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We provide a general theorem bounding the error in the approximation of a random measure of interest--for example, the empirical population measure of types in a Wright-Fisher model--and a Dirichlet process, which is a measure having…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-07-07 Han L. Gan , Nathan Ross

Using coupling techniques based on Stein's method for probability approximation, we revisit classical variance bounding inequalities of Chernoff, Cacoullos, Chen and Klaassen. Taking advantage of modern coupling techniques allows us to…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-11-11 Fraser Daly , Fatemeh Ghaderinezhad , Christophe Ley , Yvik Swan

This paper proposes a new theoretical lens to view Wasserstein generative adversarial networks (WGANs). To minimize the Wasserstein-1 distance between the true data distribution and our estimate of it, we derive a distribution-dependent…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-05 Zachariah Malik , Yu-Jui Huang

This paper studies distributional model risk in marginal problems, where each marginal measure is assumed to lie in a Wasserstein ball centered at a fixed reference measure with a given radius. Theoretically, we establish several…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-04 Yanqin Fan , Hyeonseok Park , Gaoqian Xu

We address the challenge of sequential data-driven decision-making under context distributional uncertainty. This problem arises in numerous real-world scenarios where the learner optimizes black-box objective functions in the presence of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-27 Francesco Micheli , Efe C. Balta , Anastasios Tsiamis , John Lygeros

We study lower bounds for the problem of approximating a one dimensional distribution given (noisy) measurements of its moments. We show that there are distributions on $[-1,1]$ that cannot be approximated to accuracy $\epsilon$ in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-07-04 Yujia Jin , Christopher Musco , Aaron Sidford , Apoorv Vikram Singh

Stein's method for measuring convergence to a continuous target distribution relies on an operator characterizing the target and Stein factor bounds on the solutions of an associated differential equation. While such operators and bounds…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-11-14 Jackson Gorham , Andrew B. Duncan , Sebastian J. Vollmer , Lester Mackey

A new class of distributional transformations is introduced, characterized by equations relating function weighted expectations of test functions on a given distribution to expectations of the transformed distribution on the test function's…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Larry Goldstein , Gesine Reinert

We study the Wasserstein metric $W_p$, a notion of distance between two probability distributions, from the perspective of Fourier Analysis and discuss applications. In particular, we bound the Earth Mover Distance $W_1$ between the…

Classical Analysis and ODEs · Mathematics 2020-09-15 Stefan Steinerberger

Stein operators allow to characterise probability distributions via differential operators. Based on these characterisations, we develop a new method of point estimation for marginal parameters of strictly stationary and ergodic processes,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-12-05 Bruno Ebner , Adrian Fischer , Robert E. Gaunt , Babette Picker , Yvik Swan

This paper presents a novel Wasserstein distributionally robust control and state estimation algorithm for partially observable linear stochastic systems, where the probability distributions of disturbances and measurement noises are…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-06-05 Minhyuk Jang , Astghik Hakobyan , Insoon Yang

We propose a measure of the impact of any two choices of prior distributions by quantifying the Wasserstein distance between the respective resulting posterior distributions at any fixed sample size. We illustrate this measure on the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-03-02 Fatemeh Ghaderinezhad , Christophe Ley

The goal of scenario reduction is to approximate a given discrete distribution with another discrete distribution that has fewer atoms. We distinguish continuous scenario reduction, where the new atoms may be chosen freely, and discrete…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-01-17 Napat Rujeerapaiboon , Kilian Schindler , Daniel Kuhn , Wolfram Wiesemann

We derive and analyze new diffusion approximations of stationary distributions of Markov chains that are based on second- and higher-order terms in the expansion of the Markov chain generator. Our approximations achieve a higher degree of…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-07-12 Anton Braverman , J. G. Dai , Xiao Fang

Optimal Transport (OT) metrics allow for defining discrepancies between two probability measures. Wasserstein distance is for longer the celebrated OT-distance frequently-used in the literature, which seeks probability distributions to be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-14 Mokhtar Z. Alaya , Gilles Gasso , Maxime Berar , Alain Rakotomamonjy

We establish normal approximation in the Wasserstein metric for both non-degenerate and degenerate second-order U-statistics under cross-sectional dependence using Stein's method. For the non-degenerate case, our results extend recent…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-04-28 Weiguang Liu

This paper introduces Wasserstein variational inference, a new form of approximate Bayesian inference based on optimal transport theory. Wasserstein variational inference uses a new family of divergences that includes both f-divergences and…

We study a general framework of distributional computational graphs: computational graphs whose inputs are probability distributions rather than point values. We analyze the discretization error that arises when these graphs are evaluated…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-13 Olof Hallqvist Elias , Michael Selby , Phillip Stanley-Marbell

We provide a general result for finding Stein operators for the product of two independent random variables whose Stein operators satisfy a certain assumption, extending a recent result of Gaunt, Mijoule and Swan \cite{gms18}. This…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-09-28 Robert E. Gaunt , Guillaume Mijoule , Yvik Swan

The smooth 1-Wasserstein distance (SWD) $W_1^\sigma$ was recently proposed as a means to mitigate the curse of dimensionality in empirical approximation while preserving the Wasserstein structure. Indeed, SWD exhibits parametric convergence…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-02-28 Ritwik Sadhu , Ziv Goldfeld , Kengo Kato