cs.LGOct 23, 2026

Near-Optimal List Replicability from Littlestone Dimension

Authors: Ari Blondal, Pooya Hatami, Chavdar Lalov, Sivan Tretiak

Organizations: McGill University · Ohio State University

Abstract

We study the list replicability number in the realizable PAC learning framework and prove that every concept class HH over a countable domain with Littlestone dimension dd and dual VC dimension v∗v^* satisfies

LR(H)≤2O(dmin⁡{log⁡d,v∗}).\mathrm{LR}(H)\leq 2^{O(d\min\{\log d,v^*\})}.

This matches the worst-case lower bound of 2Ω(d)2^{Ω(d)} up to a logarithmic factor in the exponent and exponentially improves the previous best upper bound LR(H)≤22O(d)\mathrm{LR}(H)\le 2^{2^{O(d)}} of Bun, Livni, and Moran [FOCS 2020]. Unlike earlier bounds of 2Oε(d2)2^{O_ε(d^2)} for fixed accuracy ε>0ε>0 implied by the work of Ghazi, Golowich, Kumar, and Manurangsi [STOC 2021] and Lyu [STOC 2026], our bound is independent of εε. The 2O(dlog⁡d)2^{O(d\log d)} bound follows from a new inductive framework for bounding list replicability that builds on the recent notion of irreducibility from differentially private learning. The 2O(dv∗)2^{O(dv^*)} bound follows from a simple globally stable learner that takes the majority vote of multiple empirical risk minimizers, with stability established using tools from stable regularity.

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