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arXiv · 1804.08237

Generalized comparison trees for point-location problems

Daniel M Kane·Shachar Lovett·Shay Moran
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Abstract

Let $H$ be an arbitrary family of hyper-planes in $d$-dimensions. We show that the point-location problem for $H$ can be solved by a linear decision tree that only uses a special type of queries called \emph{generalized comparison queries}. These queries correspond to hyperplanes that can be written as a linear combination of two hyperplanes from $H$; in particular, if all hyperplanes in $H$ are $k$-sparse then generalized comparisons are $2k$-sparse. The depth of the obtained linear decision tree is polynomial in $d$ and logarithmic in $|H|$, which is comparable to previous results in the literature that use general linear queries. This extends the study of comparison trees from a previous work by the authors [Kane {et al.}, FOCS 2017]. The main benefit is that using generalized comparison queries allows to overcome limitations that apply for the more restricted type of comparison queries. Our analysis combines a seminal result of Forster regarding sets in isotropic position [Forster, JCSS 2002], the margin-based inference dimension analysis for comparison queries from [Kane {et al.}, FOCS 2017], and compactness arguments.

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Daniel M Kane, Shachar Lovett, Shay Moran. 2018-04-23. Generalized comparison trees for point-location problems. https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.08237

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