Noisy Search with Comparative Feedback

Abstract: We present theoretical results in terms of lower and upper bounds on the query complexity of noisy search with comparative feedback. In this search model, the noise in the feedback depends on the distance between query points and the search target. Consequently, the error probability in the feedback is not fixed but varies for the queries posed by the search algorithm. Our results show that a target out of n items can be found in O(log n) queries. We also show the surprising result that for k possible answers per query, the speedup is not log k (as for k-ary search) but only log log k in some cases.