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We uncover connections between maximum likelihood estimation in statistics and norm minimization over a group orbit in invariant theory. We focus on Gaussian transformation families, which include matrix normal models and Gaussian graphical…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-08-24 Carlos Améndola , Kathlén Kohn , Philipp Reichenbach , Anna Seigal

Optimal transport induces the Earth Mover's (Wasserstein) distance between probability distributions, a geometric divergence that is relevant to a wide range of problems. Over the last decade, two relaxations of optimal transport have been…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-01-18 Thibault Séjourné , Jean Feydy , François-Xavier Vialard , Alain Trouvé , Gabriel Peyré

Optimal transport (OT) provides powerful tools for comparing probability measures in various types. The Wasserstein distance which arises naturally from the idea of OT is widely used in many machine learning applications. Unfortunately,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-03 Shu Liu , Haodong Sun , Hongyuan Zha

We present a bipartite network model that captures intermediate stages of optimization by blending the Maximum Entropy approach with Optimal Transport. In this framework, the network's constraints define the total mass each node can supply…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-02-05 Lorenzo Buffa , Dario Mazzilli , Riccardo Piombo , Fabio Saracco , Giulio Cimini , Aurelio Patelli

We address the problem of identifying the dynamical law governing the evolution of a population of indistinguishable particles, when only aggregate distributions at successive times are observed. Assuming a Markovian evolution on a discrete…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-21 Michele Mascherpa , Axel Ringh , Amirhossein Taghvaei , Johan Karlsson

In this work, we develop a collection of novel methods for the entropic-regularised optimal transport problem, which are inspired by existing mirror descent interpretations of the Sinkhorn algorithm used for solving this problem. These are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-17 Vishwak Srinivasan , Qijia Jiang

Recently, Optimal Transport has been proposed as a probabilistic framework in Machine Learning for comparing and manipulating probability distributions. This is rooted in its rich history and theory, and has offered new solutions to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-22 Eduardo Fernandes Montesuma , Fred Ngolè Mboula , Antoine Souloumiac

Optimal transport has become part of the standard quantitative economics toolbox. It is the framework of choice to describe models of matching with transfers, but beyond that, it allows to: extend quantile regression; identify discrete…

General Economics · Economics 2021-07-13 Alfred Galichon

Density deconvolution is the task of estimating a probability density function given only noise-corrupted samples. We can fit a Gaussian mixture model to the underlying density by maximum likelihood if the noise is normally distributed, but…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-14 Tim Dockhorn , James A. Ritchie , Yaoliang Yu , Iain Murray

The maximum likelihood strategy to the estimation of group parameters allows to derive in a general fashion optimal measurements, optimal signal states, and their relations with other information theoretical quantities. These results…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-04-02 G. Chiribella , G. M. D'Ariano , P. Perinotti , M. F. Sacchi

A novel algorithm is proposed to solve the sample-based optimal transport problem. An adversarial formulation of the push-forward condition uses a test function built as a convolution between an adaptive kernel and an evolving probability…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-11 Daeyoung Kim , Esteban G. Tabak

We describe a method to computationally estimate the probability density function of a univariate random variable by applying the maximum entropy principle with some local conditions given by Gaussian functions. The estimation errors and…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-06-21 Mihail-Ioan Pop

This article gives an introduction to optimal transport, a mathematical theory that makes it possible to measure distances between functions (or distances between more general objects), to interpolate between objects or to enforce…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2017-10-10 Bruno Levy , Erica Schwindt

We introduce the Gaussian transform (GT), an optimal transport inspired iterative method for denoising and enhancing latent structures in datasets. Under the hood, GT generates a new distance function (GT distance) on a given dataset by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Kun Jin , Facundo Mémoli , Zhengchao Wan

Optimal Transport has received much attention in Machine Learning as it allows to compare probability distributions by exploiting the geometry of the underlying space. However, in its original formulation, solving this problem suffers from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-27 Clément Bonet

We study the problem of estimating, in the sense of optimal transport metrics, a measure which is assumed supported on a manifold embedded in a Hilbert space. By establishing a precise connection between optimal transport metrics, optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-09-06 Guillermo D. Canas , Lorenzo Rosasco

Machine learning systems operate under the assumption that training and test data are sampled from a fixed probability distribution. However, this assumptions is rarely verified in practice, as the conditions upon which data was acquired…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-09 Eduardo Fernandes Montesuma , Fred Maurice Ngolè Mboula , Antoine Souloumiac

Optimal transport provides a metric which quantifies the dissimilarity between probability measures. For measures supported in discrete metric spaces, finding the optimal transport distance has cubic time complexity in the size of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-30 Samantha Chen , Puoya Tabaghi , Yusu Wang

Several problems in machine learning are naturally expressed as the design and analysis of time-evolving probability distributions. This includes sampling via diffusion methods, optimizing the weights of neural networks, and analyzing the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Gabriel Peyré

We develop a computationally tractable method for estimating the optimal map between two distributions over $\mathbb{R}^d$ with rigorous finite-sample guarantees. Leveraging an entropic version of Brenier's theorem, we show that our…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-05-14 Aram-Alexandre Pooladian , Jonathan Niles-Weed