Related papers: Average Bias and Polynomial Sources

We consider the problem of extracting randomness from \textit{sumset sources}, a general class of weak sources introduced by Chattopadhyay and Li (STOC, 2016). An $(n,k,C)$-sumset source $\mathbf{X}$ is a distribution on $\{0,1\}^n$ of the…

We explicitly construct the first nontrivial extractors for degree $d \ge 2$ polynomial sources over $\mathbb{F}_2^n$. Our extractor requires min-entropy $k\geq n - \tilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{\log n})$. Previously, no constructions were known,…

Consider the problem of estimating the Shannon entropy of a distribution over $k$ elements from $n$ independent samples. We show that the minimax mean-square error is within universal multiplicative constant factors of $$\Big(\frac{k }{n…

A degree-$d$ polynomial $p$ in $n$ variables over a field $\F$ is {\em equidistributed} if it takes on each of its $|\F|$ values close to equally often, and {\em biased} otherwise. We say that $p$ has a {\em low rank} if it can be expressed…

The average properties of the well-known Subset Sum Problem can be studied by the means of its randomised version, where we are given a target value $z$, random variables $X_1, \ldots, X_n$, and an error parameter $\varepsilon > 0$, and we…

We represent affine sub-manifolds of exponential family distributions as minimum relative entropy sub-manifolds. With such representation we derive analytical formulas for the inference from partial information on expectations and…

We provide a lower bound on the probability that a binomial random variable is exceeding its mean. Our proof employs estimates on the mean absolute deviation and the tail conditional expectation of binomial random variables.

We prove that random low-degree polynomials (over $\mathbb{F}_2$) are unbiased, in an extremely general sense. That is, we show that random low-degree polynomials are good randomness extractors for a wide class of distributions. Prior to…

We generalise the known fact that for binomial $X_{n,k} \sim \mathrm{Bin}(n, k/n)$ one has $\inf_{k>1,n} \mathrm{P}(X_{n,k} \geq k) \geq \lim_{k \to 1+}\mathrm{P}(X_{2,k} \geq k) = 1/4$ to cover probabilities of exceeding a constant shift…

This paper introduces \emph{biased mean regression}, estimating the \emph{biased mean}, i.e., $\mathbb{E}[Y] + x$, where $x \in \mathbb{R}$. The approach addresses a fundamental statistical problem that covers numerous applications. For…

De, Trevisan and Tulsiani [CRYPTO 2010] show that every distribution over $n$-bit strings which has constant statistical distance to uniform (e.g., the output of a pseudorandom generator mapping $n-1$ to $n$ bit strings), can be…

The sample mean is often used to aggregate different unbiased estimates of a parameter, producing a final estimate that is unbiased but possibly high-variance. This paper introduces the Bayesian median of means, an aggregation rule that…

Two-sample inference for the difference of population means typically relies upon a Central Limit Theorem approximation. When data are drawn from a Negative Binomial distribution, previous work of Shilane et al. (2010) showed that a Normal…

The weak law of large numbers implies that, under mild assumptions on the source, the Renyi entropy per produced symbol converges (in probability) towards the Shannon entropy rate. This paper quantifies the speed of this convergence for…

This paper proposes a Bayesian method for estimating the parameters of a normal distribution when only limited summary statistics (sample mean, minimum, maximum, and sample size) are available. To estimate the parameters of a normal…

In classical random matrix theory the Gaussian and chiral Gaussian random matrix models with a source are realized as shifted mean Gaussian, and chiral Gaussian, random matrices with real $(\beta = 1)$, complex ($\beta = 2)$ and real…

We propose a new model of a weakly random source that admits randomness extraction. Our model of additive sources includes such natural sources as uniform distributions on arithmetic progressions (APs), generalized arithmetic progressions…

In this note, we show that the relative entropy of an empirical distribution of $n$ samples drawn from a set of size $k$ with respect to the true underlying distribution is exponentially concentrated around its expectation, with central…

Maximum entropy method is a constructive criterion for setting up a probability distribution maximally non-committal to missing information on the basis of partial knowledge, usually stated as constrains on expectation values of some…

The bias of an estimator is defined as the difference of its expected value from the parameter to be estimated, where the expectation is with respect to the model. Loosely speaking, small bias reflects the desire that if an experiment is…