English

Open Problem: Is Interaction Necessary for Order-Optimal 1-bit Mean Estimation?

Information Theory 2026-07-03 v1 Machine Learning Statistics Theory Machine Learning

Abstract

We ask whether interaction is necessary for order-optimal 1-bit mean estimation over nonparametric finite-moment classes. Adaptive threshold-query protocols achieve the order-optimal 1-bit minimax rate, and the same rate is attainable with general 1-bit queries using only one adaptive transition (i.e., two stages of querying). In the non-adaptive setting, threshold and interval queries are known to be highly suboptimal, but the case of arbitrary non-adaptive quantizers remains unresolved. Can such quantizers match the adaptive rate, yielding an optimal one-shot protocol? Or is the known two-stage estimator stage-optimal, with a single adaptive transition being necessary and sufficient?

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.02896,
  title  = {Open Problem: Is Interaction Necessary for Order-Optimal 1-bit Mean Estimation?},
  author = {Ivan Lau and Jonathan Scarlett},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.02896},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

COLT 2026 Open Problem