Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2020
Let M be an n × m matrix of independent Rademacher (±1) random variables. It is well known that if $n \leq m$, then M is of full rank with high probability. We show that this property is resilient to adversarial changes to M. More precisely, if $m \ge n + {n^{1 - \varepsilon /6}}$, then even after changing the sign of (1 – ε)m/2 entries, M is still of full rank with high probability. Note that this is asymptotically best possible as one can easily make any two rows proportional with at most m/2 changes. Moreover, this theorem gives an asymptotic solution to a slightly weakened version of a conjecture made by Van Vu in [17].