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Calibration$\unicode{x2014}$the problem of ensuring that predicted probabilities align with observed class frequencies$\unicode{x2014}$is a basic desideratum for reliable prediction with machine learning systems. Calibration error is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-02 Eugène Berta , Sacha Braun , David Holzmüller , Francis Bach , Michael I. Jordan

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

When deploying a trained machine learning model in the real world, it is inevitable to receive inputs from out-of-distribution (OOD) sources. For instance, in continual learning settings, it is common to encounter OOD samples due to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-23 Chuanwen Feng , Wenlong Chen , Ao Ke , Yilong Ren , Xike Xie , S. Kevin Zhou

This paper considers a new bootstrap procedure to estimate the distribution of high-dimensional $\ell_p$-statistics, i.e. the $\ell_p$-norms of the sum of $n$ independent $d$-dimensional random vectors with $d \gg n$ and $p \in [1,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-08-18 Alexander Giessing , Jianqing Fan

The approximation of a discrete probability distribution $\mathbf{t}$ by an $M$-type distribution $\mathbf{p}$ is considered. The approximation error is measured by the informational divergence $\mathbb{D}(\mathbf{t}\Vert\mathbf{p})$, which…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2016-07-28 Bernhard C. Geiger , Georg Böcherer

In this paper, we study sequential testing problems with \emph{overlapping} hypotheses. We first focus on the simple problem of assessing if the mean $\mu$ of a Gaussian distribution is smaller or larger than a fixed $\epsilon>0$; if…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-11-19 Aurélien Garivier , Emilie Kaufmann

We propose a new probabilistic characterization of the uniform distribution on the hypersphere in terms of the distribution of pairwise inner products, extending the ideas of \citep{cuesta2009projection,cuesta2007sharp} in a data-driven…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-04-14 Tiefeng Jiang , Tuan Pham

We provide a distribution-free test that can be used to determine whether any two joint distributions $p$ and $q$ are statistically different by inspection of a large enough set of samples. Following recent efforts from Long et al. [1], we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-07-26 Francesco Solera , Andrea Palazzi

In supervised learning one wishes to identify a pattern present in a joint distribution $P$, of instances, label pairs, by providing a function $f$ from instances to labels that has low risk $\mathbb{E}_{P}\ell(y,f(x))$. To do so, the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-07-07 Brendan van Rooyen , Robert C. Williamson

A novel, non-trivial, probabilistic upper bound on the entropy of an unknown one-dimensional distribution, given the support of the distribution and a sample from that distribution, is presented. No knowledge beyond the support of the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2007-07-13 Joseph DeStefano , Erik Learned-Miller

A probability distribution over {-1, 1}^n is (eps, k)-wise uniform if, roughly, it is eps-close to the uniform distribution when restricted to any k coordinates. We consider the problem of how far an (eps, k)-wise uniform distribution can…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Ryan O'Donnell , Yu Zhao

Combining p-values from multiple independent tests is a fundamental task in statistical inference, but presents unique challenges when the p-values are discrete. We extend a recent optimal transport-based framework for combining discrete…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-05 Gonzalo Contador , Zheyang Wu

We study a new framework for property testing of probability distributions, by considering distribution testing algorithms that have access to a conditional sampling oracle.* This is an oracle that takes as input a subset $S \subseteq [N]$…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-01-19 Clement Canonne , Dana Ron , Rocco A. Servedio

We study the problem of learning exponential distributions under differential privacy. Given $n$ i.i.d.\ samples from $\mathrm{Exp}(\lambda)$, the goal is to privately estimate $\lambda$ so that the learned distribution is close in total…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Bar Mahpud , Or Sheffet

We study approximation of the embedding $\ell_p^m \hookrightarrow \ell_q^m$, $1 \leq p < q \leq \infty$, based on randomized algorithms that use up to $n$ arbitrary linear functionals as information on a problem instance where $n \ll m$. By…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-09-22 Robert J. Kunsch , Marcin Wnuk

One of the main contributions of this paper is to illustrate how large deviation theory can be used to determine the equilibrium distribution of a basic droplet model that underlies a number of important models in material science and…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-09-11 Richard S. Ellis , Shlomo Ta'asan

Uniform probability distributions on $\ell_p$ balls and spheres have been studied extensively and are known to behave like product measures in high dimensions. In this note we consider the uniform distribution on the intersection of a…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-09-27 Sourav Chatterjee

Designing learning algorithms that are resistant to perturbations of the underlying data distribution is a problem of wide practical and theoretical importance. We present a general approach to this problem focusing on unsupervised…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-22 Andreas Maurer , Daniela A. Parletta , Andrea Paudice , Massimiliano Pontil

We present new algorithms for estimating and testing \emph{collision probability}, a fundamental measure of the spread of a discrete distribution that is widely used in many scientific fields. We describe an algorithm that satisfies…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-21 Robert Busa-Fekete , Umar Syed

We investigate the statistical task of closeness (or equivalence) testing for multidimensional distributions. Specifically, given sample access to two unknown distributions $\mathbf p, \mathbf q$ on $\mathbb R^d$, we want to distinguish…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-11-23 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Sihan Liu