Distributed Gaussian Mean Testing under Communication Constraints: messages, samples, and coins
Abstract
We revisit the problem of Gaussian mean testing in a distributed, communication constrained setting, where each of users independently observes samples from an unknown -dimensional spherical Gaussian distribution , and can communicate up to bits to a central referee. The referee's goal is then to distinguish between cases (i) versus (ii) . This problem has been considered in the private- and public-coin settings, when each user holds exactly one sample, or more generally when each holds exactly samples. In this work, we significantly generalize the question in three directions: when the users only share a small number of random bits, when each user holds a different number of samples , and when each user can send a different number of bits to the referee.
Comments: 20 pages
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.29426,
title = {Distributed Gaussian Mean Testing under Communication Constraints: messages, samples, and coins},
author = {Clément L. Canonne and Nimitt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.29426},
year = {2026}
}