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We study the problem of generalized uniformity testing \cite{BC17} of a discrete probability distribution: Given samples from a probability distribution $p$ over an {\em unknown} discrete domain $\mathbf{\Omega}$, we want to distinguish,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-09-08 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Alistair Stewart

Sampling algorithms play a pivotal role in probabilistic AI. However, verifying if a sampler program indeed samples from the claimed distribution is a notoriously hard problem. Provably correct testers like Barbarik, Teq, Flash, CubeProbe…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Rishiraj Bhattacharyya , Sourav Chakraborty , Yash Pote , Uddalok Sarkar , Sayantan Sen

The incomplete particle identification limits the experimentally-available phase space region for identified particle analysis. This problem affects ongoing fluctuation and correlation studies including the search for the critical point of…

High Energy Physics - Experiment · Physics 2018-09-18 Maja Mackowiak-Pawlowska , Piotr Przybyla

We study the question of closeness testing for two discrete distributions. More precisely, given samples from two distributions $p$ and $q$ over an $n$-element set, we wish to distinguish whether $p=q$ versus $p$ is at least $\eps$-far from…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-08-20 Siu-On Chan , Ilias Diakonikolas , Gregory Valiant , Paul Valiant

We investigate the problem of testing the equivalence between two discrete histograms. A {\em $k$-histogram} over $[n]$ is a probability distribution that is piecewise constant over some set of $k$ intervals over $[n]$. Histograms have been…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-03-07 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Vladimir Nikishkin

We consider the problem of learning an unknown product distribution $X$ over $\{0,1\}^n$ using samples $f(X)$ where $f$ is a \emph{known} transformation function. Each choice of a transformation function $f$ specifies a learning problem in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-03-04 Constantinos Daskalakis , Ilias Diakonikolas , Rocco A. Servedio

We study distribution-free property testing and learning problems where the unknown probability distribution is a product distribution over $\mathbb{R}^d$. For many important classes of functions, such as intersections of halfspaces,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-11-17 Nathaniel Harms , Yuichi Yoshida

The quantum analogue of the equality function, known as the quantum state identity problem, is the task of deciding whether $n$ unknown quantum states are equal or unequal, given the promise that all states are either pairwise orthogonal or…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-15 Harry Buhrman , Dmitry Grinko , Philip Verduyn Lunel , Jordi Weggemans

Distribution testing can be described as follows: $q$ samples are being drawn from some unknown distribution $P$ over a known domain $[n]$. After the sampling process, a decision must be made about whether $P$ holds some property, or is far…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2020-12-04 Uri Meir

We study the question of testing structured properties (classes) of discrete distributions. Specifically, given sample access to an arbitrary distribution $D$ over $[n]$ and a property $\mathcal{P}$, the goal is to distinguish between…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-01-22 Clément L. Canonne , Ilias Diakonikolas , Themis Gouleakis , Ronitt Rubinfeld

We study the problem of testing whether an unknown $n$-variable Boolean function is a $k$-junta in the distribution-free property testing model, where the distance between functions is measured with respect to an arbitrary and unknown…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2018-02-15 Xi Chen , Zhengyang Liu , Rocco A. Servedio , Ying Sheng , Jinyu Xie

Property testers are fast, randomized "election polling"-type algorithms that determine if an input (e.g., graph or hypergraph) has a certain property or is $\varepsilon$-far from the property. In the dense graph model of property testing,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Lior Gishboliner , Asaf Shapira

We consider the problem of testing whether an unknown $n$-variable Boolean function is a $k$-junta in the distribution-free property testing model, where the distance between function is measured with respect to an arbitrary and unknown…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-06-09 Nader H. Bshouty

The classic exact pattern matching problem, given two strings -- a pattern $P$ of length $m$ and a text $T$ of length $n$ -- asks whether $P$ occurs as a substring of $T$. A property tester for the problem needs to distinguish (with high…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Ce Jin , Tomasz Kociumaka

We study goodness-of-fit of discrete distributions in the distributed setting, where samples are divided between multiple users who can only release a limited amount of information about their samples due to various information constraints.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-07-23 Jayadev Acharya , Clément L. Canonne , Yanjun Han , Ziteng Sun , Himanshu Tyagi

In the uniformity testing task, an algorithm is provided with samples from an unknown probability distribution over a (known) finite domain, and must decide whether it is the uniform distribution, or, alternatively, if its total variation…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Guy Blanc , Clément L. Canonne , Erik Waingarten

We study the basic statistical problem of testing whether normally distributed $n$-dimensional data has been truncated, i.e. altered by only retaining points that lie in some unknown truncation set $S \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$. As our main…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-11-25 Anindya De , Shivam Nadimpalli , Rocco A. Servedio

There are many high dimensional function classes that have fast agnostic learning algorithms when assumptions on the distribution of examples can be made, such as Gaussianity or uniformity over the domain. But how can one be confident that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Ronitt Rubinfeld , Arsen Vasilyan

Motivated by the fact that input distributions are often unknown in advance, distribution-free property testing considers a setting where the algorithmic task is to accept functions $f : [n] \to \{0,1\}$ with a certain property P and reject…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2024-02-19 Hugo Aaronson , Tom Gur , Ninad Rajgopal , Ron D. Rothblum

We give a nearly-optimal algorithm for testing uniformity of distributions supported on $\{-1,1\}^n$, which makes $\tilde O (\sqrt{n}/\varepsilon^2)$ queries to a subcube conditional sampling oracle (Bhattacharyya and Chakraborty (2018)).…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-02-08 Clément L. Canonne , Xi Chen , Gautam Kamath , Amit Levi , Erik Waingarten