When Is Amplification Necessary for Composition in Randomized Query Complexity?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Suppose we have randomized decision trees for an outer function $f$ and an inner function $g$. The natural approach for obtaining a randomized decision tree for the composed function $(f\circ g^n)(x^1,\ldots,x^n)=f(g(x^1),\ldots,g(x^n))$ involves amplifying the success probability of the decision tree for $g$, so that a union bound can be used to bound the error probability over all the coordinates. The amplification introduces a logarithmic factor cost overhead. We study the question: When is this log factor necessary? We show that when the outer function is parity or majority, the log factor can be necessary, even for models that are more powerful than plain randomized decision trees. Our results are related to, but qualitatively strengthen in various ways, known results about decision trees with noisy inputs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.144 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.040 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.017 | 0.003 |
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 itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".