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What makes a function simple? Three equivalent answers

Balazs Szegedy

May 21, 2026

Functions of many variables can be classified by how much information they actually need. The authors prove three definitions of "simplicity" are equivalent: a function has the holographic property (output recoverable from random coordinates), can be approximated by low-degree polynomials in few coordinate forms, or is close to a shallow neural network with bounded weights. The result connects sampling, algebra, and neural computation through a single lens.
Published as Holographic functions and neural networks arXiv:2605.22666
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