Related papers: A proof of the Shepp-Olkin entropy concavity conje…

Consider tossing a collection of coins, each fair or biased towards heads, and take the distribution of the total number of heads that result. It is natural to conjecture that this distribution should be 'more random' when each coin is…

Let $ X_1, \ldots, X_n $ be independent random variables taking values in the alphabet $ \{0, 1, \ldots, r\} $, and $ S_n = \sum_{i = 1}^n X_i $. The Shepp--Olkin theorem states that, in the binary case ($ r = 1 $), the Shannon entropy of $…

The classical problem of maximizing the Shannon entropy of a sum of independent random variables supported on a finite alphabet is considered and settled in the ternary case. Namely, the following theorem is established: if…

Building on the recent work of Johnson (2007) and Yu (2008), we prove that entropy is a concave function with respect to the thinning operation T_a. That is, if X and Y are independent random variables on Z_+ with ultra-log-concave…

We introduce a framework to consider transport problems for integer-valued random variables. We introduce weighting coefficients which allow us to characterize transport problems in a gradient flow setting, and form the basis of our…

We consider the entropy of sums of independent discrete random variables, in analogy with Shannon's Entropy Power Inequality, where equality holds for normals. In our case, infinite divisibility suggests that equality should hold for…

We want to find the convex combination $S$ of iid Bernoulli random variables that maximizes $\textbf{P}(S\geq t)$ for a given threshold~$t$. Cs\'oka conjectured that such an $S$ is an average if $t\geq p$, where $p$ is the success…

There are $n$ independent Bernoulli random variables $I_{k}$ with parameters $p_{k}$ that are observed sequentially. We consider a generalization of the Last-Success-Problem considering $w_{k}$ positive payments if the player successfully…

We investigate the R\'enyi entropy of independent sums of integer valued random variables through Fourier theoretic means, and give sharp comparisons between the variance and the R\'enyi entropy, for Poisson-Bernoulli variables. As…

In this paper we improve Bernoulli comparison. The result works for independent Rademacher random variables $(\varepsilon_i)_{i\geq1}$ and states that we can compare $\mathbb{E}\sup_{t\in T}\sum_{i\geq1}\varphi_{i}(t)\varepsilon_i$ with…

We establish several Schur-convexity type results under fixed variance for weighted sums of independent gamma random variables and obtain nonasymptotic bounds on their R\'enyi entropies. In particular, this pertains to the recent results by…

This paper provides a complete proof of Simon-Lukic conjecture for orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle. For a probability measure $d\mu = w(\theta) \frac{d\theta}{2\pi} + d\mu_s$ with Verblunsky coefficients…

We describe five types of results concerning information and concentration of discrete random variables, and relationships between them, motivated by their counterparts in the continuous case. The results we consider are information…

The Boltzmann-Gibbs celebrated entropy $S_{BG}=-k\sum_ip_i \ln p_i$ is {\it concave} (with regard to all probability distributions $\{p_i\}$) and {\it stable} (under arbitrarily small deformations of any given probability distribution). It…

In the present paper we show that in P\'{o}lya's urn model, for an arbitrarily fixed initial distribution of the urn, the corresponding random variables satisfy a convex ordering with respect to the replacement parameter. As an application,…

This paper considers the entropy of the sum of (possibly dependent and non-identically distributed) Bernoulli random variables. Upper bounds on the error that follows from an approximation of this entropy by the entropy of a Poisson random…

Let S_n=X_1+...+X_n be a sum of independent symmetric random variables such that |X_{i}|\leq 1. Denote by W_n=\epsilon_{1}+...+\epsilon_{n} a sum of independent random variables such that \prob{\eps_i = \pm 1} = 1/2. We prove that…

It is well-known that the Shannon entropies of some parameterized probability distributions are concave functions with respect to the parameter. In this paper we consider a family of such distributions (including the binomial, Poisson, and…

We revisit entropic formulations of the uncertainty principle for an arbitrary pair of positive operator-valued measures (POVM) $A$ and $B$, acting on finite dimensional Hilbert space. Salicr\'u generalized $(h,\phi)$-entropies, including…

In this note, we prove a tight lower bound on the joint entropy of $n$ unbiased Bernoulli random variables which are $n/2$-wise independent. For general $k$-wise independence, we give new lower bounds by adapting Navon and Samorodnitsky's…