Related papers: Efficient Rejection Sampling in the Entropy-Optima…
We consider importance sampling for estimating the probability that a light-tailed $d$-dimensional random walk exits through one of many disjoint rare-event regions before reaching an anticipated target. This problem arises in sequential…
Diffusion models perform remarkably well on high-dimensional data such as images, often using only a modest number of reverse-time steps. Despite this practical success, existing convergence theory does not fully explain why such samplers…
In 1952, von Neumann introduced the rejection method for random variate generation. We revisit this algorithm when we have a source of perfect bits at our disposal. In this random bit model, there are universal lower bounds for generating a…
Compressed Counting (CC), based on maximally skewed stable random projections, was recently proposed for estimating the p-th frequency moments of data streams. The case p->1 is extremely useful for estimating Shannon entropy of data…
We derive an asymptotic lower bound on the Shannon entropy $H$ of sums of $N$ arbitrary iid discrete random variables. The derived bound $H \geq \frac{r(X)}{2}\log(N) + {\it cst}$ is given in terms of the incommensurability rank $r(X)$ of…
We examine the estimation of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence and the use of the goodness-of-fit test for multivariate continuous distributions. Our starting point is the maximum entropy principle for Shannon entropy: among all…
Let A be a matrix, c be any linear objective function and x be a fractional vector, say an LP solution to some discrete optimization problem. Then a recurring task in theoretical computer science (and in approximation algorithms in…
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…
In this manuscript, we investigate importance sampling methods for rare-event simulation in diffusion processes. We show, from a large-deviation perspective, that the resulting importance sampling estimator is log-efficient. This connection…
The principle of maximum entropy provides a useful method for inferring statistical mechanics models from observations in correlated systems, and is widely used in a variety of fields where accurate data are available. While the assumptions…
Consider the problem: we are given $n$ boxes, labeled $\{1,2,\ldots, n\}$ by an adversary, each containing a single number chosen from an unknown distribution; these $n$ distributions are not necessarily identical. We are also given an…
Estimating the p-th frequency moment of data stream is a very heavily studied problem. The problem is actually trivial when p = 1, assuming the strict Turnstile model. The sample complexity of our proposed algorithm is essentially O(1) near…
Entropy is a measure of heterogeneity widely used in applied sciences, often when data are collected over space. Recently, a number of approaches has been proposed to include spatial information in entropy. The aim of entropy is to…
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 aim to access entropy sources available within smartphones in order to construct and evaluate a random number generator which is competitive in comparison with existing and proven random number generators. A prototype utilizing the…
We consider the problem of learning a target probability distribution over a set of $N$ binary variables from the knowledge of the expectation values (with this target distribution) of $M$ observables, drawn uniformly at random. The space…
We have systematically studied the optimal real-space sampling of atomic pair distribution data by comparing refinement results from oversampled and resampled data. Based on nickel and a complex perovskite system, we demonstrate that the…
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,…
In 2016, Karney proposed an exact sampling algorithm for the standard normal distribution. In this paper, we study the computational complexity of this algorithm under the random deviate model. Specifically, Karney's algorithm requires the…
Estimating the entropy based on data is one of the prototypical problems in distribution property testing and estimation. For estimating the Shannon entropy of a distribution on $S$ elements with independent samples, [Paninski2004] showed…