Related papers: Sampling and Identity-Testing Without Approximate …
We study the identity testing problem for high-dimensional distributions. Given as input an explicit distribution $\mu$, an $\varepsilon>0$, and access to sampling oracle(s) for a hidden distribution $\pi$, the goal in identity testing is…
We study the mixing time of the single-site update Markov chain, known as the Glauber dynamics, for generating a random independent set of a tree. Our focus is obtaining optimal convergence results for arbitrary trees. We consider the more…
We introduce a framework for obtaining tight mixing times for Markov chains based on what we call restricted modified log-Sobolev inequalities. Modified log-Sobolev inequalities (MLSI) quantify the rate of relative entropy contraction for…
Modern data workflows are inherently adaptive, repeatedly querying the same dataset to refine and validate sequential decisions, but such adaptivity can lead to overfitting and invalid statistical inference. Adaptive Data Analysis (ADA)…
We present a simple combinatorial framework for establishing approximate tensorization of variance and entropy in the setting of spin systems (a.k.a. undirected graphical models) based on balanced separators of the underlying graph. Such…
We give a nearly linear-time algorithm to approximately sample satisfying assignments in the random $k$-SAT model when the density of the formula scales exponentially with $k$. The best previously known sampling algorithm for the random…
\emph{Sampling} constitutes an important tool in a variety of areas: from machine learning and combinatorial optimization to computational physics and biology. A central class of sampling algorithms is the \emph{Markov Chain Monte Carlo}…
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,…
Mainstream Test-Time Adaptation (TTA) methods for adapting vision-language models, e.g., CLIP, typically rely on Shannon Entropy (SE) at test time to measure prediction uncertainty and inconsistency. However, since CLIP has a built-in bias…
Given a graph $G$, the hard-core model defines a probability distribution over its independent sets, assigning to each set of size $k$ a probability of $\frac{\lambda^k}{Z}$, where $\lambda>0$ is a parameter known as the \emph{fugacity} and…
Test time adaptation (TTA) equips deep learning models to handle unseen test data that deviates from the training distribution, even when source data is inaccessible. While traditional TTA methods often rely on entropy as a confidence…
We consider the problem of closeness testing for two discrete distributions in the practically relevant setting of \emph{unequal} sized samples drawn from each of them. Specifically, given a target error parameter $\varepsilon > 0$, $m_1$…
We study the problem of testing identity against a given distribution with a focus on the high confidence regime. More precisely, given samples from an unknown distribution $p$ over $n$ elements, an explicitly given distribution $q$, and…
One of the most fundamental problems in distribution testing is the identity testing problem: given samples $x_1,\ldots,x_s$, the goal is to determine whether the samples are drawn from a target distribution $\mathcal{D}$. When…
Exponential random graphs are used extensively in the sociology literature. This model seeks to incorporate in random graphs the notion of reciprocity, that is, the larger than expected number of triangles and other small subgraphs.…
For distributions over discrete product spaces $\prod_{i=1}^n \Omega_i'$, Glauber dynamics is a Markov chain that at each step, resamples a random coordinate conditioned on the other coordinates. We show that $k$-Glauber dynamics, which…
Motivated by the community detection problem in Bayesian inference, as well as the recent explosion of interest in spin glasses from statistical physics, we study the classical Glauber dynamics for sampling from Ising models with sparse…
Open-set test-time adaptation (OSTTA) addresses the challenge of adapting models to new environments where out-of-distribution (OOD) samples coexist with in-distribution (ID) samples affected by distribution shifts. In such settings,…
Model calibration usually requires optimizing some parameters (e.g., temperature) w.r.t an objective function (e.g., negative log-likelihood). In this paper, we report a plain, important but often neglected fact that the objective function…
We study the problem of sampling an approximately uniformly random satisfying assignment for atomic constraint satisfaction problems i.e. where each constraint is violated by only one assignment to its variables. Let $p$ denote the maximum…