English
Related papers

Related papers: Distances between distributions via Stein's method

200 papers

We propose a general purpose variational inference algorithm that forms a natural counterpart of gradient descent for optimization. Our method iteratively transports a set of particles to match the target distribution, by applying a form of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-10 Qiang Liu , Dilin Wang

We prove abstract bounds on the Wasserstein and Kolmogorov distances between non-randomly centered random sums of real i.i.d. random variables with a finite third moment and the standard normal distribution. Except for the case of mean zero…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-11-20 Christian Döbler

Stochastic diffusion equations are crucial for modeling a range of physical phenomena influenced by uncertainties. We introduce the generalized finite difference method for solving these equations. Then, we examine its consistency,…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-11-22 Faezeh Nassajian Mojarrad

We present, in a unified way, a Stein methodology for infinitely divisible laws (without Gaussian component) having finite first moment. Based on a correlation representation, we obtain a characterizing non-local Stein operator which boils…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-04-08 Benjamin Arras , Christian Houdré

An important task in computational statistics and machine learning is to approximate a posterior distribution $p(x)$ with an empirical measure supported on a set of representative points $\{x_i\}_{i=1}^n$. This paper focuses on methods…

Edgeworth expansion provides higher-order corrections to the normal approximation for a probability distribution. The classical proof of Edgeworth expansion is via characteristic functions. As a powerful method for distributional…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-11-09 Xiao Fang , Song-Hao Liu

Stein's method (Stein, 1973; 1981) is a powerful tool for statistical applications and has significantly impacted machine learning. Stein's lemma plays an essential role in Stein's method. Previous applications of Stein's lemma either…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-04 Wu Lin , Mohammad Emtiyaz Khan , Mark Schmidt

We study the problem of estimating a sequence of evolving probability distributions from historical data, where the underlying distribution changes over time in a nonstationary and nonparametric manner. To capture gradual changes, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-16 Edward J. Anderson , Dominic S. T. Keehan

The Wasserstein distance is an attractive tool for data analysis but statistical inference is hindered by the lack of distributional limits. To overcome this obstacle, for probability measures supported on finitely many points, we derive…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-04-27 Max Sommerfeld , Axel Munk

We use Stein's method to obtain a bound on the distance between scaled $p$-dimensional random walks and a $p$-dimensional (correlated) Brownian Motion. We consider dependence schemes including those in which the summands in scaled sums are…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-06-09 Mikołaj J. Kasprzak

In this paper, we address the classification of instances each characterized not by a singular point, but by a distribution on a vector space. We employ the Wasserstein metric to measure distances between distributions, which are then used…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-27 Jia Li , Lin Lin

The generalized hyperbolic (GH) distributions form a five parameter family of probability distributions that includes many standard distributions as special or limiting cases, such as the generalized inverse Gaussian distribution, Student's…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-12-15 Robert E. Gaunt

We completely characterize the class of univariate distributions allowing for a Stein kernel and illustrate our result by means of some concrete distributions. Moreover, we apply our findings to prove a quantitative version of the central…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-02-19 Christian Döbler

Many variants of the Wasserstein distance have been introduced to reduce its original computational burden. In particular the Sliced-Wasserstein distance (SW), which leverages one-dimensional projections for which a closed-form solution of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-31 Clément Bonet , Paul Berg , Nicolas Courty , François Septier , Lucas Drumetz , Minh-Tan Pham

Stein's identity is a fundamental tool in machine learning with applications in generative models, stochastic optimization, and other problems involving gradients of expectations under Gaussian distributions. Less attention has been paid to…

We discuss Stein's method for approximation by the stationary distribution of a single-birth Markov chain, in conjunction with stochastic monotonicity and similar assumptions. We use bounds on the increments of the solution of Poisson's…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-11-08 Fraser Daly

We address the problem of efficiently computing Wasserstein distances for multiple pairs of distributions drawn from a meta-distribution. To this end, we propose a fast estimation method based on regressing Wasserstein distance on sliced…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-04 Khai Nguyen , Hai Nguyen , Nhat Ho

We establish inequalities that compare the p-Wasserstein distance to distances which are built as suprema of box measures. More precisely, when the measures are supported on $[0,1]^d$, we obtain sharp upper-bounds of the $p$-Wasserstein…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-05-06 Gilles Pagès , Fabien Panloup

Many spatial models exhibit locality structures that effectively reduce their intrinsic dimensionality, enabling efficient approximation and sampling of high-dimensional distributions. However, existing approximation techniques primarily…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-02 Tiangang Cui , Shuigen Liu , Xin T. Tong

We introduce a distributionally robust maximum likelihood estimation model with a Wasserstein ambiguity set to infer the inverse covariance matrix of a $p$-dimensional Gaussian random vector from $n$ independent samples. The proposed model…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-05-21 Viet Anh Nguyen , Daniel Kuhn , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani