Related papers: Testing Mixtures of Discrete Distributions
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…
A Poisson Binomial distribution over $n$ variables is the distribution of the sum of $n$ independent Bernoullis. We provide a sample near-optimal algorithm for testing whether a distribution $P$ supported on $\{0,...,n\}$ to which we have…
We investigate the statistical task of closeness (or equivalence) testing for multidimensional distributions. Specifically, given sample access to two unknown distributions $\mathbf p, \mathbf q$ on $\mathbb R^d$, we want to distinguish…
Distribution testing is a fundamental statistical task with many applications, but we are interested in a variety of problems where systematic mislabelings of the sample prevent us from applying the existing theory. To apply distribution…
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…
Given samples from an unknown multivariate distribution $p$, is it possible to distinguish whether $p$ is the product of its marginals versus $p$ being far from every product distribution? Similarly, is it possible to distinguish whether…
Distribution testing can be described as follows: $q$ samples are being drawn from some unknown distribution $P$ over a known domain $[n]$. After the sampling process, a decision must be made about whether $P$ holds some property, or is far…
In this paper, we find a sample complexity bound for learning a simplex from noisy samples. Assume a dataset of size $n$ is given which includes i.i.d. samples drawn from a uniform distribution over an unknown simplex in $\mathbb{R}^K$,…
We give a general unified method that can be used for $L_1$ {\em closeness testing} of a wide range of univariate structured distribution families. More specifically, we design a sample optimal and computationally efficient algorithm for…
The field of property testing of probability distributions, or distribution testing, aims to provide fast and (most likely) correct answers to questions pertaining to specific aspects of very large datasets. In this work, we consider a…
Learning distribution families over $\mathbb{R}^d$ is a fundamental problem in unsupervised learning and statistics. A central question in this setting is whether a given family of distributions possesses sufficient structure to be (at…
We investigate the problem of testing the equivalence between two discrete histograms. A {\em $k$-histogram} over $[n]$ is a probability distribution that is piecewise constant over some set of $k$ intervals over $[n]$. Histograms have been…
Motivated by the question of data quantization and "binning," we revisit the problem of identity testing of discrete probability distributions. Identity testing (a.k.a. one-sample testing), a fundamental and by now well-understood problem…
The sample complexity of simple binary hypothesis testing is the smallest number of i.i.d.\ samples required to distinguish between two distributions $p$ and $q$ in either: (i) the prior-free setting, with type-I error at most $\alpha$ and…
In classical statistics and distribution testing, it is often assumed that elements can be sampled from some distribution $P$, and that when an element $x$ is sampled, the probability $P$ of sampling $x$ is also known. Recent work in…
In this paper we consider the uniformity testing problem for high-dimensional discrete distributions (multinomials) under sparse alternatives. More precisely, we derive sharp detection thresholds for testing, based on $n$ samples, whether a…
Hypothesis testing plays a central role in statistical inference, and is used in many settings where privacy concerns are paramount. This work answers a basic question about privately testing simple hypotheses: given two distributions $P$…
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…
Suppose one has access to oracles generating samples from two unknown probability distributions P and Q on some N-element set. How many samples does one need to test whether the two distributions are close or far from each other in the…
We consider the problem of detecting a small subset of defective items from a large set via non-adaptive "random pooling" group tests. We consider both the case when the measurements are noiseless, and the case when the measurements are…