Sublinear-time computation in the presence of online erasures

Abstract

We initiate the study of sublinear-time algorithms that access their input via an online adversarial erasure oracle. After answering each query to the input object, such an oracle can erase t input values. Our goal is to understand the complexity of basic computational tasks in extremely adversarial situations, where the algorithm’s access to data is blocked during the execution of the algorithm in response to its actions. Specifically, we focus on property testing in the model with online erasures. We show that two fundamental properties of functions, linearity and quadraticity, can be tested for constant t with asymptotically the same complexity as in the standard property testing model. For linearity testing, we prove tight bounds in terms of t, showing that the query complexity is Θ(log t). In contrast to linearity and quadraticity, some other properties, including sortedness and the Lipschitz property of sequences, cannot be tested at all, even for t = 1. Our investigation leads to a deeper understanding of the structure of violations of linearity and other widely studied properties.