Lower bounds for predecessor searching in the cell probe model
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
We consider a fundamental problem in data structures, static predecessor searching: Given a subset S of size n from the universe [m], store S so that queries of the form "What is the predecessor of x in S?" can be answered efficiently. We study this problem in the cell probe model introduced by Yao. Recently, Beame and Fich obtained optimal bounds on the number of probes needed by any deterministic query scheme if the associated storage scheme uses only n^{O(1)} cells of word size (\log m)^{O(1)} bits. We give a new lower bound proof for this problem that matches the bounds of Beame and Fich. Our lower bound proof has the following advantages: it works for randomised query schemes too, while Beame and Fich's proof works for deterministic query schemes only. It also extends to `quantum address-only' query schemes that we define in this paper, and is simpler than Beame and Fich's proof. We prove our lower bound using the round elimination approach of Miltersen, Nisan, Safra and Wigderson. Using tools from information theory, we prove a strong round elimination lemma for communication complexity that enables us to obtain a tight lower bound for the predecessor problem. Our strong round elimination lemma also extends to quantum communication complexity. We also use our round elimination lemma to obtain a rounds versus communication tradeoff for the `greater-than' problem, improving on the tradeoff in Miltersen et al. We believe that our round elimination lemma is of independent interest and should have other applications.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it