Learning from Equivalence Queries, Revisited

Model evaluations may fix all tests before observing any responses or select later tests using earlier responses. We study this choice in a conditional-query model on a finite outcome space $\mathcal{X}$ with $|\mathcal{X}|=N$. We first ask which pairs of distribution classes can be reliably distinguished. We then ask how many additional queries are required to match an adaptive tester when all queried events must be fixed in advance. We show that learnability holds if and only if the two classes have positive separation in their pairwise conditional probabilities. When this separation is zero, the optimal worst-case error is exactly $1/2$ at every finite query budget. For any $T$-query adaptive policy and any $ρ\in (0,1)$, we construct a randomized non-adaptive procedure using $O(N^2(T + \log(1/ρ)))$ pair queries chosen before any response is observed. Its simulated transcript is within $ρ$ in total variation of the adaptive transcript, uniformly over all distributions in the model. We also construct a matching family with constant adaptive query complexity and $Ω_\varepsilon(N^2)$ non-adaptive query complexity. Consequently, the worst-case fixed-error adaptivity gap is $Θ_\varepsilon(N^2)$. Thus interaction can reduce the required number of tests by a quadratic factor, but the apparent exponential branching of an interactive evaluation does not yield an exponential query advantage.

Valiant's 1984 paper is widely credited with introducing the PAC learning model, but it, in fact, introduced a different model: unlike PAC learning, the learner receives only positives, may issue membership queries, and must output a hypothesis with no false positives. Prior work characterized variants, including the case without queries. We revisit Valiant's original model and ask: Which classes are learnable in it? For every finite domain, including Valiant's Boolean-hypercube setting, we show that a class is learnable if and only if every realizable positive sample can be certified by a poly-size adaptive query-compression scheme. This is a new variant of sample compression where the learner certifies samples via a short interaction with the membership oracle. Our characterization shows that learnability in Valiant's model is strictly sandwiched between learnability in the PAC model and the variant of Valiant's model without membership queries. This is one of the rare cases where introducing membership queries changes the set of learnable classes, and not just the sample or computational complexity. Next, we study the natural extension of the model to arbitrary domains. While we do not obtain an exact characterization, our techniques readily generalize and show that the same strict sandwiching persists. Finally, we show that $d$-dimensional halfspaces, which are not learnable without queries, are learnable with queries: we give a $\mathrm{poly}(d) \tilde{O}(1/ε)$ sample and $\mathrm{poly}(d) \mathrm{polylog}(1/ε)$ query algorithm, and prove that at least $Ω(d)$ samples or queries are necessary. To our knowledge, this is the first algorithm for halfspaces in Valiant's model. Together, these results uncover a surprisingly rich theory behind Valiant's original notion of learnability and introduce ideas that may be of independent interest in learning theory.

Recent work on provably efficient algorithms for learning with distribution shift has focused on two models: PQ learning (Goldwasser et al. (2020)) and TDS learning (Klivans et al. (2024)). Algorithms for TDS learning are allowed to reject a test set entirely if distribution shift is detected. In contrast, PQ learners may only reject points that are deemed out-of-distribution on an individual basis. Our main result is a surprising equivalence between these two models in the distribution-free setting. In particular, we give an efficient black-box reduction from PQ learning to TDS learning for any Boolean concept class. This equivalence implies the first hardness results for distribution-free TDS learning of basic classes such as halfspaces. The main technical contribution underlying our equivalence is a method for boosting, via branching programs, the weak distinguishing power of TDS learners that have rejected the target domain. We also show that giving a learner access to membership queries sidesteps these hardness results and allows for efficient, distribution-free PQ learnability of halfspaces. Our algorithm iteratively recovers large-margin separators obtained by applying successive Forster transforms on the training data.