Coin Flipping in Dynamic Programming Is Almost Useless

Abstract

We consider probabilistic circuits working over the real numbers and using arbitrary semialgebraic functions of bounded description complexity as gates. In particular, such circuits can use all arithmetic operations (+, −, ×, ÷), optimization operations (min and max), conditional branching (if-then-else), and many more. We show that probabilistic circuits using any of these operations as gates can be simulated by deterministic circuits with only about a quadratical blowup in size. A slightly larger blowup in circuit size is also shown when derandomizing approximating circuits. The algorithmic consequence, motivating the title, is that randomness cannot substantially speed up dynamic programming algorithms.