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Representing, comparing, and measuring the distance between probability distributions is a key task in computational statistics and machine learning. The choice of representation and the associated distance determine properties of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-26 Masha Naslidnyk

Maximum mean discrepancies (MMDs) like the kernel Stein discrepancy (KSD) have grown central to a wide range of applications, including hypothesis testing, sampler selection, distribution approximation, and variational inference. In each…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-26 Alessandro Barp , Carl-Johann Simon-Gabriel , Mark Girolami , Lester Mackey

This paper characterizes the maximum mean discrepancies (MMD) that metrize the weak convergence of probability measures for a wide class of kernels. More precisely, we prove that, on a locally compact, non-compact, Hausdorff space, the MMD…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-06 Carl-Johann Simon-Gabriel , Alessandro Barp , Bernhard Schölkopf , Lester Mackey

The classical Mercer's theorem claims that a continuous positive definite kernel $K({\mathbf x}, {\mathbf y})$ on a compact set can be represented as $\sum_{i=1}^\infty \lambda_i\phi_i({\mathbf x})\phi_i({\mathbf y})$ where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-27 Rustem Takhanov

Starting with a similarity function between objects, it is possible to define a distance metric on pairs of objects, and more generally on probability distributions over them. These distance metrics have a deep basis in functional analysis,…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2011-03-15 Sarang Joshi , Raj Varma Kommaraju , Jeff M. Phillips , Suresh Venkatasubramanian

The paper introduces a new kernel-based Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) statistic for measuring the distance between two distributions given finitely-many multivariate samples. When the distributions are locally low-dimensional, the proposed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-09-03 Xiuyuan Cheng , Alexander Cloninger , Ronald R. Coifman

Distances between probability distributions are a key component of many statistical machine learning tasks, from two-sample testing to generative modeling, among others. We introduce a novel distance between measures that compares them…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-07-09 Arturo Castellanos , Anna Korba , Pavlo Mozharovskyi , Hicham Janati

Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) has been widely used in the areas of machine learning and statistics to quantify the distance between two distributions in the $p$-dimensional Euclidean space. The asymptotic property of the sample MMD has…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-08-29 Hanjia Gao , Xiaofeng Shao

Negative distance kernels $K(x,y) := - \|x-y\|$ were used in the definition of maximum mean discrepancies (MMDs) in statistics and lead to favorable numerical results in various applications. In particular, so-called slicing techniques for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-23 Nicolaj Rux , Michael Quellmalz , Gabriele Steidl

We provide a unifying framework linking two classes of statistics used in two-sample and independence testing: on the one hand, the energy distances and distance covariances from the statistics literature; on the other, maximum mean…

Methodology · Statistics 2013-11-13 Dino Sejdinovic , Bharath Sriperumbudur , Arthur Gretton , Kenji Fukumizu

Embedding probability distributions into reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS) has enabled powerful nonparametric methods such as the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD), a statistical distance with strong theoretical and computational…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-28 Masha Naslidnyk , Siu Lun Chau , François-Xavier Briol , Krikamol Muandet

While likelihood-based inference and its variants provide a statistically efficient and widely applicable approach to parametric inference, their application to models involving intractable likelihoods poses challenges. In this work, we…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-06-17 Francois-Xavier Briol , Alessandro Barp , Andrew B. Duncan , Mark Girolami

The kernel mean embedding of probability distributions is commonly used in machine learning as an injective mapping from distributions to functions in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. It allows us, for example, to define a distance…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-12-24 Jonas M. Kübler , Krikamol Muandet , Bernhard Schölkopf

We establish quantitative rates of convergence for the empirical estimation of probability measures by means of the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) with power kernel $K_q(x,y) = -|x-y|^q$, $q \in (0,2)$. The resulting discrepancy is the…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-05-19 Francesco Colasanto , Matteo Focardi , Massimo Fornasier , Francesco Mattesini

Distances between probability distributions that take into account the geometry of their sample space,like the Wasserstein or the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) distances have received a lot of attention in machine learning as they can, for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-29 Gaëtan Hadjeres , Frank Nielsen

Distance metrics are central to machine learning, yet distances between ensembles of quantum states remain poorly understood due to fundamental quantum measurement constraints. We introduce a hierarchy of integral probability metrics,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-01-30 Jian Yao , Pengtao Li , Xiaohui Chen , Quntao Zhuang

Comparing conditional distributions is a fundamental challenge in statistics and machine learning, with applications across a wide range of domains. While proposed methods for measuring discrepancies using kernel embeddings of distributions…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-05 Peter Moskvichev , Siu Lun Chau , Dino Sejdinovic

We find probability error bounds for approximations of functions $f$ in a separable reproducing kernel Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ with reproducing kernel $K$ on a base space $X$, firstly in terms of finite linear combinations of functions…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-02-26 Ata Deniz Aydin , Aurelian Gheondea

This paper studies random operator-valued positive definite (p.d.) kernels and their connection to moment dilations. A class of random p.d. kernels is introduced in which the positivity requirement is imposed only in expectation, extending…

Functional Analysis · Mathematics 2025-08-15 James Tian

Many methods in differentially private model training rely on computing the similarity between a query point (such as public or synthetic data) and private data. We abstract out this common subroutine and study the following fundamental…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-03-15 Arturs Backurs , Zinan Lin , Sepideh Mahabadi , Sandeep Silwal , Jakub Tarnawski
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