On the number of multilinear partitions and the computing capacity of multiple-valued multiple-threshold perceptrons

We introduce the concept of multilinear partition of a point set V/spl sub/R/sup n/ and the concept of multilinear separability of a function f:V/spl rarr/K={0, ..., k-1}. Based on well known relationships between linear partitions and minimal pairs, we derive formulae for the number of multilinear partitions of a point set in general position and of the set K/sup 2/. The (n, k, s)-perceptrons partition the input space V into s+1 regions with s parallel hyperplanes. We obtain results on the capacity of a single (n, k, s)-perceptron, respectively for V/spl sub/R/sup n/ in general position and for V=K/sup 2/. Finally, we describe a fast polynomial-time algorithm for counting the multilinear partitions of K/sup 2/.