The long code is a central tool in hardness of approximation, especially in
questions related to the unique games conjecture. We construct a new code that
is exponentially more ecient, but can still be used in many of these applications.
Using the new code we obtain exponential improvements over several ... more >>>

We prove that, assuming the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC), every problem in the class of ordering constraint satisfaction problems (OCSP) where each constraint has constant arity is approximation
resistant. In other words, we show that if $\rho$ is the expected fraction of constraints satisfied by a random ordering, then obtaining ... more >>>

We study constraint satisfaction problems on the domain $\{-1,1\}$, where the given constraints are homogeneous linear threshold predicates. That is, predicates of the form $\mathrm{sgn}(w_1 x_1 + \cdots + w_n x_n)$ for some positive integer weights $w_1, \dots, w_n$. Despite their simplicity, current techniques fall short of providing a classification ... more >>>

For every fixed finite field $\F_q$, $p \in (0,1-1/q)$ and $\varepsilon >
0$, we prove that with high probability a random subspace $C$ of
$\F_q^n$ of dimension $(1-H_q(p)-\varepsilon)n$ has the
property that every Hamming ball of radius $pn$ has at most
$O(1/\varepsilon)$ codewords.

This answers a ... more >>>

Most state-of-the-art satisfiability algorithms today are variants of
the DPLL procedure augmented with clause learning. The main bottleneck
for such algorithms, other than the obvious one of time, is the amount
of memory used. In the field of proof complexity, the resources of
time and memory correspond to the length ... more >>>

We introduce the notion of covering complexity of a probabilistic
verifier. The covering complexity of a verifier on a given input is
the minimum number of proofs needed to ``satisfy'' the verifier on
every random string, i.e., on every random string, at least one of the
given proofs must be ... more >>>

We prove that any constraint satisfaction problem
where each variable appears a bounded number of
times admits a nontrivial polynomial time approximation
algorithm.

We study the security of individual bits in an
RSA encrypted message $E_N(x)$. We show that given $E_N(x)$,
predicting any single bit in $x$ with only a non-negligible
advantage over the trivial guessing strategy, is (through a
polynomial time reduction) as hard as breaking RSA\@. ... more >>>

We extend the notion of linearity testing to the task of checking
linear-consistency of multiple functions. Informally, functions
are ``linear'' if their graphs form straight lines on the plane.
Two such functions are ``consistent'' if the lines have the same
slope. We propose a variant of a test of ... more >>>

We investigate the computational complexity of languages
which have interactive proof systems of bounded message complexity.
In particular, we show that
(1) If $L$ has an interactive proof in which the total
communication is bounded by $c(n)$ bits
then $L$ can be recognized a probabilitic machine
in time ... more >>>