Abstract:In the first version of Chang, Slote, Volberg, and Zhang's paper \cite{BSA_of_PTF}, the authors modify a nice recursive approach due to Kane in \cite{Correct_exponent_for_AS} where he bounded the average sensitivity of polynomial threshold functions. In \cite{BSA_of_PTF} Kane's argument was adopted to estimate the boolean surface area of polynomial threshold function. The bridge is a combinatorial averaging lemma considering all balanced partitions. The lemma serves as a substitute for an additive property of average sensitivity. With the lemma, one can apply a Kane-type algorithm to derive a recurrence. Solving the recurrence then gives an upper bound of $e^{C_d \sqrt{\log n}}$ for the boolean surface area.
In the second version of the same paper, the authors derive a polylog upper bound for BSA of PTFs. The difference is that they use a tail estimate for the sensitivity function. With the help of a polynomial restriction lemma in \cite{poly_restriction} they sharpen the upper bound. It is noteworthy that when applying the polynomial restriction, each coordinate is put into each part independently with equal probability. As a result, a partition does not necessarily have equal-size blocks. In other words, it may not be balanced.
In this note, we first investigate the effect of different partitioning. Second, we use the recursive method in the first version to derive a polylog upper bound for $\mathbb E[s(x)^{\eta}]$ where $\eta < 1/2$. It is interesting to note the phase transition that happens at $\eta=1/2$ in both versions of the proof (but in a completely different form). Section \ref{PhaseTr-s} treats that.
From: Alexander L. Volberg [view email]
[v1]
Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:18:11 UTC (8 KB)
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