Related papers: Distributing mass under a pointwise bound and an a…
We consider the problem of minimizing a given $n$-variate polynomial $f$ over the hypercube $[-1,1]^n$. An idea introduced by Lasserre, is to find a probability distribution on $[-1,1]^n$ with polynomial density function $h$ (of given…
We provide a unifying interpretation of various optimal transport problems as a minimisation of a linear functional over the set of all Choquet representations of a given pair of probability measures ordered with respect to a certain convex…
This paper studies estimation of and inference on a distribution function $F$ that is concave on the nonnegative half line and admits a density function $f$ with potentially unbounded support. When $F$ is strictly concave, we show that the…
An analytic approximation to the mass function for gravitationally bound objects is presented. We base on the Zel'dovich approximation to extend the Press-Schechter formalism to a nonspherical dynamical model. A simple extrapolation of that…
Suppose that $K\subset\C$ is compact and that $z_0\in\C\backslash K$ is an external point. An optimal prediction measure for regression by polynomials of degree at most $n,$ is one for which the variance of the prediction at $z_0$ is as…
In the present paper we introduce and study finite point subsets of a special kind, called optimum distributions, in the n-dimensional unit cube. Such distributions are closely related with known (delta,s,n)-nets of low discrepancy. It…
We establish the limiting distribution of $\frac{{(\log \log x)}^{1/4}}{\sqrt{x}} \sum_{n\le x}\alpha(n)$ where $\alpha$ is a Steinhaus random multiplicative function, answering a question of Harper. The distributional convergence is proved…
We consider a distributionally robust second-order stochastic dominance constrained optimization problem. We require the dominance constraints hold with respect to all probability distributions in a Wasserstein ball centered at the…
Consider the problem of matching two independent i.i.d. samples of size $N$ from two distributions $P$ and $Q$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$. For an arbitrary continuous cost function, the optimal assignment problem looks for the matching that…
We consider the problem of finding the maximum of $\mathbb{E}_{\nu}[f(X)]$ where $\nu$ is allowed to vary over all the probability measures on a Polish space $S$ for which $d_c(\mu,\nu)\leq \theta$, in which $d_c$ is an optimal transport…
We present a novel approach to estimating discrete distributions with (potentially) infinite support in the total variation metric. In a departure from the established paradigm, we make no structural assumptions whatsoever on the sampling…
This paper introduces two classes of variational problems, determining optimal shapes for tree roots and branches. Given a measure $\mu$, describing the distribution of leaves, we introduce a sunlight functional $\S(\mu)$ computing the…
We consider a discrete best approximation problem formulated in the framework of tropical algebra, which deals with the theory and applications of algebraic systems with idempotent operations. Given a set of samples of input and output of…
We initiate a study of the following problem: Given a continuous domain $\Omega$ along with its convex hull $\mathcal{K}$, a point $A \in \mathcal{K}$ and a prior measure $\mu$ on $\Omega$, find the probability density over $\Omega$ whose…
We study a random partial covering model on the $(d-1)$-dimensional unit sphere, where $N$ spherical caps are placed independently and uniformly at random, each covering a surface fraction of $1/N$. This model provides a continuous…
We present a general method for obtaining strong bounds for discrete optimization problems that is based on a concept of branching duality. It can be applied when no useful integer programming model is available, and we illustrate this with…
We consider the problem of minimizing a continuous function f over a compact set K. We analyze a hierarchy of upper bounds proposed by Lasserre in [SIAM J. Optim. 21(3) (2011), pp. 864--885], obtained by searching for an optimal probability…
We propose a numerical method to find the optimal transport map between a measure supported on a lower-dimensional subset of R^d and a finitely supported measure. More precisely, the source measure is assumed to be supported on a simplex…
The Bernstein approximation problem is to determine whether or not the space of all polynomials is dense in a given weighted $C_0$-space on the real line. A theorem of L. de Branges characterizes non--density by existence of an entire…
We study the statistical complexity of estimating partition functions given sample access to a proposal distribution and an unnormalized density ratio for a target distribution. While partition function estimation is a classical problem,…