Discrepancy Sets and Pseudorandom Generators for Combinatorial Rectangles

A common subproblem of DNF approximate counting and derandomizing RL is the discrepancy problem for combinatorial rectangles. We explicitly construct a poly(n)-size sample space that approximates the volume of any combinatorial rectangle in [n]n to within o(1) error (improving on the constructions of [EGLNV92]). The construction extends the techniques of [LLSZ95] for the analogous hitting set problem, most notably via discrepancy preserving reductions.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1996
• Where: FOCS
• Authors: Roy Armoni, Michael E. Saks, Avi Wigderson, Shiyu Zhou
• Keywords: Combinatorial Rectangle, Discrepancy Problem, DNF Approximate Counting, FOCS 1996, Theoretical Computer Science