A basic lower bound for property testing

Abstract

An $\epsilon$-test for any non-trivial property (one for which there are both satisfying inputs and inputs of large distance from the property) should use a number of queries that is at least inversely proportional in $\epsilon$. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no reference proof for this intuition. Such a proof is provided here. It is written so as to not require any prior knowledge of the related literature, and in particular does not use Yao's method.

arXiv comment4 pages. Added a related work reference