Related papers: Tight tail probability bounds for distribution-fre…
In this paper we consider the problem of obtaining sharp bounds for the performance of temporal difference (TD) methods with linear function approximation for policy evaluation in discounted Markov decision processes. We show that a simple…
Known Bernstein-type upper bounds on the tail probabilities for sums of independent zero-mean sub-exponential random variables are improved in several ways at once. The new upper bounds have a certain optimality property.
We consider a multivariate distributional recursion of sum-type as arising in the probabilistic analysis of algorithms and random trees. We prove an upper tail bound for the solution using Chernoff's bounding technique by estimating the…
A common bottleneck in evaluating extremal performance measures is that, due to their very nature, tail data are often very limited. The conventional approach selects the best probability distribution from tail data using parametric…
We establish upper and lower bounds with matching leading terms for tails of weighted sums of two-sided exponential random variables. This extends Janson's recent results for one-sided exponentials.
We study the almost surely finite random variable $S$ defined by the distributional fixed-point equation \[ S \stackrel{d}{=} 1 + \max\{US', (1-U)S''\}, \qquad U \sim \mathrm{Unif}(0,1), \] where $S'$ and $S''$ are independent copies of…
The exact expression for the probability density $p_{_N}(x)$ for sums of a finite number $N$ of random independent terms is obtained. It is shown that the very tail of $p_{_N}(x)$ has a Gaussian form if and only if all the random terms are…
We introduce a method to estimate simultaneously the tail and the threshold parameters of an extreme value regression model. This standard model finds its use in finance to assess the effect of market variables on extreme loss distributions…
Probabilistic forecasts comprehensively describe the uncertainty in the unknown future outcome, making them essential for decision making and risk management. While several methods have been introduced to evaluate probabilistic forecasts,…
We show an extension of Sanov's theorem on large deviations, controlling the tail probabilities of i.i.d. random variables with matching concentration and anti-concentration bounds. This result has a general scope, applies to samples of any…
It is shown that at least 50% of the probability mass of a sum of independent Rademacher random variables is within one standard deviation from its mean. This lower bound is sharp, it is much better than for instance the bound that can be…
In this paper we present a tail inequality for the maximum of partial sums of a weakly dependent sequence of random variables that are not necessarily bounded. The class considered includes geometrically and subgeometrically strongly mixing…
We derive in this article the asymptotic behavior as well as non-asymptotical estimates of tail of distribution for self-normalized sums of random variables (r.v.) under natural classical norming. We investigate also the case of…
We study a tight Bennett-type concentration inequality for sums of heterogeneous and independent variables, defined as a one-dimensional minimization. We show that this refinement, which outperforms the standard known bounds, remains…
Using tail bounds, we introduce a new probabilistic condition for function estimation in stochastic derivative-free optimization which leads to a reduction in the number of samples and eases algorithmic analyses. Moreover, we develop simple…
This paper presents new probability inequalities for sums of independent, random, self-adjoint matrices. These results place simple and easily verifiable hypotheses on the summands, and they deliver strong conclusions about the…
A variant of the well-known Chebyshev inequality for scalar random variables can be formulated in the case where the mean and variance are estimated from samples. In this paper we present a generalization of this result to multiple…
We present a method for upper and lower bounding the right and the left tail probabilities of continuous random variables (RVs). For the right tail probability of RV $X$ with probability density function $f (x)$, this method requires first…
Let $(\xi_i)_{i=1,...,n}$ be a sequence of independent and symmetric random variables. We consider the upper bounds on tail probabilities of self-normalized deviations $$ \mathbf{P} \Big( \max_{1\leq k \leq n} \sum_{i=1}^{k} |\xi_i|\big/…
This paper addresses the statistical problem of estimating the infinite-norm deviation from the empirical mean to the distribution mean for high-dimensional distributions on $\{0,1\}^d$, potentially with $d=\infty$. Unlike traditional…