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The kernel Maximum Mean Discrepancy~(MMD) is a popular multivariate distance metric between distributions that has found utility in two-sample testing. The usual kernel-MMD test statistic is a degenerate U-statistic under the null, and thus…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-16 Shubhanshu Shekhar , Ilmun Kim , Aaditya Ramdas

A new goodness-of-fit test for normality in high-dimension (and Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space) is proposed. It shares common ideas with the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) it outperforms both in terms of computation time and applicability…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-04-14 Jérémie Kellner , Alain Celisse

This paper provides a new theoretical lens for understanding the finite-sample performance of kernel-based specification tests, such as the Kernel Conditional Moment (KCM) test. Rather than introducing a fundamentally new test, we isolate…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-10-15 Cui Rui , Li Yuhao , Song Xiaojun

We provide a unifying framework linking two classes of statistics used in two-sample and independence testing: on the one hand, the energy distances and distance covariances from the statistics literature; on the other, maximum mean…

Methodology · Statistics 2013-11-13 Dino Sejdinovic , Bharath Sriperumbudur , Arthur Gretton , Kenji Fukumizu

This paper provides a unifying view of optimal kernel hypothesis testing across the MMD two-sample, HSIC independence, and KSD goodness-of-fit frameworks. Minimax optimal separation rates in the kernel and $L^2$ metrics are presented, with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-30 Antonin Schrab

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

Motivated by the increasing use of kernel-based metrics for high-dimensional and large-scale data, we study the asymptotic behavior of kernel two-sample tests when the dimension and sample sizes both diverge to infinity. We focus on the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-10-31 Jian Yan , Xianyang Zhang

We propose two novel nonparametric two-sample kernel tests based on the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD). First, for a fixed kernel, we construct an MMD test using either permutations or a wild bootstrap, two popular numerical procedures to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-08-22 Antonin Schrab , Ilmun Kim , Mélisande Albert , Béatrice Laurent , Benjamin Guedj , Arthur Gretton

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

Machine learning and deep learning have been used extensively to classify physical surfaces through images and time-series contact data. However, these methods rely on human expertise and entail the time-consuming processes of data and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-10 Behnam Khojasteh , Friedrich Solowjow , Sebastian Trimpe , Katherine J. Kuchenbecker

Modern kernel-based two-sample tests have shown great success in distinguishing complex, high-dimensional distributions with appropriate learned kernels. Previous work has demonstrated that this kernel learning procedure succeeds, assuming…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-01-06 Feng Liu , Wenkai Xu , Jie Lu , Danica J. Sutherland

To adapt kernel two-sample and independence testing to complex structured data, aggregation of multiple kernels is frequently employed to boost testing power compared to single-kernel tests. However, we observe a phenomenon that directly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Zhijian Zhou , Xunye Tian , Liuhua Peng , Chao Lei , Antonin Schrab , Danica J. Sutherland , Feng Liu

The distribution closeness testing (DCT) assesses whether the distance between a distribution pair is at least $\epsilon$-far. Existing DCT methods mainly measure discrepancies between a distribution pair defined on discrete one-dimensional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-10 Zhijian Zhou , Liuhua Peng , Xunye Tian , Feng Liu

We characterize the asymptotic performance of nonparametric goodness of fit testing. The exponential decay rate of the type-II error probability is used as the asymptotic performance metric, and a test is optimal if it achieves the maximum…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-03-19 Shengyu Zhu , Biao Chen , Pengfei Yang , Zhitang Chen

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

Comparing conditional distributions is a fundamental challenge in statistics and machine learning, with applications across a wide range of domains. While proposed methods for measuring discrepancies using kernel embeddings of distributions…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-05 Peter Moskvichev , Siu Lun Chau , Dino Sejdinovic

In many contemporary statistical and machine learning methods, one needs to optimize an objective function that depends on the discrepancy between two probability distributions. The discrepancy can be referred to as a metric for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-11 Yijin Ni , Xiaoming Huo

The Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) is a cornerstone statistic for nonparametric two-sample testing, but its test power is dictated entirely by the chosen kernel. Because any fixed kernel inherently fails to distinguish certain…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-11 Yijin Ni , Xiaoming Huo

Representing, comparing, and measuring the distance between probability distributions is a key task in computational statistics and machine learning. The choice of representation and the associated distance determine properties of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-26 Masha Naslidnyk

Nonparametric two sample testing deals with the question of consistently deciding if two distributions are different, given samples from both, without making any parametric assumptions about the form of the distributions. The current…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-11-25 Aaditya Ramdas , Sashank J. Reddi , Barnabas Poczos , Aarti Singh , Larry Wasserman