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Distributed Gaussian Mean Testing under Communication Constraints: messages, samples, and coins

cs.DS2026-05v1license

Abstract

We revisit the problem of Gaussian mean testing in a distributed, communication constrained setting, where each of nn users independently observes samples from an unknown dd-dimensional spherical Gaussian distribution G(μ,Id)\mathcal{G}(\mu,\mathbb{I}_d), and can communicate up to \ell bits to a central referee. The referee's goal is then to distinguish between cases (i) μ2=0\|\mu\|_2 = 0 versus (ii) μ2ε\|\mu\|_2\ge \varepsilon. 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 mm samples. In this work, we significantly generalize the question in three directions: when the users only share a small number ss of random bits, when each user holds a different number of samples mkm_k, and when each user can send a different number of bits k\ell_k 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}
}