Lower Bound for Non-Adaptive Estimation of the Number of Defective Items

摘要

We prove that to estimate within a constant factor the number of defective items in a non-adaptive randomized group testing algorithm we need at least Omega~(log n) tests. This solves the open problem posed by Damaschke and Sheikh Muhammad in [Peter Damaschke and Azam Sheikh Muhammad, 2010; Peter Damaschke and Azam Sheikh Muhammad, 2010].