A simple proof of the polylog counting ability of first-order logic

The counting ability of weak formalisms (e.g., determining the number of 1's in a string of length N ) is of interest as a measure of their expressive power, and also resorts to complexity-theoretic motivations: the more we can count the closer we get to real computing power. The question was investigated in several papers in complexity theory and in weak arithmetic around 1985. In each case, the considered formalism (AC 0 -circuits, first-order logic, Δ 0 ) was shown to be able to count up to a polylogarithmic number. An essential part of the proofs is the construction of a 1-1 mapping from a small subset of {0, ..., N - 1} into a small initial segment. In each case the expressibility of …