Weighted Chernoff information and optimal loss exponent in context-sensitive hypothesis testing
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 where is the weighted Chernoff information. The single-letter form of the exponent relies on a structural assumption that the weight factorises across observations, ; 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 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