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This paper focuses on finite-time (FT) convergent distributed algorithms for solving time-varying (TV) distributed optimization (TVDO). The objective is to minimize the sum of local TV cost functions subject to the possible TV constraints…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-04 Xinli Shi , Guanghui Wen , Xinghuo Yu

We consider a problem which has received considerable attention in systems literature because of its applications to routing in delay tolerant networks and replica placement in distributed storage systems. In abstract terms the problem can…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-07-16 Constantinos Daskalakis , Anindya De , Ilias Diakonikolas , Ankur Moitra , Rocco A. Servedio

Motivated by modern-day applications such as Attended Home Delivery and Preference-based Group Scheduling, where decision makers wish to steer a large number of customers toward choosing the exact same alternative, we introduce a novel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-13 Omar El Housni , Marouane Ibn Brahim , Danny Segev

We study the total variation distance (TV) between two $n$-fold Bernoulli product measures parametrized by $\vec p=(p_1,\ldots,p_n)$ and $\vec q=(q_1,\ldots,q_n)$, respectively, in the \emph{tiny} and \emph{small} regimes. In the tiny…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-02-26 Ariel Avital , Aryeh Kontorovich , George Salafatinos

We study several questions related to diversifying search results. We give improved approximation algorithms in each of the following problems, together with some lower bounds. - We give a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) for a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-03-04 Amir Abboud , Vincent Cohen-Addad , Euiwoong Lee , Pasin Manurangsi

We consider the problem of estimating Ising models over $n$ variables in Total Variation (TV) distance, given $l$ independent samples from the model. While the statistical complexity of the problem is well-understood [DMR20], identifying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Constantinos Daskalakis , Vardis Kandiros , Rui Yao

In this paper, we derive some upper and lower bounds and inequalities for the total variation distance (TVD) and the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD), also known as the relative entropy, between two probability measures $\mu$ and $\nu$…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-01-07 Ievlev Pavel , Timofei Shashkov

Let $p$ be an unknown and arbitrary probability distribution over $[0,1)$. We consider the problem of {\em density estimation}, in which a learning algorithm is given i.i.d. draws from $p$ and must (with high probability) output a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-11-04 Siu-On Chan , Ilias Diakonikolas , Rocco A. Servedio , Xiaorui Sun

We develop a framework for obtaining polynomial time approximation schemes (PTAS) for a class of stochastic dynamic programs. Using our framework, we obtain the first PTAS for the following stochastic combinatorial optimization problems:…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-05-22 Hao Fu , Jian Li , Pan Xu

We give the first polynomial time algorithm for \emph{list-decodable covariance estimation}. For any $\alpha > 0$, our algorithm takes input a sample $Y \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ of size $n\geq d^{\mathsf{poly}(1/\alpha)}$ obtained by…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Misha Ivkov , Pravesh K. Kothari

We give a deterministic polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for the volume of the truncated fractional matching polytope for graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$, where the truncation is by restricting each variable to the interval…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-09-12 Heng Guo , Vishvajeet N

The distance from calibration, introduced by B{\l}asiok, Gopalan, Hu, and Nakkiran (STOC 2023), has recently emerged as a central measure of miscalibration for probabilistic predictors. We study the fundamental problems of computing and…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-20 Mingda Qiao

We give a polynomial-time algorithm for learning high-dimensional halfspaces with margins in $d$-dimensional space to within desired TV distance when the ambient distribution is an unknown affine transformation of the $d$-fold product of an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-03 Xinyuan Cao , Santosh S. Vempala

Accurate approximation of probability measures is essential in numerical applications. This paper explores the quantization of probability measures using the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) distance as a guiding metric. We first investigate…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-18 Zahra Mehraban , Alois Pichler

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a fundamental algorithm for estimating value functions in reinforcement learning. Recent finite-time analyses of TD with linear function approximation quantify its theoretical convergence rate. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Yunxiang Li , Mark Schmidt , Reza Babanezhad , Sharan Vaswani

The Wasserstein barycenter problem seeks a probability measure that minimizes the weighted average of the Wasserstein distances to a given collection of probability measures. We study the discrete setting, where each measure has finite…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-07 Jiaqi Wang , Weijun Xie

Pinsker's classical inequality asserts that the total variation $TV(\mu, \nu)$ between two probability measures is bounded by $\sqrt{ 2H(\mu|\nu)}$ where $H$ denotes the relative entropy (or Kullback-Leibler divergence). Considering the…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-06-30 Mathias Beiglböck , Markus Zona

We study the problem of supervised learning a metric space under discriminative constraints. Given a universe $X$ and sets ${\cal S}, {\cal D}\subset {X \choose 2}$ of similar and dissimilar pairs, we seek to find a mapping $f:X\to Y$, into…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2019-03-20 Diego Ihara Centurion , Neshat Mohammadi , Anastasios Sidiropoulos

Estimating the density of a distribution from its samples is a fundamental problem in statistics. Hypothesis selection addresses the setting where, in addition to a sample set, we are given $n$ candidate distributions -- referred to as…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Maryam Aliakbarpour , Zhan Shi , Ria Stevens , Vincent X. Wang

In this paper, we propose Total Variation Regularized Tensor-on-scalar Regression(TVTR), a novel method for estimating the association between a tensor outcome (a one dimensional or multidimensional array) and scalar predictors. While the…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-12-11 Ying Liu , Bowei Yan , Kathleen Merikangas , Haochang Shou