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The Wasserstein distance has emerged as a key metric to quantify distances between probability distributions, with applications in various fields, including machine learning, control theory, decision theory, and biological systems.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Eduardo Figueiredo , Steven Adams , Luca Laurenti

Semi-discrete optimal transport problems, which evaluate the Wasserstein distance between a discrete and a generic (possibly non-discrete) probability measure, are believed to be computationally hard. Even though such problems are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-02 Bahar Taskesen , Soroosh Shafieezadeh-Abadeh , Daniel Kuhn

We study a general formulation of regularized Wasserstein barycenters that enjoys favorable regularity, approximation, stability and (grid-free) optimization properties. This barycenter is defined as the unique probability measure that…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-28 Lénaïc Chizat

We develop a projected Wasserstein distance for the two-sample test, a fundamental problem in statistics and machine learning: given two sets of samples, to determine whether they are from the same distribution. In particular, we aim to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-04-01 Jie Wang , Rui Gao , Yao Xie

In many applications in statistics and machine learning, the availability of data samples from multiple possibly heterogeneous sources has become increasingly prevalent. On the other hand, in distributionally robust optimization, we seek…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-31 Tim Tsz-Kit Lau , Han Liu

This paper derives non-asymptotic error bounds for nonlinear stochastic approximation algorithms in the Wasserstein-$p$ distance. To obtain explicit finite-sample guarantees for the last iterate, we develop a coupling argument that compares…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Seo Taek Kong , R. Srikant

We study barycenters of $N$ probability measures on $\mathbb{R}^d$ with respect to the $p$-Wasserstein metric ($1<p<\infty$). We prove that -- $p$-Wasserstein barycenters of absolutely continuous measures are unique, and again absolutely…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2024-10-23 Camilla Brizzi , Gero Friesecke , Tobias Ried

We study the problem of model aggregation within the Wasserstein space for probability measures on the real line. Given a fixed finite collection of candidate probability models, we consider the associated class of Wasserstein barycenters…

We study in this paper a variant of Wasserstein barycenter problem, which we refer to as tree-Wasserstein barycenter, by leveraging a specific class of ground metrics, namely tree metrics, for Wasserstein distance. Drawing on the tree…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-28 Tam Le , Viet Huynh , Nhat Ho , Dinh Phung , Makoto Yamada

Bayesian inference typically requires the computation of an approximation to the posterior distribution. An important requirement for an approximate Bayesian inference algorithm is to output high-accuracy posterior mean and uncertainty…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-10-03 Jonathan H. Huggins , Trevor Campbell , Mikołaj Kasprzak , Tamara Broderick

In this paper, a regularization of Wasserstein barycenters for random measures supported on $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ is introduced via convex penalization. The existence and uniqueness of such barycenters is first proved for a large class of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-03-20 Jérémie Bigot , Elsa Cazelles , Nicolas Papadakis

Wasserstein Barycenter (WB) is one of the most fundamental optimization problems in optimal transportation. Given a set of distributions, the goal of WB is to find a new distribution that minimizes the average Wasserstein distance to them.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-23 Qingyuan Yang , Hu Ding

We study the problem of the decentralized computation of entropy-regularized semi-discrete Wasserstein barycenters over a network. Building upon recent primal-dual approaches, we propose a sampling gradient quantization scheme that allows…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-10-28 Roman Krawtschenko , César A. Uribe , Alexander Gasnikov , Pavel Dvurechensky

Wasserstein distance plays increasingly important roles in machine learning, stochastic programming and image processing. Major efforts have been under way to address its high computational complexity, some leading to approximate or…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-26 Yujia Xie , Xiangfeng Wang , Ruijia Wang , Hongyuan Zha

Barycenter problems encode important geometric information about a metric space. While these problems are typically studied with positive weight coefficients associated to each distance term, more general signed Wasserstein barycenter…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Matt Jacobs , Bohan Zhou

Computing Wasserstein barycenters is a fundamental geometric problem with widespread applications in machine learning, statistics, and computer graphics. However, it is unknown whether Wasserstein barycenters can be computed in polynomial…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-11-16 Jason M. Altschuler , Enric Boix-Adsera

Gaussian Process based Bayesian Optimization is a widely applied algorithm to learn and optimize under uncertainty, well-known for its sample efficiency. However, recently -- and more frequently -- research studies have empirically…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-20 Antonio Candelieri , Andrea Ponti , Francesco Archetti

Squared Wasserstein distance is a frequently used tool to measure discrepancy between probability distributions. This distance is typically computed between empirical measures of size $n$ from two underlying random samples. Unfortunately,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-20 Peter Matthew Jacobs , Jeff M. Phillips

In this work we consider regularized Wasserstein barycenters (average in Wasserstein distance) in Fourier basis. We prove that random Fourier parameters of the barycenter converge to some Gaussian random vector by distribution. The…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-09-21 Nazar Buzun

The Wasserstein distance between two probability measures on a metric space is a measure of closeness with applications in statistics, probability, and machine learning. In this work, we consider the fundamental question of how quickly the…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-07-04 Jonathan Weed , Francis Bach