔函数所需原型数量的问题,通过加强已知下界、VC维数约束及覆盖设计等方法,探讨了不同设置下的最优解。
📝 Abstract
We study the number of prototypes needed to represent Boolean functions by nearest-neighbour classification. There are two distinct settings: the prototypes may be arbitrary points of Euclidean space, or they may themselves be required to lie in the Boolean cube. For unrestricted prototypes, we strengthen a known lower bound for almost all Boolean functions. The bound applies simultaneously to nearest-neighbour voting rules with any number of voting neighbours, and substantially narrows the gap with the known general upper bound. We obtain a VC-dimension bound for classes with a bounded number of prototypes, and show that it is sharp in order in dimensions at least four. We then study Boolean prototypes, beginning with symmetric threshold functions. A connection with covering designs expresses the minimum number of prototypes at every threshold level exactly in terms of a covering number, and leads to further exact results for related monotone functions, including disjunctive extensions and a characterisation of when a representation with a single negative prototype is possible. For a uniformly random Boolean function, the Boolean nearest-neighbour complexity, as a proportion of the cube, is asymptotically close either to one half or to one, with explicit limiting probabilities. In particular, almost every Boolean function requires at least approximately half as many prototypes as there are points in the cube, and one half is the largest proportion for which such a lower bound holds. Finally, we consider arbitrary symmetric Boolean functions. Their Boolean nearest-neighbour complexity is closely approximated by a weighted vertex-cover problem on paths. As a consequence, a uniformly random symmetric function typically requires prototypes amounting to $11/20$ of the cube. This is much larger than the upper bounds known when the prototypes are allowed to lie anywhere in Euclidean space.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

Boolean functions
nearest-neighbour classification
prototypes
VC-dimension
covering designs
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

nearest-neighbour classification
Boolean functions
covering designs
symmetric threshold functions
weighted vertex-cover problem
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M
Martin Anthony
Department of Mathematics, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK