A new polynomial-time algorithm for linear programming
Combinatorica
Minimal representation of directed hypergraphs
SIAM Journal on Computing
Logical foundations of artificial intelligence
Logical foundations of artificial intelligence
Information Processing Letters
Optimal compression of propositional Horn knowledge bases: complexity and approximation
Artificial Intelligence
Minimum Covers in Relational Database Model
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Propositional Logic: Deduction and Algorithms
Propositional Logic: Deduction and Algorithms
The minimum equivalent DNF problem and shortest implicants
Journal of Computer and System Sciences
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness
Quasi-Acyclic Propositional Horn Knowledge Bases: Optimal Compression
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
The complexity of theorem-proving procedures
STOC '71 Proceedings of the third annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
Minimizing DNF Formulas and AC^0_d Circuits Given a Truth Table
CCC '06 Proceedings of the 21st Annual IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity
Exclusive and essential sets of implicates of Boolean functions
Discrete Applied Mathematics
Disjoint essential sets of implicates of a CQ Horn function
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
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In this paper we study relationships between CNF representations of a given Boolean function f and essential sets of implicates of f. It is known that every CNF representation and every essential set must intersect. Therefore the maximum number of pairwise disjoint essential sets of f provides a lower bound on the size of any CNF representation of f. We are interested in functions, for which this lower bound is tight, and call such functions coverable. We prove that for every coverable function there exists a polynomially verifiable certificate (witness) for its minimum CNF size. On the other hand, we show that not all functions are coverable, and construct examples of non-coverable functions. Moreover, we prove that computing the lower bound, i.e. the maximum number of pairwise disjoint essential sets, is NP-hard under various restrictions on the function and on its input representation.