In this talk, we will survey questions related to polynomial approximations of AC0. A classic result due to Tarui (1991) and Beigel, Reingold, and Spielman (1991), that any AC0 circuit of size s and depth d has an ε-error probabilistic polynomial over the reals of degree (log(s/ε))^{O(d)}. We will have a re-look at this construction and show how to improve the bound to (log s)^{O(d)}⋅log(1/ε), which is much better for small values of ε.
As an application of this result, we show that (log s)^{O(d)}⋅log(1/ε)-wise independence fools AC0, improving on Tal's strengthening of Braverman's theorem that (log(s/ε))^{O(d)}-wise independence fools AC0. Time permitting, we will also discuss some lower bounds on the best polynomial approximations to AC0 (joint work with Srikanth Srinivasan).
