Testing fourier dimensionality and sparsity

Abstract

We present a range of new results for testing properties of Boolean functions that are defined in terms of the Fourier spectrum. Broadly speaking, our results show that the property of a Boolean function having a concise Fourier representation is locally testable. We first give an efficient algorithm for testing whether the Fourier spectrum of a Boolean function is supported in a low-dimensional subspace of (equivalently, for testing whether f is a junta over a small number of parities). We next give an efficient algorithm for testing whether a Boolean function has a sparse Fourier spectrum (small number of nonzero coefficients). In both cases we also prove lower bounds showing that any testing algorithm - even an adaptive one - must have query complexity within a polynomial factor of our algorithms, which are nonadaptive. Finally, we give an "implicit learning" algorithm that lets us test any sub-property of Fourier concision. Our technical contributions include new structural results about sparse Boolean functions and new analysis of the pairwise independent hashing of Fourier coefficients from [12]. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.