NP = PCP(log n, 1) and related results crucially depend upon
the close connection between the probability with which a
function passes a ``low degree test'' and the distance of
this function to the nearest degree d polynomial. In this
paper we study a test proposed ... more >>>

We prove hardness results for approximating set splitting problems and
also instances of satisfiability problems which have no ``mixed'' clauses,
i.e all clauses have either all their literals unnegated or all of them
negated. Recent results of Hastad imply tight hardness results for set
splitting when all sets have size ... more >>>