Related papers: Learning $k$-Modal Distributions via Testing
We give highly efficient algorithms, and almost matching lower bounds, for a range of basic statistical problems that involve testing and estimating the L_1 distance between two k-modal distributions $p$ and $q$ over the discrete domain…
Let $p$ be an unknown and arbitrary probability distribution over $[0,1)$. We consider the problem of {\em density estimation}, in which a learning algorithm is given i.i.d. draws from $p$ and must (with high probability) output a…
We investigate the problem of testing whether a discrete probability distribution over an ordered domain is a histogram on a specified number of bins. One of the most common tools for the succinct approximation of data, $k$-histograms over…
Let $\mathfrak{C}$ be a class of probability distributions over the discrete domain $[n] = \{1,...,n\}.$ We show that if $\mathfrak{C}$ satisfies a rather general condition -- essentially, that each distribution in $\mathfrak{C}$ can be…
We study the {\em robust proper learning} of univariate log-concave distributions (over continuous and discrete domains). Given a set of samples drawn from an unknown target distribution, we want to compute a log-concave hypothesis…
Given samples from an unknown distribution $p$, is it possible to distinguish whether $p$ belongs to some class of distributions $\mathcal{C}$ versus $p$ being far from every distribution in $\mathcal{C}$? This fundamental question has…
We study the problem of robustly learning multi-dimensional histograms. A $d$-dimensional function $h: D \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is called a $k$-histogram if there exists a partition of the domain $D \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ into $k$…
We give an algorithm for learning a mixture of {\em unstructured} distributions. This problem arises in various unsupervised learning scenarios, for example in learning {\em topic models} from a corpus of documents spanning several topics.…
We consider the problem of learning a discrete distribution in the presence of an $\epsilon$ fraction of malicious data sources. Specifically, we consider the setting where there is some underlying distribution, $p$, and each data source…
We study three fundamental statistical-learning problems: distribution estimation, property estimation, and property testing. We establish the profile maximum likelihood (PML) estimator as the first unified sample-optimal approach to a wide…
We study the problem of learning junta distributions on $\{0, 1\}^n$, where a distribution is a $k$-junta if its probability mass function depends on a subset of at most $k$ variables. We make two main contributions: - We show that learning…
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…
We give a highly efficient "semi-agnostic" algorithm for learning univariate probability distributions that are well approximated by piecewise polynomial density functions. Let $p$ be an arbitrary distribution over an interval $I$ which is…
We give a general unified method that can be used for $L_1$ {\em closeness testing} of a wide range of univariate structured distribution families. More specifically, we design a sample optimal and computationally efficient algorithm for…
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,…
The $k$-of-$n$ testing problem involves performing $n$ independent tests sequentially, in order to determine whether/not at least $k$ tests pass. The objective is to minimize the expected cost of testing. This is a fundamental and…
This paper addresses the problem of approximating an unknown probability distribution with density $f$ -- which can only be evaluated up to an unknown scaling factor -- with the help of a sequential algorithm that produces at each iteration…
We consider the following basic learning task: given independent draws from an unknown distribution over a discrete support, output an approximation of the distribution that is as accurate as possible in $\ell_1$ distance (i.e. total…
We consider a basic problem in unsupervised learning: learning an unknown \emph{Poisson Binomial Distribution}. A Poisson Binomial Distribution (PBD) over $\{0,1,\dots,n\}$ is the distribution of a sum of $n$ independent Bernoulli random…
We study the problem of learning from unlabeled samples very general statistical mixture models on large finite sets. Specifically, the model to be learned, $\vartheta$, is a probability distribution over probability distributions $p$,…