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Related papers: Near-Optimal Bounds for Testing Histogram Distribu…

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Histograms are convenient non-parametric density estimators, which continue to be used ubiquitously. Summary quantities estimated from histogram-based probability density models depend on the choice of the number of bins. We introduce a…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2013-09-17 Kevin H. Knuth

We initiate a systematic investigation of distribution testing in the framework of algorithmic replicability. Specifically, given independent samples from a collection of probability distributions, the goal is to characterize the sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-04 Ilias Diakonikolas , Jingyi Gao , Daniel Kane , Sihan Liu , Christopher Ye

We give a nearly-optimal algorithm for testing uniformity of distributions supported on $\{-1,1\}^n$, which makes $\tilde O (\sqrt{n}/\varepsilon^2)$ queries to a subcube conditional sampling oracle (Bhattacharyya and Chakraborty (2018)).…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-02-08 Clément L. Canonne , Xi Chen , Gautam Kamath , Amit Levi , Erik Waingarten

We study the question of identity testing for structured distributions. More precisely, given samples from a {\em structured} distribution $q$ over $[n]$ and an explicit distribution $p$ over $[n]$, we wish to distinguish whether $q=p$…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-10-10 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Vladimir Nikishkin

In this paper, we present approximation algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems under probabilistic constraints. Specifically, we focus on stochastic variants of two important combinatorial optimization problems: the k-center…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2008-09-03 Shipra Agrawal , Amin Saberi , Yinyu Ye

We give highly efficient algorithms, and almost matching lower bounds, for a range of basic statistical problems that involve testing and estimating the L_1 distance between two k-modal distributions $p$ and $q$ over the discrete domain…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2011-12-26 Constantinos Daskalakis , Ilias Diakonikolas , Rocco A. Servedio , Gregory Valiant , Paul Valiant

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-04-05 Renato Ferreira Pinto , Nathaniel Harms

The objective of goodness-of-fit testing is to assess whether a dataset of observations is likely to have been drawn from a candidate probability distribution. This paper presents a rank-based family of goodness-of-fit tests that is…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-04-18 Feras A. Saad , Cameron E. Freer , Nathanael L. Ackerman , Vikash K. Mansinghka

We study the density estimation problem defined as follows: given $k$ distributions $p_1, \ldots, p_k$ over a discrete domain $[n]$, as well as a collection of samples chosen from a ``query'' distribution $q$ over $[n]$, output $p_i$ that…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Anders Aamand , Alexandr Andoni , Justin Y. Chen , Piotr Indyk , Shyam Narayanan , Sandeep Silwal , Haike Xu

We study the question of testing structured properties (classes) of discrete distributions. Specifically, given sample access to an arbitrary distribution $D$ over $[n]$ and a property $\mathcal{P}$, the goal is to distinguish between…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-01-22 Clément L. Canonne , Ilias Diakonikolas , Themis Gouleakis , Ronitt Rubinfeld

In the Best-$k$-Arm problem, we are given $n$ stochastic bandit arms, each associated with an unknown reward distribution. We are required to identify the $k$ arms with the largest means by taking as few samples as possible. In this paper,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-02-15 Lijie Chen , Jian Li , Mingda Qiao

We study the question of closeness testing for two discrete distributions. More precisely, given samples from two distributions $p$ and $q$ over an $n$-element set, we wish to distinguish whether $p=q$ versus $p$ is at least $\eps$-far from…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-08-20 Siu-On Chan , Ilias Diakonikolas , Gregory Valiant , Paul Valiant

In this work, we consider the sample complexity required for testing the monotonicity of distributions over partial orders. A distribution $p$ over a poset is monotone if, for any pair of domain elements $x$ and $y$ such that $x \preceq y$,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-07-09 Maryam Aliakbarpour , Themis Gouleakis , John Peebles , Ronitt Rubinfeld , Anak Yodpinyanee

We consider the problem of identifying, from statistics, a distribution of discrete random variables $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ that is a mixture of $k$ product distributions. The best previous sample complexity for $n \in O(k)$ was $(1/\zeta)^{O(k^2…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-26 Spencer L. Gordon , Erik Jahn , Bijan Mazaheri , Yuval Rabani , Leonard J. Schulman

There has been significant study on the sample complexity of testing properties of distributions over large domains. For many properties, it is known that the sample complexity can be substantially smaller than the domain size. For example,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-07-09 Maryam Aliakbarpour , Ravi Kumar , Ronitt Rubinfeld

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-04-28 Clément L. Canonne , Karl Wimmer

We study quantum algorithms for verifying properties of the output probability distribution of a classical or quantum circuit, given access to the source code that generates the distribution. We consider the basic task of uniformity…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-11-08 Clément L. Canonne , Robin Kothari , Ryan O'Donnell

When one deals with data drawn from continuous variables, a histogram is often inadequate to display their probability density. It deals inefficiently with statistical noise, and binsizes are free parameters. In contrast to that, the…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2009-11-13 Bernd A. Berg , Robert C. Harris

We consider an approach for testing the hypothesis that two realizations of the random variables in the form of histograms are taken from the same statistical population (i.e. two histograms are drawn from the same distribution). The…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2013-11-26 S. Bityukov , N. Krasnikov , A. Nikitenko , V. Smirnova

We study a variant of the simple hypothesis testing problem where observed samples do not necessarily come from either of the specified distributions, but rather from a close variant of them. In this setting, we require a test that is…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-04-21 Eeshan Modak , Sivaraman Balakrishnan , Ananda Theertha Suresh