Related papers: On the Properties of Kullback-Leibler Divergence B…
We show that the Kullback-Leibler distance is a good measure of the statistical uncertainty of correlation matrices estimated by using a finite set of data. For correlation matrices of multivariate Gaussian variables we analytically…
We present simple conditions for Bayesian consistency in the supremum metric. The key to the technique is a triangle inequality which allows us to explicitly use weak convergence, a consequence of the standard Kullback--Leibler support…
We show that the moment generating function of the Kullback-Leibler divergence (relative entropy) between the empirical distribution of $n$ independent samples from a distribution $P$ over a finite alphabet of size $k$ (i.e. a multinomial…
To achieve scalable and accurate inference for latent Gaussian processes, we propose a variational approximation based on a family of Gaussian distributions whose covariance matrices have sparse inverse Cholesky (SIC) factors. We combine…
We propose a greedy mixture reduction algorithm which is capable of pruning mixture components as well as merging them based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD). The algorithm is distinct from the well-known Runnalls' KLD based method…
We conduct a KL-divergence based procedure for testing elliptical distributions. The procedure simultaneously takes into account the two defining properties of an elliptically distributed random vector: independence between length and…
$f$-divergences, which quantify discrepancy between probability distributions, are ubiquitous in information theory, machine learning, and statistics. While there are numerous methods for estimating $f$-divergences from data, a limit…
Divergences are quantities that measure discrepancy between two probability distributions and play an important role in various fields such as statistics and machine learning. Divergences are non-negative and are equal to zero if and only…
We consider the problem of sampling from a probability distribution $\pi$ which admits a density w.r.t. a dominating measure. It is well known that this can be written as an optimisation problem over the space of probability distributions…
For a multinomial distribution, suppose that we have prior knowledge of the sum of the probabilities of some categories. This allows us to construct a submodel in a full (i.e., no-restriction) model. Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE)…
The book is structured into four main chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the foundational concepts of divergence measures, including the well-known Kullback-Leibler divergence and its limitations. It then presents a detailed exploration of…
Data processing inequalities for $f$-divergences can be sharpened using constants called "contraction coefficients" to produce strong data processing inequalities. For any discrete source-channel pair, the contraction coefficients for…
In this work, we present formulations for regularized Kullback-Leibler and R\'enyi divergences via the Alpha Log-Determinant (Log-Det) divergences between positive Hilbert-Schmidt operators on Hilbert spaces in two different settings,…
Consider the Langevin diffusion process $\mathrm{d} X_t = \nabla \log p_t(X_t) + \sqrt{2}\mathrm{d} W_t$ guided by the time-dependent probability density $p_t(x)$. Let $q_t$ be the density of $X_t$. Recently, in order to analyze convergence…
It is well known and readily seen that the maximum of $n$ independent and uniformly on $[0,1]$ distributed random variables, suitably standardised, converges in total variation distance, as $n$ increases, to the standard negative…
The likelihood function is a fundamental component in Bayesian statistics. However, evaluating the likelihood of an observation is computationally intractable in many applications. In this paper, we propose a non-parametric approximation of…
The probability density quantile (pdQ) carries essential information regarding shape and tail behavior of a location-scale family. Convergence of repeated applications of the pdQ mapping to the uniform distribution is investigated and new…
Data collection is a critical step in statistical inference and data science, and the goal of statistical experimental design (ED) is to find the data collection setup that can provide most information for the inference. In this work we…
We consider the problem of constructing a least conservative estimator of the expected value $\mu$ of a non-negative heavy-tailed random variable. We require that the probability of overestimating the expected value $\mu$ is kept…
The Poisson model is frequently employed to describe count data, but in a Bayesian context it leads to an analytically intractable posterior probability distribution. In this work, we analyze a variational Gaussian approximation to the…