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We give algorithms for sampling several structured logconcave families to high accuracy. We further develop a reduction framework, inspired by proximal point methods in convex optimization, which bootstraps samplers for regularized…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-10-25 Yin Tat Lee , Ruoqi Shen , Kevin Tian

We present the first efficient averaging sampler that achieves asymptotically optimal randomness complexity and near-optimal sample complexity. For any $\delta < \varepsilon$ and any constant $\alpha > 0$, our sampler uses $m + O(\log (1 /…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-08-18 Zhiyang Xun , David Zuckerman

We revisit the problem of sampling from a target distribution that has a smooth strongly log-concave density everywhere in $\mathbb R^p$. In this context, if no additional density information is available, the randomized midpoint…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-06-19 Lu Yu , Avetik Karagulyan , Arnak Dalalyan

We present a faster algorithm to generate a warm start for sampling an arbitrary logconcave density specified by an evaluation oracle, leading to the first sub-cubic sampling algorithms for inputs in (near-)isotropic position. A long line…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Yunbum Kook , Santosh S. Vempala

We consider the problem of computing the maximum likelihood multivariate log-concave distribution for a set of points. Specifically, we present an algorithm which, given $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ and an accuracy parameter $\epsilon>0$,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-07-22 Brian Axelrod , Ilias Diakonikolas , Anastasios Sidiropoulos , Alistair Stewart , Gregory Valiant

We consider local Markov chain Monte-Carlo algorithms for sampling from the weighted distribution of independent sets with activity $\l$, where the weight of an independent set $I$ is $\l^{|I|}$. A recent result has established that Gibbs…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Elchanan Mossel , Dror Weitz , Nicholas Wormald

Sampling a target probability distribution with an unknown normalization constant is a fundamental challenge in computational science and engineering. Recent work shows that algorithms derived by considering gradient flows in the space of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-12 Yifan Chen , Daniel Zhengyu Huang , Jiaoyang Huang , Sebastian Reich , Andrew M Stuart

The log-concave maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) problem answers: for a set of points $X_1,...X_n \in \mathbb R^d$, which log-concave density maximizes their likelihood? We present a characterization of the log-concave MLE that leads to…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-11-09 Brian Axelrod , Gregory Valiant

We consider the problem of sampling from the posterior distribution of a $d$-dimensional coefficient vector $\boldsymbol{\theta}$, given linear observations $\boldsymbol{y} = \boldsymbol{X}\boldsymbol{\theta}+\boldsymbol{\varepsilon}$. In…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-01 Andrea Montanari , Yuchen Wu

We give a general unified method that can be used for $L_1$ {\em closeness testing} of a wide range of univariate structured distribution families. More specifically, we design a sample optimal and computationally efficient algorithm for…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-08-25 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Vladimir Nikishkin

A new framework is introduced for examining and evaluating the fundamental limits of lossless data compression, that emphasizes genuinely non-asymptotic results. The {\em sample complexity} of compressing a given source is defined as the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Terence Viaud , Ioannis Kontoyiannis

Sampling from nonsmooth target probability distributions is essential in various applications, including the Bayesian Lasso. We propose a splitting-based sampling algorithm for the time-implicit discretization of the probability flow for…

Computation · Statistics 2025-07-14 Fuqun Han , Stanley Osher , Wuchen Li

This paper addresses the problem of approximating an unknown probability distribution with density $f$ -- which can only be evaluated up to an unknown scaling factor -- with the help of a sequential algorithm that produces at each iteration…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-09-23 Pascal Bianchi , Bernard Delyon , Victor Priser , François Portier

We study the query complexity of sampling from high-dimensional Gaussian distributions using gradient information. In the standard oracle model, exact gradients expose only matrix-vector products with the precision matrix, leading to…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Jingbo Liu

We study the problem of sampling from strongly log-concave distributions over $\mathbb{R}^d$ using the Poisson midpoint discretization (a variant of the randomized midpoint method) for overdamped/underdamped Langevin dynamics. We prove its…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-10-02 Rishikesh Srinivasan , Dheeraj Nagaraj

Drawing from the theory of stochastic differential equations, we introduce a novel sampling method for known distributions and a new algorithm for diffusion generative models with unknown distributions. Our approach is inspired by the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-07-12 Xicheng Zhang

Given samples from an unknown distribution $p$, is it possible to distinguish whether $p$ belongs to some class of distributions $\mathcal{C}$ versus $p$ being far from every distribution in $\mathcal{C}$? This fundamental question has…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-12-09 Jayadev Acharya , Constantinos Daskalakis , Gautam Kamath

The family of log-concave density functions contains various kinds of common probability distributions. Due to the shape restriction, it is possible to find the nonparametric estimate of the density, for example, the nonparametric maximum…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-01-29 Fuheng Cui , Stephen G. Walker

When the nonconvex problem is complicated by stochasticity, the sample complexity of stochastic first-order methods may depend linearly on the problem dimension, which is undesirable for large-scale problems. To alleviate this linear…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Yue Xie , Jiawen Bi , Hongcheng Liu

Let $\mathscr{F}_{n,d}$ be the class of all functions $f:\{-1,1\}^n\to[-1,1]$ on the $n$-dimensional discrete hypercube of degree at most $d$. In the first part of this paper, we prove that any (deterministic or randomized) algorithm which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Alexandros Eskenazis , Paata Ivanisvili , Lauritz Streck