Related papers: Estimating the Effective Support Size in Constant …
We consider the problem of estimating the support size of a distribution $D$. Our investigations are pursued through the lens of distribution testing and seek to understand the power of conditional sampling (denoted as COND), wherein one is…
Consider two problems about an unknown probability distribution $p$: 1. How many samples from $p$ are required to test if $p$ is supported on $n$ elements or not? Specifically, given samples from $p$, determine whether it is supported on at…
We consider the problem of estimating the number of distinct elements in a large data set (or, equivalently, the support size of the distribution induced by the data set) from a random sample of its elements. The problem occurs in many…
We study the problem of testing discrete distributions with a focus on the high probability regime. Specifically, given samples from one or more discrete distributions, a property $\mathcal{P}$, and parameters $0< \epsilon, \delta <1$, we…
We study the problem of sampling from a $d$-dimensional distribution with density $p(x)\propto e^{-f(x)}$, which does not necessarily satisfy good isoperimetric conditions. Specifically, we show that for any $L,M$ satisfying $LM\ge d\ge 5$,…
Estimating the empirical distribution of a scalar-valued data set is a basic and fundamental task. In this paper, we tackle the problem of estimating an empirical distribution in a setting with two challenging features. First, the algorithm…
We resolve a long-standing open question, about the existence of a constant-factor approximation algorithm for the average-case \textsc{Decision Tree} problem with uniform probability distribution over the hypotheses. We answer the question…
The classic problems of testing uniformity of and learning a discrete distribution, given access to independent samples from it, are examined under general $\ell_p$ metrics. The intuitions and results often contrast with the classic…
The Huge Object model is a distribution testing model in which we are given access to independent samples from an unknown distribution over the set of strings $\{0,1\}^n$, but are only allowed to query a few bits from the samples. We…
We consider the problem of identifying the subset $\mathcal{S}^{\gamma}_{\mathcal{P}}$ of elements in the support of an underlying distribution $\mathcal{P}$ whose probability value is larger than a given threshold $\gamma$, by actively…
We study a fundamental stochastic selection problem involving $n$ independent random variables, each of which can be queried at some cost. Given a tolerance level $\delta$, the goal is to find a value that is $\delta$-approximately minimum…
The problem of estimating the support of a distribution is of great importance in many areas of machine learning, computer science, physics and biology. Most of the existing work in this domain has focused on settings that assume perfectly…
The Wasserstein distance has emerged as a key metric to quantify distances between probability distributions, with applications in various fields, including machine learning, control theory, decision theory, and biological systems.…
Given an implicit $n\times n$ matrix $A$ with oracle access $x^TA x$ for any $x\in \mathbb{R}^n$, we study the query complexity of randomized algorithms for estimating the trace of the matrix. This problem has many applications in quantum…
We study the problem of estimating the size of the maximum matching in the sublinear-time setting. This problem has been extensively studied, with several known upper and lower bounds. A notable result by Behnezhad (FOCS 2021) established a…
In classical statistics and distribution testing, it is often assumed that elements can be sampled from some distribution $P$, and that when an element $x$ is sampled, the probability $P$ of sampling $x$ is also known. Recent work in…
Suppose that we are given an arbitrary graph $G=(V, E)$ and know that each edge in $E$ is going to be realized independently with some probability $p$. The goal in the stochastic matching problem is to pick a sparse subgraph $Q$ of $G$ such…
We introduce a new method for estimating the support size of an unknown distribution which provably matches the performance bounds of the state-of-the-art techniques in the area and outperforms them in practice. In particular, we present…
We study the problem of estimating the sum of $n$ elements, each with weight $w(i)$, in a structured universe. Our goal is to estimate $W = \sum_{i=1}^n w(i)$ within a $(1 \pm \epsilon)$ factor using a sublinear number of samples, assuming…
We provide CONGEST model algorithms for approximating minimum weighted vertex cover and the maximum weighted matching. For bipartite graphs, we show that a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximate weighted vertex cover can be computed…