Related papers: An optimal $(\epsilon,\delta)$-approximation schem…
We study the conditions under which one is able to efficiently apply variance-reduction and acceleration schemes on finite sum optimization problems. First, we show that, perhaps surprisingly, the finite sum structure by itself, is not…
Computing the approximate quantiles or ranks of a stream is a fundamental task in data monitoring. Given a stream of elements $x_1, x_2, \dots, x_n$ and a query $x$, a relative-error quantile estimation algorithm can estimate the rank of…
Recently, Musco and Woodruff (FOCS, 2017) showed that given an $n \times n$ positive semidefinite (PSD) matrix $A$, it is possible to compute a $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate relative-error low-rank approximation to $A$ by querying…
We obtain bounds to quantify the distributional approximation in the delta method for vector statistics (the sample mean of $n$ independent random vectors) for normal and non-normal limits, measured using smooth test functions. For normal…
Approximating distributions from their samples is a canonical statistical-learning problem. One of its most powerful and successful modalities approximates every distribution to an $\ell_1$ distance essentially at most a constant times…
When reporting the results of clinical studies, some researchers may choose the five-number summary (including the sample median, the first and third quartiles, and the minimum and maximum values) rather than the sample mean and standard…
We construct a quasi-polynomial time deterministic approximation algorithm for computing the volume of an independent set polytope with restrictions. Randomized polynomial time approximation algorithms for computing the volume of a convex…
Consider the problem of minimizing the expected value of a (possibly nonconvex) cost function parameterized by a random (vector) variable, when the expectation cannot be computed accurately (e.g., because the statistics of the random…
We provide an efficient unified plug-in approach for estimating symmetric properties of distributions given $n$ independent samples. Our estimator is based on profile-maximum-likelihood (PML) and is sample optimal for estimating various…
In this paper, we propose a method to approximate the Gaussian function on ${\mathbb R}$ by a short cosine sum. We generalise and extend the differential approximation method proposed in [4, 40] to approximate $\mathrm{e}^{-t^{2}/2\sigma}$…
We consider the problem of distributed mean estimation (DME), in which $n$ machines are each given a local $d$-dimensional vector $x_v \in \mathbb{R}^d$, and must cooperate to estimate the mean of their inputs $\mu = \frac 1n\sum_{v = 1}^n…
Most of the modern literature on robust mean estimation focuses on designing estimators which obtain optimal sub-Gaussian concentration bounds under minimal moment assumptions and sometimes also assuming contamination. This work looks at…
We consider the problem of recovering a vector $\beta_o \in \mathbb{R}^p$ from $n$ random and noisy linear observations $y= X\beta_o + w$, where $X$ is the measurement matrix and $w$ is noise. The LASSO estimate is given by the solution to…
We study linear chance-constrained problems where the coefficients follow a Gaussian mixture distribution. We provide mixed-binary quadratic programs that give inner and outer approximations of the chance constraint based on piecewise…
Consider the Maximum Weight Independent Set problem for rectangles: given a family of weighted axis-parallel rectangles in the plane, find a maximum-weight subset of non-overlapping rectangles. The problem is notoriously hard both in the…
A sliding window algorithm receives a stream of symbols and has to output at each time instant a certain value which only depends on the last $n$ symbols. If the algorithm is randomized, then at each time instant it produces an incorrect…
For probability distributions on $\mathbb{R}^n$, we study the optimal sample size N = N(n,p) that suffices to uniformly approximate the pth moments of all one-dimensional marginals. Under the assumption that the marginals have bounded 4p…
In this article, we consider Poisson and Poisson convoluted geometric approximation to the sums of $n$ independent random variables under moment conditions. We use Stein's method to derive the approximation results in total variation…
A non trivial problem that arises in several applications is the estimation of the mean of a truncated normal distribution. In this paper, an iterative deterministic scheme for approximating this mean is proposed. It has been inspired from…
In this paper we study algorithms to find a Gaussian approximation to a target measure defined on a Hilbert space of functions; the target measure itself is defined via its density with respect to a reference Gaussian measure. We employ the…