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Modern large-scale kernel-based tests such as maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) and kernelized Stein discrepancy (KSD) optimize kernel hyperparameters on a held-out sample via data splitting to obtain the most powerful test statistics. While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-20 Jonas M. Kübler , Wittawat Jitkrittum , Bernhard Schölkopf , Krikamol Muandet

We introduce a kernel-based two-sample test for comparing probability distributions up to group actions. Our construction yields invariant kernels for locally compact $\sigma$-compact groups and extends classical Haar-based approaches…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-03-18 Madison Giacofci , Anouar Meynaoui , Alex Podgorny

Two-sample inference for the difference of population means typically relies upon a Central Limit Theorem approximation. When data are drawn from a Negative Binomial distribution, previous work of Shilane et al. (2010) showed that a Normal…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-03-06 David Shilane , Derek Bean

A family of maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) kernel two-sample tests is introduced. Members of the test family are called Block-tests or B-tests, since the test statistic is an average over MMDs computed on subsets of the samples. The choice…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-02-11 Wojciech Zaremba , Arthur Gretton , Matthew Blaschko

Several researchers have proposed minimisation of maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) as a method to quantise probability measures, i.e., to approximate a target distribution by a representative point set. We consider sequential algorithms that…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-15 Onur Teymur , Jackson Gorham , Marina Riabiz , Chris. J. Oates

Two-sample tests are important in statistics and machine learning, both as tools for scientific discovery as well as to detect distribution shifts. This led to the development of many sophisticated test procedures going beyond the standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-18 Jonas M. Kübler , Vincent Stimper , Simon Buchholz , Krikamol Muandet , Bernhard Schölkopf

Two-sample and independence tests with the kernel-based MMD and HSIC have shown remarkable results on i.i.d. data and stationary random processes. However, these statistics are not directly applicable to non-stationary random processes, a…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-01-05 Felix Laumann , Julius von Kügelgen , Mauricio Barahona

Given $M \geq 2$ distributions defined on a general measurable space, we introduce a nonparametric (kernel) measure of multi-sample dissimilarity (KMD) -- a parameter that quantifies the difference between the $M$ distributions. The…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-10-18 Zhen Huang , Bodhisattva Sen

Nonparametric two sample testing is a decision theoretic problem that involves identifying differences between two random variables without making parametric assumptions about their underlying distributions. We refer to the most common…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-08-05 Aaditya Ramdas , Sashank J. Reddi , Barnabas Poczos , Aarti Singh , Larry Wasserman

Kernel techniques are among the most popular and flexible approaches in data science allowing to represent probability measures without loss of information under mild conditions. The resulting mapping called mean embedding gives rise to a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-27 Linda Chamakh , Zoltan Szabo

Modern data analyses frequently encounter settings where samples of variables are contaminated by measurement error. Ignoring measurement noise can substantially degrade statistical inference, while existing correction techniques are often…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-15 Ritwik Vashistha , Jeff M. Phillips , Abhra Sarkar , Arya Farahi

We study two-sample variable selection: identifying variables that discriminate between the distributions of two sets of data vectors. Such variables help scientists understand the mechanisms behind dataset discrepancies. Although…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-06 Kensuke Mitsuzawa , Motonobu Kanagawa , Stefano Bortoli , Margherita Grossi , Paolo Papotti

We consider the problem of hypothesis testing for discrete distributions. In the standard model, where we have sample access to an underlying distribution $p$, extensive research has established optimal bounds for uniformity testing,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-03 Maryam Aliakbarpour , Piotr Indyk , Ronitt Rubinfeld , Sandeep Silwal

Maximum mean discrepancies (MMDs) like the kernel Stein discrepancy (KSD) have grown central to a wide range of applications, including hypothesis testing, sampler selection, distribution approximation, and variational inference. In each…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-26 Alessandro Barp , Carl-Johann Simon-Gabriel , Mark Girolami , Lester Mackey

We study the problem of nonparametric two-sample testing using the sliced Wasserstein (SW) distance. While prior theoretical and empirical work indicates that the SW distance offers a promising balance between strong statistical guarantees…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-03 Binh Thuan Tran , Nicolas Schreuder

We propose a framework for analyzing and comparing distributions, allowing us to design statistical tests to determine if two samples are drawn from different distributions. Our test statistic is the largest difference in expectations over…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2008-05-16 Arthur Gretton , Karsten Borgwardt , Malte J. Rasch , Bernhard Scholkopf , Alexander J. Smola

In this article, we introduce a novel discrepancy called the maximum variance discrepancy for the purpose of measuring the difference between two distributions in Hilbert spaces that cannot be found via the maximum mean discrepancy. We also…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-12-08 Natsumi Makigusa

The stochastic block model is a popular tool for detecting community structures in network data. Detecting the difference between two community structures is an important issue for stochastic block models. However, the two-sample test has…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-12-21 Kang Fu , Jianwei Hu , Seydou Keita , Hao Liu

We propose a class of nonparametric two-sample tests with a cost linear in the sample size. Two tests are given, both based on an ensemble of distances between analytic functions representing each of the distributions. The first test uses…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-06-16 Kacper Chwialkowski , Aaditya Ramdas , Dino Sejdinovic , Arthur Gretton

Likelihood-free inference methods typically make use of a distance between simulated and real data. A common example is the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD), which has previously been used for approximate Bayesian computation, minimum…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-05-11 Ayush Bharti , Masha Naslidnyk , Oscar Key , Samuel Kaski , François-Xavier Briol