English

Pinsker's inequality for adapted total variation

Probability 2025-06-30 v1 Information Theory math.IT

Abstract

Pinsker's classical inequality asserts that the total variation TV(μ,ν)TV(\mu, \nu) between two probability measures is bounded by 2H(μν)\sqrt{ 2H(\mu|\nu)} where HH denotes the relative entropy (or Kullback-Leibler divergence). Considering the discrete metric, TVTV can be seen as a Wasserstein distance and as such possesses an adapted variant ATVATV. Adapted Wasserstein distances have distinct advantages over their classical counterparts when μ,ν\mu, \nu are the laws of stochastic processes (Xk)k=1n,(Yk)k=1n(X_k)_{k=1}^n, (Y_k)_{k=1}^n and exhibit numerous applications from stochastic control to machine learning. In this note we observe that the adapted total variation distance ATVATV satisfies the Pinsker-type inequality ATV(μ,ν)n2H(μν). ATV(\mu, \nu)\leq \sqrt{n} \sqrt{2 H(\mu|\nu)}.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.22106,
  title  = {Pinsker's inequality for adapted total variation},
  author = {Mathias Beiglböck and Markus Zona},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.22106},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:36:12.358Z