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Related papers: How Hard Is Robust Mean Estimation?

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We consider the problem of robust polynomial regression, where one receives samples $(x_i, y_i)$ that are usually within $\sigma$ of a polynomial $y = p(x)$, but have a $\rho$ chance of being arbitrary adversarial outliers. Previously, it…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-08-11 Daniel Kane , Sushrut Karmalkar , Eric Price

We study the problem of robustly estimating the mean or location parameter without moment assumptions. We show that for a large class of symmetric distributions, the same error as in the Gaussian setting can be achieved efficiently. The…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-11-09 Gleb Novikov , David Steurer , Stefan Tiegel

We resolve one of the major outstanding problems in robust statistics. In particular, if $X$ is an evenly weighted mixture of two arbitrary $d$-dimensional Gaussians, we devise a polynomial time algorithm that given access to samples from…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-07-14 Daniel M. Kane

In this paper we initiate the study of whether or not sparse estimation tasks can be performed efficiently in high dimensions, in the robust setting where an $\eps$-fraction of samples are corrupted adversarially. We study the natural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-03-02 Jerry Li

We present a fast, differentially private algorithm for high-dimensional covariance-aware mean estimation with nearly optimal sample complexity. Only exponential-time estimators were previously known to achieve this guarantee. Given $n$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Gavin Brown , Samuel B. Hopkins , Adam Smith

We consider the problem of estimating the mean of a random vector based on i.i.d. observations and adversarial contamination. We introduce a multivariate extension of the trimmed-mean estimator and show its optimal performance under minimal…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-02-25 Gabor Lugosi , Shahar Mendelson

For many inference problems in statistics and econometrics, the unknown parameter is identified by a set of moment conditions. A generic method of solving moment conditions is the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). However, classical GMM…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-18 Dhruv Rohatgi , Vasilis Syrgkanis

We give the first polynomial time and sample $(\epsilon, \delta)$-differentially private (DP) algorithm to estimate the mean, covariance and higher moments in the presence of a constant fraction of adversarial outliers. Our algorithm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-12-08 Pravesh K. Kothari , Pasin Manurangsi , Ameya Velingker

We study robust estimators of the mean of a probability measure $P$, called robust empirical mean estimators. This elementary construction is then used to revisit a problem of aggregation and a problem of estimator selection, extending…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-07-05 M. Lerasle , R. I. Oliveira

We study the problem of high-dimensional robust linear regression where a learner is given access to $n$ samples from the generative model $Y = \langle X,w^* \rangle + \epsilon$ (with $X \in \mathbb{R}^d$ and $\epsilon$ independent), in…

Many modern datasets are collected automatically and are thus easily contaminated by outliers. This led to a regain of interest in robust estimation, including new notions of robustness such as robustness to adversarial contamination of the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-05-05 Pierre Alquier , Mathieu Gerber

Randomized smoothing is a popular certified defense against adversarial attacks. In its essence, we need to solve a problem of statistical estimation which is usually very time-consuming since we need to perform numerous (usually $10^5$)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-22 Vaclav Voracek

We obtain robust and computationally efficient estimators for learning several linear models that achieve statistically optimal convergence rate under minimal distributional assumptions. Concretely, we assume our data is drawn from a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-12-07 Ainesh Bakshi , Adarsh Prasad

The best subset selection (or "best subsets") estimator is a classic tool for sparse regression, and developments in mathematical optimization over the past decade have made it more computationally tractable than ever. Notwithstanding its…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-01-11 Ryan Thompson

We study the task of high-dimensional entangled mean estimation in the subset-of-signals model. Specifically, given $N$ independent random points $x_1,\ldots,x_N$ in $\mathbb{R}^D$ and a parameter $\alpha \in (0, 1)$ such that each $x_i$ is…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-01-10 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Sihan Liu , Thanasis Pittas

We propose an estimator for the mean of a random vector in $\mathbb{R}^d$ that can be computed in time $O(n^4+n^2d)$ for $n$ i.i.d.~samples and that has error bounds matching the sub-Gaussian case. The only assumptions we make about the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-02-07 Yeshwanth Cherapanamjeri , Nicolas Flammarion , Peter L. Bartlett

We consider the problem of mean estimation assuming only finite variance. We study a new class of mean estimators constructed by integrating over random noise applied to a soft-truncated empirical mean estimator. For appropriate choices of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-06-26 Matthew J. Holland

In this work, we give efficient algorithms for privately estimating a Gaussian distribution in both pure and approximate differential privacy (DP) models with optimal dependence on the dimension in the sample complexity. In the pure DP…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-06-02 Daniel Alabi , Pravesh K. Kothari , Pranay Tankala , Prayaag Venkat , Fred Zhang

We study the problem of high-dimensional linear regression in a robust model where an $\epsilon$-fraction of the samples can be adversarially corrupted. We focus on the fundamental setting where the covariates of the uncorrupted samples are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-04 Ilias Diakonikolas , Weihao Kong , Alistair Stewart

There is growing interest in improving our algorithmic understanding of fundamental statistical problems such as mean estimation, driven by the goal of understanding the limits of what we can extract from valuable data. The state of the art…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-11-22 Trung Dang , Jasper C. H. Lee , Maoyuan Song , Paul Valiant