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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…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-04-28 Ruth Heller , Yair Heller , Shachar Kaufman , Barak Brill , Malka Gorfine

In the uniformity testing task, an algorithm is provided with samples from an unknown probability distribution over a (known) finite domain, and must decide whether it is the uniform distribution, or, alternatively, if its total variation…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Guy Blanc , Clément L. Canonne , Erik Waingarten

We initiate a systematic investigation of distribution testing in the framework of algorithmic replicability. Specifically, given independent samples from a collection of probability distributions, the goal is to characterize the sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-04 Ilias Diakonikolas , Jingyi Gao , Daniel Kane , Sihan Liu , Christopher Ye

We consider the problem of closeness testing for two discrete distributions in the practically relevant setting of \emph{unequal} sized samples drawn from each of them. Specifically, given a target error parameter $\varepsilon > 0$, $m_1$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-04-20 Bhaswar B. Bhattacharya , Gregory Valiant

We study a hypothesis testing problem in which data is compressed distributively and sent to a detector that seeks to decide between two possible distributions for the data. The aim is to characterize all achievable encoding rates and…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2011-02-01 Md. Saifur Rahman , Aaron B. Wagner

We study the general problem of testing whether an unknown distribution belongs to a specified family of distributions. More specifically, given a distribution family $\mathcal{P}$ and sample access to an unknown discrete distribution…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-08-09 Clément L. Canonne , Ilias Diakonikolas , Alistair Stewart

One of the most fundamental problems in distribution testing is the identity testing problem: given samples $x_1,\ldots,x_s$, the goal is to determine whether the samples are drawn from a target distribution $\mathcal{D}$. When…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-15 Bruno Cavalar , Eli Goldin , Matthew Gray , Taiga Hiroka , Min-Hsiu Hsieh , Tomoyuki Morimae

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-26 Rayen Tan , Viswanath Nagarajan

Conditional independence testing is a fundamental problem underlying causal discovery and a particularly challenging task in the presence of nonlinear and high-dimensional dependencies. Here a fully non-parametric test for continuous data…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-09-06 Jakob Runge

We introduce a new statistical test based on the observed spacings of ordered data. The statistic is sensitive to detect non-uniformity in random samples, or short-lived features in event time series. Under some conditions, this new test…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-10-27 Philipp Eller , Lolian Shtembari

Given a discrete-valued sample $X_1,...,X_n$ we wish to decide whether it was generated by a distribution belonging to a family $H_0$, or it was generated by a distribution belonging to a family $H_1$. In this work we assume that all…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-12-30 Daniil Ryabko

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-06-27 Yash Pote , Kuldeep S. Meel

Recently, there has been significant work studying distribution testing under the Conditional Sampling model. In this model, a query specifies a subset $S$ of the domain, and the output received is a sample drawn from the distribution…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-11-05 Shyam Narayanan

The classic problems of testing uniformity of and learning a discrete distribution, given access to independent samples from it, are examined under general $\ell_p$ metrics. The intuitions and results often contrast with the classic…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-03-24 Bo Waggoner

In this work we present novel differentially private identity (goodness-of-fit) testers for natural and widely studied classes of multivariate product distributions: Gaussians in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with known covariance and product…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-03-07 Clément L. Canonne , Gautam Kamath , Audra McMillan , Jonathan Ullman , Lydia Zakynthinou

We study the problem of testing the covariance matrix of a high-dimensional Gaussian in a robust setting, where the input distribution has been corrupted in Huber's contamination model. Specifically, we are given i.i.d. samples from a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane

We study the following distribution clustering problem: Given a hidden partition of $k$ distributions into two groups, such that the distributions within each group are the same, and the two distributions associated with the two clusters…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-12-10 Gunjan Kumar , Yash Pote , Jonathan Scarlett

We prove a strong concentration result about the natural collision estimator, which counts the number of collisions that occur within an iid sample. This estimator is at the heart of algorithms used for uniformity testing and entropy…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2020-06-26 Maciej Skorski

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 study the problem of testing identity against a given distribution with a focus on the high confidence regime. More precisely, given samples from an unknown distribution $p$ over $n$ elements, an explicitly given distribution $q$, and…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-01-17 Ilias Diakonikolas , Themis Gouleakis , John Peebles , Eric Price