English

Weighted Chernoff information and optimal loss exponent in context-sensitive hypothesis testing

Statistics Theory 2026-05-12 v3 Information Theory math.IT Probability Statistics Theory

Abstract

We study binary hypothesis testing for i.i.d. observations under a multiplicative context weight. For the optimal weighted total loss, defined as the sum of weighted type-I and type-II losses, we prove the logarithmic asymptotic Ln=exp{nDCw(P,Q)+o(n)},n, L_n^* = \exp\{-n D_C^{\mathrm{w}}(\mathbb{P}, \mathbb{Q}) + o(n)\}, \quad n \to \infty, where DCwD_C^{\mathrm{w}} is the weighted Chernoff information. The single-letter form of the exponent relies on a structural assumption that the weight factorises across observations, φ(x1n)=i=1nφ(xi)\varphi(x_1^n) = \prod_{i=1}^n \varphi(x_i); this restriction is essential for the single-letter representation and should be distinguished from the weaker qualitative description "multiplicative context weight". The proof embeds the weighted geometric mixtures φpαq1α\varphi p^\alpha q^{1-\alpha} into a likelihood-ratio exponential family and identifies the rate through its log-normaliser. We also derive concentration bounds for the tilted weighted log-likelihood, obtain closed forms for Gaussian, Poisson, and exponential models, and extend the exponent characterisation to finitely many hypotheses.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.08308,
  title  = {Weighted Chernoff information and optimal loss exponent in context-sensitive hypothesis testing},
  author = {Mark Kelbert and El'mira Yu. Kalimulina},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.08308},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

30 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:10:13.831Z