Indistinguishability and First-Order Logic
Skip Jordan and Thomas Zeugmann
Division of Computer Science
Hokkaido University, N-14, W-9, Sapporo 060-0814, Japan{skip,thomas}@ist.hokudai.ac.jp

Abstract. The “richness” of properties that are indistinguishable fromfirst-order properties is investigated. Indistinguishability is a concept ofequivalence among properties of combinatorial structures that is appropriate in the context of testability. All formulas in a restricted class of
second-order logic are shown to be indistinguishable from first-order formulas. Arbitrarily hard properties, including RE-complete properties,
that are indistinguishable from first-order formulas are shown to exist.
Implications on the search for a logical characterization of the testableproperties are discussed.
Key words: property testing, logic, graph theory, descriptive complexity

1

Introduction

In property testing we are interested in efficiently deciding whether a given structure possesses, or is far from possessing, a desired property. Although algorithmic
efficiency is often defined as polynomial time, this is not always ideal. For example, we may not have an explicit representation of the input but instead only theability to query an oracle for individual bits. These queries may be expensive
and even a linear-time algorithm, which requires us to compute the entire input
explicitly, may be unacceptable. If we are only concerned about distinguishingwith high probability between the input satisfying and being far from satisfying
a property, a sub-linear number of queries may be sufficient.
Testers are randomized algorithms that, given the size of the input, arerestricted to a certain number of queries which does not depend on the input size.
We shall give formal definitions below, but mention here that such algorithms
are probabilistic approximation algorithms.
In a certain sense, the whole area can be traced back to Freivalds [14] who
introduced a program result checker for matrix multiplication over a finite field.
Subsequently, the study of property testing originally arose in the context ofprogram verification (see Blum et al. [7] and Rubinfeld and Sudan [22]), and thefirst explicit definition appears to be in [22]. For surveys of the field see e.g.,
Fischer [12] and Ron [21].
Characterizing the testable properties has been called the most important
problem in the area (see Alon and Shapira [5]). The class of regular languages
was shown to be testable in Alon et al. [4], a result that was extended in Chockler and Kupferman [8]. However, there are context-free languages that are notIndistinguishability and First-Order Logic

95

testable [12]. It is then perhaps at first surprising that there are many natural,
testable properties that are considerably harder. Testers for NP-complete graphproperties including k-color were given in Goldreich et al. [16].
Restricting ourselves to characterizations of testable graph properties, thefirst step towards a logical characterization was obtained by Alon et al. [2], later
extended by Fischer [13]. They show that all properties expressible in first-orderlogic (FO) with all quantifier alternations of type “∃∀” are testable, whereas
there exists a property expressible with a single quantifier alternation of type“∀∃” that is not testable. It is useful to note the equivalence of first-order logic
with arithmetic and uniform AC0 (see Barrington et al. [6]). Later, a characterization of the graph properties testable with one-sided error by algorithms thatare unaware of the input size was given in [5], a result that was extended to
hypergraphs by Rödl and Schacht [20]. An exact combinatorial characterizationof the graph properties testable with a constant number of queries has beenobtained by Alon et al. [3].
In the present paper we focus on a question raised in [13]: the expressive
power of first-order logic in the context of indistinguishability and testing. The
concept of indistinguishability was introduced by Alon et al. [2] as a suitableform of equivalence in the context of testing. First-order logic with arithmetic
is equivalent to uniform AC0 , and so it is strictly contained in NP (see Furst etal. [15]). Therefore, properties that are complete for NP under first-order reductions such as k-color cannot be expressed in FO (see Allender et al. [1]). However,it has been noted in Alon et al. [2] that there are first-order expressible properties that are indistinguishable from such properties, including k-color. In thissense, the descriptive power of first-order logic with indistinguishability is surprisingly rich. We examine the set of properties that are indistinguishable from
FO-expressible properties and show that this set is larger than was previously
known.
The paper is organized as follows. We begin by giving more formal definitions. In Section 3 we show that all graph properties expressible in a restrictionof monadic second-order existential logic (MSO∃) are indistinguishable from FO
properties. We next prove that there are arbitrarily-hard properties, including
RE-complete properties, that are indistinguishable from FO properties (cf. Section 4). In fact, we can construct arbitrarily-hard testable properties. Finally, we
discuss the implications of the results obtained (cf. Section 5).

2Preliminaries

We generally restrict our attention to graph properties, and so give the following
definitions for graphs. We consider only finite, undirected graphs without loops.
We use G and H to refer to graphs, n = |G| as the number of vertices in a graph,and P , Q and R to refer to properties.
Let G and G0 be two graphs having the same vertex set and let ε > 0. If
0G can be constructed from G by adding and removing no more than εn2 edges
then we say that G and G0 differ in no more than εn2 places.

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Definition 1 (Alon et al. [2]). Let P be a property of graphs and let ε > 0.
(1) A graph G with n vertices is called ε-far from satisfying P if no graph G0
with the same vertex set, which differs from G in no more than εn2 places,
satisfies P .
(2) An ε-test for P is a randomized algorithm which, given the quantity n andthe ability to make queries whether or not a desired pair of vertices of an
input graph G with n vertices are adjacent, distinguishes with probability atleast 23 between the case of G satisfying P and the case of G being ε-far fromsatisfying P .
Note that in Definition 1 the choice of 32 is of course traditional and arbitrary.
Any probability strictly greater than 12 can be chosen and the resulting test canbe iterated a constant number of times to achieve any desired accuracy strictly
less than one, see e.g., Hromkovič [19].
Definition 2 (Alon et al. [2]). The property P is called testable if for every
fixed ε > 0 there exists an ε-test for P whose total number of queries is bounded
only by a function of ε, which is independent of the size of the input graph.
We allow the tester to know the size of the input, and to make its queries
in any computable fashion. In [17] this was shown to be equivalent to the “nonadaptive” model, where a tester uniformly chooses a set of vertices, receives theinduced subgraph, and makes a decision based on whether that subgraph hassome fixed property. We note that this definition of testability is not an o(n)number of queries and that “ε-far” clearly depends on n.
In general we do not require a uniformity condition. However, it is very
natural to require the ε-tests for P in the above definition to be computablegiven ε. We refer to properties satisfying this additional condition as uniformly
testable where the uniform and non-uniform cases differ (Proposition 1).
We note that testers given in the literature are generally presented as a single
algorithm that takes ε as a parameter and therefore uniform.
Definition 3 (Alon et al. [2]). Two graph properties P and Q are called indistinguishable if for every ε > 0 there exists N = N (ε) satisfying the following.
For every graph G having n > N vertices that satisfies P there exists a graphG0 with the same vertex set, differing from G in no more than εn2 places, which
satisfies Q; and for every graph H with n > N vertices satisfying Q there exists agraph H 0 with the same vertex set, differing from H in no more than εn2 places,
which satisfies P .
As notation, we use φ, ψ and γ to refer to logical formulas. Whether theseformulas are first- or second-order will be clear from context. We use Φ to denotea logical interpretation of variables. First-order variables are denoted by xi , yi
and ti while second-order variables are denoted by Ci . Members of the universe(nodes in the graph) are referred to as ui when we wish to distinguish between
variables and the nodes bound to them. We write E(x, y) to denote the predicate“there is an edge between x and y.” Since we consider only finite, undirectedIndistinguishability and First-Order Logic

97

graphs without loops, it follows that E(x, y) implies E(y, x) for all x, y and thatE(x, x) is false for all x.
Logical structures such as graphs allow us to interpret predicate symbols.
The combination of structures and interpretations, e.g., (G, Φ), then allows us
to interpret formulas. We write G |= φ, read G models φ, if formula φ holds wheninterpreting the edge predicate according to G. Inductively we use interpretations
to interpret bound variables, and write (G, Φ) |= φ if formula φ holds wheninterpreting bound variables according to Φ and the edge predicate (assuming
it isn’t bound by a second-order quantifier) according to G. For a more formal
introduction to the logics used, see e.g., Enderton [9].
We assume that ordering and arithmetic are not present in the logics considered, however ordering and arithmetic can be defined in logics containing existential second-order. In proofs we treat the universal quantifier (∀) as the dual of
the existential quantifier (∃). Although properties are often implicitly assumed
to be computable, we shall see that there are implications to this assumption,and so explicitly state that we do not make this assumption.
Finally, we define DTIME(f (n)) in the usual manner as the set of decision
problems computable on a deterministic Turing machine in f (n) steps.

3

Monadic Second-Order Existential Logic

In this section we show that all graph properties expressible in a restriction ofmonadic second-order existential logic (see Definition 4 below) are indistinguishable from FO properties.
Definition 4. Let rMSO∃ denote the graph properties expressible in monadic
second-order existential logic that satisfy the following. For all P ∈rMSO∃ expressible with r second-order quantifiers, there exists an N such that in all graphs
G satisfying P with n > N vertices(1) there exists a set of r vertices such that removing them does not affect P ,and(2) adding r disconnected vertices to the graph does not affect P .
Note that rMSO∃ contains natural problems such as k-color. The first restriction is similar to but weaker than hereditariness. The proof of the following
theorem is a generalization of a result regarding the indistinguishability of kcolor from FO properties (see, e.g., Alon et al. [2]).
Theorem 1. All properties expressible in rMSO∃ are indistinguishable fromproperties expressible in FO.
Proof. Let P be the rMSO∃ property expressed by formula φ := ∃C1 C2 . . . Cr ψ,
where ψ is first-order. We construct a first-order formula φ0 expressing property
Q such that P and Q are indistinguishable.
φ0 := ∃t1 t2 . . . tr ψ 0 ,98Skip Jordan and Thomas Zeugmann

where the symbols ti do not occur in ψ (if they do occur, simply rename them).
Formula ψ 0 is derived from ψ with the following changes:
1. Replace all occurrences of Ci (x) with E(ti , x).
2. Replace all quantifiers with restricted quantifiers:∃x : γ with ∃x : (x 6= t1 ∧ . . . ∧ x 6= tr ) ∧ γ and∀x : γ with ∀x : (x 6= t1 ∧ . . . ∧ x 6= tr ) → γ.
First, let ε > 0 be arbitrary and let G model φ. Assume |G| = n > N . Choose
the set of r vertices guaranteed to exist by Restriction (1) of Definition 4, callthem u1 . . . ur and remove them. Call this graph G− . Take an interpretation Φ
under which G− models φ. Replace the ui as disconnected vertices. Connect ui
and x iff Ci (x) holds in Φ. Call the resulting graph G0 . Note that we have changed
at most r(n − 1) edges, which is less than εn2 for sufficiently large n.
Claim 1. Graph G0 models φ0 .
Proof. We construct a satisfying interpretation Φ0 from Φ. The only change
is to bind ti to ui . Recall that the ti appear only where we added them above
and thus the ui are only referred to in these contexts.
Note that:– (G− , Φ) |= x = y ⇐⇒ (G0 , Φ0 ) |= x = y,because the ui cannot appear here and all other members are retained.
– (G− , Φ) |= Ci (x) ⇐⇒ (G0 , Φ0 ) |= E(ti , x), by construction.
– Logical operators ∧, ¬ are preserved inductively.
– (G− , Φ) |= ∃x : γ ⇐⇒ (G0 , Φ0 ) |= ∃x : (x 6= t1 ∧ . . . ∧ x 6= tr ) ∧ γ,
because G− does not contain the vertices referred to by the ti .
Therefore, G0 models φ0 and thus has the first-order property Q.

t Claim 1
u0

Next, let ε > 0 be arbitrary and assume that graph H models φ . Assume
further that |H| > N . Let Φ0 be an interpretation satisfying ψ 0 . Let the vertices
bound to the ti be called ui . Recall that because of the restricted quantifiersin φ0 , the ui are referred to only as ti , and the ti only occur where we explicitly
added them.
Remove the ui from H and call this graph H − . Next, re-add the ui as r
isolated vertices and call this graph H 0 . We claim that both H − and H 0 modelφ, and construct a satisfying interpretation Φ from Φ0 . Because of Restriction (2)in Definition 4, it is sufficient to prove that H − models φ as adding r isolated
vertices will not affect property P .
We set Ci (x) to be true in Φ iff there is an edge between ui and x in H.
Claim 2. (H − , Φ) |= φ.
Proof. Note that:– (H − , Φ) |= x = y ⇐⇒ (H, Φ0 ) |= x = y,because x and y cannot be bound to ui on the right.
– (H − , Φ) |= Ci (x) ⇐⇒ (H, Φ0 ) |= E(ti , x), by construction.
– Logical operators ∧, ¬ are preserved inductively.

Indistinguishability and First-Order Logic

99– (H − , Φ) |= ∃x : γ ⇐⇒ (H, Φ0 ) |= ∃x : (x 6= t1 ∧ . . . ∧ x 6= tr ) ∧ γ,
because H − does not contain the vertices referred to by the ti .
t Claim 2u
Therefore, H − has property P and by Restriction (2) of Definition 4, H 0
does too. We have changed at most r(n − 1) edges, which is less than εn2 forsufficiently large n.
Properties P and Q are therefore indistinguishable.
tu4Hard Properties

In the previous section, we showed that every property expressible in a restriction of monadic second-order existential logic is indistinguishable from someFO-expressible property. All properties expressible in this logic are containedin NP by Fagin’s [10] theorem. For graphs it is known that MSO∃ is strictly lessexpressive than SO∃: there are graph properties in NP that are not expressible
in MSO∃ (see, Fagin et al. [11]). In this section we continue our study of the setof properties indistinguishable from FO-expressible properties, and show that it
contains much harder properties. We show that this set contains uncomputableproperties, and also, for every f (n), computable (and testable) properties thatare not computable in time f (n). In this sense, the power of first-order logic in
the context of indistinguishability is even larger than previously known. However, we also show that there exist computable properties that are distinguishable
from every first-order expressible property.
In the next proof we use the concept of RE-completeness. A decision problem
is in RE (recursively enumerable) iff there exists a Turing machine that halts
and accepts all positive instances and does not accept negative instances. The
machine is not required to halt on negative instances. A decision problem D
is RE-complete iff it is in RE and all other problems in RE can be decided
by machines given an oracle for D. The halting problem is the canonical REcomplete problem.
Theorem 2. There exists an RE-complete graph property that is indistinguishable from a FO-expressible property.
Proof. We define property P such that graph G satisfies it iff(1) there is a vertex i such that all edges are incident to i, and(2) taking the degree d of vertex i as the number of a Turing machine Md insome canonical enumeration (Mi )i∈N of Turing machines where every Turingmachine appears at least once, provided Md halts on the empty string.
If Md does not halt on the empty string, then graph G does not have property P . For convenience, we require that machine M0 in the enumeration haltson the empty string. We shall show that P is an RE-complete property that is
indistinguishable from the FO-expressible property of being an empty graph.

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Lemma 1. P is RE-complete.
Proof. Let HALT={a | Ma halts on the empty string}. We show that P is
RE-complete by reducing HALT to it. On input a, representing Turing machine
Ma in the enumeration, we output a graph on a + 1 vertices. There is an edge
between vertices i and j iff exactly one of them is zero. All edges are then incident
to the zero vertex, and as the degree of vertex zero is n − 1 = a, the graph hasproperty P iff machine Ma halts on the empty string.
t Lemma 1uLemma 2. P is indistinguishable from the FO property of being an empty graph(∀x, y : ¬E(x, y)).
Proof. Assume graph G satisfies property P and let ε > 0 be arbitrary. Leti denote the vertex that is mentioned in Property (1) of the Theorem, and let dbe its degree. Remove the d ≤ n − 1 edges incident to i. By assumption, all edges
in G were incident to i, and so the resulting graph is empty. For n sufficiently
large, n − 1 < εn2 .
Now assume graph G is an empty graph. By assumption, M0 halts. Choose
an arbitrary vertex i and note that all zero edges are incident to it. Consequently,
G has property P . We have not changed any edges, and therefore 0 < εn2 for
all non-zero n.
t Lemma 2uLemma 1 and 2 directly yield the theorem.
tu
The following proposition is essentially obvious: an ε-tester is a probabilistic
machine. It remains only to mention that we can, by choosing ε > 0 appropriately
as a function of n, remove the “approximation” in “probabilistic approximation
algorithm.” Of course, we then make a number of queries that depends on the
input size.
It is important to note that this proposition does not hold in the non-uniform
case.
Proposition 1. All uniformly testable graph properties can be decided by a probabilistic Turing machine with success probability at least 32 .
Proof. Assume graph property P is testable. We construct a probabilistic machine deciding P . On input G of size n, choose ε such that εn2 < 1, for example,
ε = n21+1 . Run the ε-test on G and output the result. Because εn2 < 1, being
at most ε-far from G implies that we may not change any edges. We therefore
distinguish with probability at least 23 between the case of G satisfying P and
G not satisfying P .
tuCorollary 1. All uniformly testable properties are decidable by probabilistic machines.
Proof. Simply modify εn2 in the proof to the appropriate definition of ε-far forthe vocabulary in question.
tu
The following also follows immediately, as randomization does not allow us tocompute uncomputable functions. We provide a proof sketch for completeness.

Indistinguishability and First-Order Logic

101

Corollary 2. All uniformly testable properties are recursive.
Proof. We convert the probabilistic machine into a deterministic machine using
the following generic construction.
All probabilistic machines can be modified such that their randomness istaken from a special binary “random tape” that is randomly fixed when themachine is started, in which each digit is 0 or 1 with equal probability.
All halting probabilistic machines must eventually halt, regardless of the random choices made. We can then simulate the machine over all initial segments ofincreasing lengths, keeping track of “accepting,” “rejecting” and “still running”
states. Once any given segment has halted, all random strings beginning withthat initial segment must also halt. Therefore, the percentage of halting paths isincreasing, and we shall eventually reach a length such that at least 70% of thepaths have halted. Our error probability is at most 13 , strictly less than half of
70% and so we can output the decision of the majority of the halting paths. utTheorem 3 (Alon et al. [2]). Every first-order property P of the form
∃x1 , . . . , xt ∀y1 , . . . , ys : A(x1 , . . . , xt , y1 , . . . , ys ),where A is quantifier-free, is testable.
Note that our RE-complete property P defined in the proof to Theorem 2,
is indistinguishable from a first-order property of this form (t = 0).
Theorem 4 (Alon et al. [2]). If P and Q are indistinguishable graph properties, then P is testable if and only if Q is testable.
However, we now see a contradiction in the uniform case. Our RE-complete
property P , defined in the proof to Theorem 2, is indistinguishable from a FOproperty that, according to Theorem 3, is testable (which it is). Theorem 4 thenimplies that this RE-complete property P is also testable, which contradicts
Corollary 2. Therefore, Theorem 4 is not strictly correct in the uniform case.
The proof given in [2] assumes that if input G has strictly less than N = N (ε)
vertices, there exists a decision procedure that gives “accurate output according
to whether it satisfies” the property in question. Of course, no such (uniform)
procedure exists for RE-complete properties. Theorem 4 holds in the uniform
case when restricted to recursive properties.
We can however use a similar construction to Theorem 2 to obtain the following, restricting ourselves to recursive properties. By the time hierarchy theorem,
for every computable f (n) there exist computable properties that cannot be
decided in time f (n), see Hartmanis and Stearns [18].
We define arbitrarily-hard properties to be any set of computable properties
that “for each computable f (n), contains properties that cannot be computedin DTIME(f (n)).”
It is of course possible to use other complexity measures. We have restricted
these sets to computable properties and so they are obviously infinite.

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The reduction in the following proof increases the input length by an exponential factor. However, because we are interested in arbitrarily-hard properties
and by the time hierarchy theorem, we can choose Q such that it is not computable in, e.g., DTIME(2f (n) ). Then, after the input length is increased exponentially, we have a property that cannot be computed in DTIME(f (n)). Thiscan be done for all f (n).
Theorem 5. There are arbitrarily-hard testable properties.
Proof. Let Q be an arbitrarily-hard property. We define property R such that
Q is reducible to R. Let q(x) be the characteristic function for Q with an appropriate encoding of the input. Similar to Theorem 2, we define R to hold ingraph G of size n iff
1. there is a vertex i such that all edges are incident to i,
2. and either the degree of i is zero or q(n) = 1.
We can obviously reduce Q to R by computing the encoding x, and outputtinga graph on x vertices with one edge. We can therefore construct arbitrarily hard
properties R.
Using the same proof as that used for Theorem 2, we see that all such R are
also indistinguishable from the empty graph. The property of being the empty
graph is testable by Theorem 3, and so R is testable by Theorem 4, if it isdecidable. We can therefore construct arbitrarily hard, testable properties. utComputable graph properties that are distinguishable from all first-orderproperties do exist however. We show the following by a simple diagonalizationargument. We define distinguishable as “not indistinguishable.”
Theorem 6. There exist computable graph properties that are distinguishable
from all first-order properties.
Proof. We let first-order formula φi denote the i’th formula in some enumerationof first-order formulas on graphs, in which all such formulas occur infinitely often.
We define property Q such that G has property Q iff φ|G| does not hold on any
graph with |G| = n vertices.
We show that Q is distinguishable from all first-order properties by contradiction. Assume that first-order ψ expresses a property that is indistinguishable
from Q. Find the first i > N such that ψ = φi . There are two cases. First,
assume that there is a graph G on i vertices such that G satisfies ψ. Then, there
is no graph on i vertices with property Q, by construction. We therefore cannot
obtain a graph G0 on i vertices with property Q by changing at most εn2 edges
in G, because no such graph exists.
There must then be no such graph G on i vertices satisfying ψ. In this case,by definition all graphs on i vertices have property Q. Taking any of them, we seethat we cannot obtain a graph on i vertices satisfying ψ by modifying at most
εn2 edges, because again no such graph exists. There must then be no first-orderψ expressing a property indistinguishable from Q.
tuIndistinguishability and First-Order Logic

5103

Discussion

The descriptive power of first-order logic with indistinguishability is surprisingly
large. As we have seen, we can construct testable properties of arbitrary hardness.
However, as seen in [2], there are problems in FO with quantifier alternations“∀∃” that are not testable. So, although the class of testable properties contains
arbitrarily hard properties, it does not strictly contain uniform AC0 or even thecontext-free languages. In this sense, it is a rather odd class.
A complete, logical characterization of the testable properties must then notcontain FO entirely, but must contain arbitrarily hard properties. However, inthe uniform case we have seen that all testable properties are recursive, and so acharacterization of the uniformly testable properties must not be able to express
e.g. RE-complete properties.
We also believe that the distinction between the uniformly testable and nonuniformly testable properties is important. In particular, given our motivationof searching for a class that is very efficiently computable, it seems undesirable
to admit uncomputable properties. In this sense, the uniform case is preferable(Proposition 1). It would also be worthwhile to consider other possible definitionsof uniformity.
Acknowledgements. We wish to thank Osamu Watanabe for an inspiring
discussion regarding the importance of uniformity conditions.

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