We continue the study of the trade-o between the length of PCPs and their query complexity, establishing the following main results (which refer to proofs of satis ability of circuits of size n): 1. We present PCPs of length exp( ~ O(log log n) ) n that can be veri ed by making o(log log n) Boolean queries.

Abstract. For a Boolean formula ϕ on n variables, the associated property Pϕ is the collection of n-bit strings that satisfy ϕ. We study the query complexity of tests that distinguish (with high probability) between strings in Pϕ and strings that are far from Pϕ in Hamming distance. We prove that there are 3CNF formulae (with O(n) clauses) such that testing for the associated property requires Ω(n) queries, even with adaptive tests. This contrasts with 2CNF formulae, whose associated properties are always testable with O ( √ n) queries [E. Fischer et al., Monotonicity testing over general poset domains, in Proceedings of the 34th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, ACM, New York, 2002, pp. 474–483]. Notice that for every negative instance (i.e., an assignment that does not satisfy ϕ) there are three bit queries that witness this fact. Nevertheless, finding such a short witness requires reading a constant fraction of the input, even when the input is very far from satisfying the formula that is associated with the property. A property is linear if its elements form a linear space. We provide sufficient conditions for linear properties to be hard to test, and in the course of the proof include the following observations which are of independent interest: 1. In the context of testing for linear properties, adaptive two-sided error tests have no more power than nonadaptive one-sided error tests. Moreover, without loss of generality, any test for a linear property is a linear test. A linear test verifies that a portion of the input satisfies a set of linear constraints, which define the property, and rejects if and only if it finds a falsified constraint. A linear test is by definition nonadaptive and, when applied to linear properties, has a one-sided error. 2. Random low density parity check codes (which are known to have linear distance and constant rate) are not locally testable. In fact, testing such a code of length n requires Ω(n) queries.

In this paper we consider the problem of testing bipartiteness of general graphs. The problem has previously been studied in two models, one most suitable for dense graphs, and one most suitable for bounded-degree graphs. Roughly speaking, dense graphs can be tested for bipartiteness with constant complexity, while the complexity of testing bounded-degree graphs is ˜ Θ ( √ n), where n is the number of vertices in the graph (and ˜ Θ(f(n)) means Θ(f(n) · polylog(f(n)))). Thus there is a large gap between the complexity of testing in the two cases. In this work we bridge the gap described above. In particular, we study the problem of testing bipartiteness in a model that is suitable for all densities. We present an algorithm whose complexity is Õ(min( √ n, n 2 /m)) where m is the number of edges in the graph, and match it with an almost tight lower bound. This work is part of the author’s Ph.D. thesis prepared at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Prof.

We argue that the symmetries of a property being tested play a central role in property testing. We support this assertion in the context of algebraic functions, by examining properties of functions mapping a vector space K n over a field K to a subfield F. We consider F-linear properties that are invariant under linear transformations of the domain and prove that an O(1)-local “characterization ” is a necessary and sufficient condition for O(1)-local testability when |K | = O(1). (A local characterization of a property is a definition of a property in terms of local constraints satisfied by functions exhibiting a property.) For the subclass of properties that are invariant under affine transformations of the domain, we prove that the existence of a single O(1)-local constraint implies O(1)-local testability. These results generalize and extend the class of algebraic properties, most notably linearity and low-degree-ness, that were previously known to be testable. In particular, the extensions include properties satisfied by functions of degree linear in n that turn out to be O(1)-locally testable. Our results are proved by introducing a new notion that we term “formal characterizations”. Roughly this corresponds to characterizations that are given by a single local constraint and its permutations under linear transformations of the domain. Our main testing result shows that local formal characterizations

Suppose G is a graph of bounded degree d, and one needs to remove ɛn of its edges in order to make it planar. We show that in this case the statistics of local neighborhoods around vertices of G is far from the statistics of local neighborhoods around vertices of any planar graph G ′. In fact, a similar result is proved for any minor-closed property of bounded degree graphs. As an immediate corollary of the above result we infer that many well studied graph properties, like being planar, outer-planar, series-parallel, bounded genus, bounded tree-width and several others, are testable with a constant number of queries. None of these properties was previously known to be testable even with o(n) queries. 1

Abstract Sublinear time algorithms represent a new paradigm in computing, where an algorithmmust give some sort of an answer after inspecting only a very small portion of the input. We discuss the sorts of answers that one might be able to achieve in this new setting. 1 Introduction The goal of algorithmic research is to design efficient algorithms, where efficiency is typicallymeasured as a function of the length of the input. For instance, the elementary school algorithm for multiplying two n digit integers takes roughly n2 steps, while more sophisticated algorithmshave been devised which run in less than n log2 n steps. It is still not known whether a linear time algorithm is achievable for integer multiplication. Obviously any algorithm for this task, as for anyother nontrivial task, would need to take at least linear time in n, since this is what it would take to read the entire input and write the output. Thus, showing the existence of a linear time algorithmfor a problem was traditionally considered to be the gold standard of achievement. Nevertheless, due to the recent tremendous increase in computational power that is inundatingus with a multitude of data, we are now encountering a paradigm shift from traditional computational models. The scale of these data sets, coupled with the typical situation in which there is verylittle time to perform our computations, raises the issue of whether there is time to consider any more than a miniscule fraction of the data in our computations? Analogous to the reasoning thatwe used for multiplication, for most natural problems, an algorithm which runs in sublinear time must necessarily use randomization and must give an answer which is in some sense imprecise.Nevertheless, there are many situations in which a fast approximate solution is more useful than a slower exact solution.

Property testing deals with tasks where the goal is to distinguish between the case that an object (e.g., function or graph) has a prespecified property (e.g., the function is linear or the graph is bipartite) and the case that it differs significantly from any such object. The task should be performed by observing only a very small part of the object, in particular by querying the object, and the algorithm is allowed a small failure probability. One view of property testing is as a relaxation of learning the object (obtaining an approximate representation of the object). Thus property testing algorithms can serve as a preliminary step to learning. That is, they can be applied in order to select, very efficiently, what hypothesis class to use for learning. This survey takes the learning-theory point of view and focuses on results for testing properties of functions that are of interest to the learning theory community. In particular, we cover results for testing algebraic properties of functions such as linearity, testing properties defined by concise representations, such as having a small DNF representation, and more. 1

We study graph properties which are testable for bounded degree graphs in time independent of the input size. Our goal is to distinguish between graphs having a predetermined graph property and graphs that are far from every graph having that property. It is believed that almost all, even very simple graph properties require a large complexity to be tested for arbitrary (bounded degree) graphs. Therefore in this paper we focus our attention on testing graph properties for special classes of graphs. We call a graph family non-expanding if every graph in this family has a weak expansion (its expansion is O(1 / log 2 n), where n is the graph size). A graph family is hereditary if it is closed under vertex removal. Similarly, a graph property is hereditary if it is closed under vertex removal. We call a graph property Π to be testable for a graph family F if for every graph G ∈ F, in time independent of the size of G we can distinguish between the case when G satisfies property Π and when it is far from every graph satisfying property Π. In this paper we prove that in the bounded degree graph model, any hereditary property is testable if the input graph belongs to a hereditary and non-expanding family of graphs. As an application, our result implies that, for example, any hereditary property (e.g., k-colorability,

Property testing algorithms are “ultra”-efficient algorithms that decide whether a given object (e.g., a graph) has a certain property (e.g., bipartiteness), or is significantly different from any object that has the property. To this end property testing algorithms are given the ability to perform (local) queries to the input, though the decision they need to make usually concern properties with a global nature. In the last two decades, property testing algorithms have been designed for many types of objects and properties, amongst them, graph properties, algebraic properties, geometric properties, and more. In this article we survey results in property testing, where our emphasis is on common analysis and algorithmic techniques. Among the techniques surveyed are the following: • The self-correcting approach, which was mainly applied in the study of property testing of algebraic properties; • The enforce and test approach, which was applied quite extensively in the analysis of algorithms for testing graph properties (in the dense-graphs model), as well as in other contexts;

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