Related papers: Optimal Algorithms and Lower Bounds for Testing Cl…
We introduce and study the computational problem of determining statistical similarity between probability distributions. For distributions $P$ and $Q$ over a finite sample space, their statistical similarity is defined as…
The problem of accurate nonparametric estimation of distributional functionals (integral functionals of one or more probability distributions) has received recent interest due to their wide applicability in signal processing, information…
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,…
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…
Distribution testing is a fundamental statistical task with many applications, but we are interested in a variety of problems where systematic mislabelings of the sample prevent us from applying the existing theory. To apply distribution…
We study the problem of testing, using only a single sample, between mean field distributions (like Curie-Weiss, Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi) and structured Gibbs distributions (like Ising model on sparse graphs and Exponential Random Graphs). Our…
In the hypothesis selection problem, we are given sample and query access to finite set of candidate distributions (hypotheses), $\mathcal{H} = \{H_1, \ldots, H_n\}$, and samples from an unknown distribution $P$, both over a domain…
The k-nearest-neighbour procedure is a well-known deterministic method used in supervised classification. This paper proposes a reassessment of this approach as a statistical technique derived from a proper probabilistic model; in…
This paper addresses a fundamental problem in random variate generation: given access to a random source that emits a stream of independent fair bits, what is the most accurate and entropy-efficient algorithm for sampling from a discrete…
In this paper we study the problem of testing of constrained samplers over high-dimensional distributions with $(\varepsilon,\eta,\delta)$ guarantees. Samplers are increasingly used in a wide range of safety-critical ML applications, and…
In this work, we revisit the one- and two-sample testing problems: binary hypothesis testing in which one or both distributions are unknown. For the one-sample test, we provide a more streamlined proof of the asymptotic optimality of…
We present an algorithm for testing halfspaces over arbitrary, unknown rotation-invariant distributions. Using $\tilde O(\sqrt{n}\epsilon^{-7})$ random examples of an unknown function $f$, the algorithm determines with high probability…
A popular approach for testing if two univariate random variables are statistically independent consists of partitioning the sample space into bins, and evaluating a test statistic on the binned data. The partition size matters, and the…
Analyzing high-dimensional data with manifold learning algorithms often requires searching for the nearest neighbors of all observations. This presents a computational bottleneck in statistical manifold learning when observations of…
Given samples from an unknown multivariate distribution $p$, is it possible to distinguish whether $p$ is the product of its marginals versus $p$ being far from every product distribution? Similarly, is it possible to distinguish whether…
This paper presents how to perform minimax optimal classification, regression, and density estimation based on fixed-$k$ nearest neighbor (NN) searches. We consider a distributed learning scenario, in which a massive dataset is split into…
We study active structure learning of Bayesian networks in an observational setting, in which there are external limitations on the number of variable values that can be observed from the same sample. Random samples are drawn from the joint…
Let $\mathbf{X} = (X_i)_{1\leq i \leq n}$ be an i.i.d. sample of square-integrable variables in $\mathbb{R}^d$, \GB{with common expectation $\mu$ and covariance matrix $\Sigma$, both unknown.} We consider the problem of testing if $\mu$ is…
This paper concerns a method of testing equality of distribution of random convex compact sets and the way how to use the test to distinguish between two realisations of general random sets. The family of metrics on the space of…
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 $S \subseteq [N]$…