Related papers: Algorithms and Hardness for Estimating Statistical…
Total variation distance (TV distance) is a fundamental notion of distance between probability distributions. In this work, we introduce and study the problem of computing the TV distance of two product distributions over the domain…
Finite precision approximations of discrete probability distributions are considered, applicable for distribution synthesis, e.g., probabilistic shaping. Two algorithms are presented that find the optimal $M$-type approximation $Q$ of a…
We investigate the problem of testing the equivalence between two discrete histograms. A {\em $k$-histogram} over $[n]$ is a probability distribution that is piecewise constant over some set of $k$ intervals over $[n]$. Histograms have been…
Hypothesis Selection is a fundamental distribution learning problem where given a comparator-class $Q=\{q_1,\ldots, q_n\}$ of distributions, and a sampling access to an unknown target distribution $p$, the goal is to output a distribution…
We study the question of closeness testing for two discrete distributions. More precisely, given samples from two distributions $p$ and $q$ over an $n$-element set, we wish to distinguish whether $p=q$ versus $p$ is at least $\eps$-far from…
Total variation distance (TV distance) is an important measure for the difference between two distributions. Recently, there has been progress in approximating the TV distance between product distributions: a deterministic algorithm for 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…
Herein we define a measure of similarity between classification distributions that is both principled from the perspective of statistical pattern recognition and useful from the perspective of machine learning practitioners. In particular,…
Statistical query (SQ) algorithms are algorithms that have access to an {\em SQ oracle} for the input distribution $D$ instead of i.i.d.~ samples from $D$. Given a query function $\phi:X \rightarrow [-1,1]$, the oracle returns an estimate…
The subset sum problem is known to be an NP-hard problem in the field of computer science with the fastest known approach having a run-time complexity of $O(2^{0.3113n})$. A modified version of this problem is known as the perfect sum…
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…
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…
We study the problems of identity and closeness testing of $n$-dimensional product distributions. Prior works by Canonne, Diakonikolas, Kane and Stewart (COLT 2017) and Daskalakis and Pan (COLT 2017) have established tight sample complexity…
In the hypothesis selection problem, we are given sample and query access to finite set of candidate distributions (hypotheses), $\mathcal{H} = \{H_1, \ldots, H_n\}$, and samples from an unknown distribution $P$, both over a domain…
We consider the problems of statically refuting equivalence and similarity of output distributions defined by a pair of probabilistic programs. Equivalence and similarity are two fundamental relational properties of probabilistic programs…
Given a graphical model (GM), computing its partition function is the most essential inference task, but it is computationally intractable in general. To address the issue, iterative approximation algorithms exploring certain local…
In classic distributed graph problems, each instance on a graph specifies a space of feasible solutions (e.g. all proper ($\Delta+1$)-list-colorings of the graph), and the task of distributed algorithm is to construct a feasible solution…
Considering the problem of sampling from the output photon-counting probability distribution of a linear-optical network for input Gaussian states, we obtain results that are of interest from both quantum theory and the computational…
We consider the Subset Sum Ratio Problem ($SSR$), in which given a set of integers the goal is to find two subsets such that the ratio of their sums is as close to~1 as possible, and introduce a family of variations that capture additional…
The subject of this paper is the time complexity of approximating Knapsack, Subset Sum, Partition, and some other related problems. The main result is an $\widetilde{O}(n+1/\varepsilon^{5/3})$ time randomized FPTAS for Partition, which is…