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Related papers: Testing Identity of Structured Distributions

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We revisit the problem of tolerant distribution testing. That is, given samples from an unknown distribution $p$ over $\{1, \dots, n\}$, is it $\varepsilon_1$-close to or $\varepsilon_2$-far from a reference distribution $q$ (in total…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-11-10 Clément L. Canonne , Ayush Jain , Gautam Kamath , Jerry Li

We study the identity testing problem for high-dimensional distributions. Given as input an explicit distribution $\mu$, an $\varepsilon>0$, and access to sampling oracle(s) for a hidden distribution $\pi$, the goal in identity testing is…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-09-02 Antonio Blanca , Zongchen Chen , Daniel Štefankovič , Eric Vigoda

In multiple classification, one aims to determine whether a testing sequence is generated from the same distribution as one of the M training sequences or not. Unlike most of existing studies that focus on discrete-valued sequences with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-30 Lina Zhu , Lin Zhou

Computing the similarity between two probability distributions is a recurring theme across control. We introduce a unified family of distances between the probability distributions of two random variables that is based on the discrepancy…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-03 Alexandros E. Tzikas , Arec Jamgochian , Nazim Kemal Ure , Mykel J. Kochenderfer , Stephen P. Boyd

A variety of statistics based on sample spacings has been studied in the literature for testing goodness-of-fit to parametric distributions. To test the goodness-of-fit to a nonparametric class of univariate shape-constrained densities,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-10-28 Kwun Chuen Gary Chan , Hok Kan Ling , Chuan-Fa Tang , Sheung Chi Phillip Yam

A test of the concavity of a distribution function with support contained in the unit interval may be based on a statistic constructed from the $L^p$-norm of the difference between an empirical distribution function and its least concave…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-01-25 Brendan K. Beare

We provide improved differentially private algorithms for identity testing of high-dimensional distributions. Specifically, for $d$-dimensional Gaussian distributions with known covariance $\Sigma$, we can test whether the distribution…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Shyam Narayanan

In this work, we give a novel general approach for distribution testing. We describe two techniques: our first technique gives sample-optimal testers, while our second technique gives matching sample lower bounds. As a consequence, we…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-05-10 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane

The objective of goodness-of-fit testing is to assess whether a dataset of observations is likely to have been drawn from a candidate probability distribution. This paper presents a rank-based family of goodness-of-fit tests that is…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-04-18 Feras A. Saad , Cameron E. Freer , Nathanael L. Ackerman , Vikash K. Mansinghka

Distribution testing deals with what information can be deduced about an unknown distribution over $\{1,\ldots,n\}$, where the algorithm is only allowed to obtain a relatively small number of independent samples from the distribution. In…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2016-09-23 Eldar Fischer , Oded Lachish , Yadu Vasudev

We consider the closeness testing problem for discrete distributions. The goal is to distinguish whether two samples are drawn from the same unspecified distribution, or whether their respective distributions are separated in $L_1$-norm. In…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-01-20 Joseph Lam-Weil , Alexandra Carpentier , Bharath K. Sriperumbudur

We study robust testing and estimation of discrete distributions in the strong contamination model. We consider both the "centralized setting" and the "distributed setting with information constraints" including communication and local…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2021-04-23 Jayadev Acharya , Ziteng Sun , Huanyu Zhang

We introduce the problem of \emph{entropy equivalence testing} for probability distributions, a relaxation of the well-studied closeness testing problem, where the distribution testing algorithm is now only required to distinguish, given…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Clément L. Canonne , Yash Pote , Jonathan Scarlett , Joy Qiping Yang

Proposition. Let $f$ be a predictor trained on a distribution $P$ and evaluated on a shifted distribution $Q$. Under verifiable regularity and complexity constraints, the excess risk under shift admits an explicit upper bound determined by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-23 Chandrasekhar Gokavarapu , Sudhakar Gadde , Y. Rajasekhar , S. R. Bhargava

In many fairness and distribution robustness problems, one has access to labeled data from multiple source distributions yet the test data may come from an arbitrary member or a mixture of them. We study the problem of constructing a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-07 Yuqi Yang , Ying Jin

We theoretically analyze the problem of testing for $p$-hacking based on distributions of $p$-values across multiple studies. We provide general results for when such distributions have testable restrictions (are non-increasing) under the…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-05-13 Graham Elliott , Nikolay Kudrin , Kaspar Wuthrich

Uniformity testing is arguably one of the most fundamental distribution testing problems. Given sample access to an unknown distribution $\mathbf{p}$ on $[n]$, one must decide if $\mathbf{p}$ is uniform or $\varepsilon$-far from uniform (in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-16 Sihan Liu , Christopher Ye

Samplers are the backbone of the implementations of any randomised algorithm. Unfortunately, obtaining an efficient algorithm to test the correctness of samplers is very hard to find. Recently, in a series of works, testers like…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Rishiraj Bhattacharyya , Sourav Chakraborty , Yash Pote , Uddalok Sarkar , Sayantan Sen

We give a short and elementary proof of a $(q, \mu, \nu)$-deformed Binomial distribution identity arising in the study of the $(q, \mu, \nu)$-Boson process and the $(q, \mu, \nu)$-TASEP. This identity found by Corwin in [4] was a key…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-02-09 Guillaume Barraquand

In this paper we consider the uniformity testing problem for high-dimensional discrete distributions (multinomials) under sparse alternatives. More precisely, we derive sharp detection thresholds for testing, based on $n$ samples, whether a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-02-17 Bhaswar B. Bhattacharya , Rajarshi Mukherjee