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The maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) is a kernel-based nonparametric statistic for two-sample testing, whose inferential accuracy depends critically on variance characterization. Existing work provides various finite-sample estimators of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-05 Shijie Zhong , Yikun Yang , Da Gong , Jiangfeng Fu

Embedding probability distributions into reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS) has enabled powerful nonparametric methods such as the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD), a statistical distance with strong theoretical and computational…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-28 Masha Naslidnyk , Siu Lun Chau , François-Xavier Briol , Krikamol Muandet

The maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) is a kernel-based distance between probability distributions useful in many applications (Gretton et al. 2012), bearing a simple estimator with pleasing computational and statistical properties. Being able…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-11-16 Danica J. Sutherland , Namrata Deka

Two-sample hypothesis testing-determining whether two sets of data are drawn from the same distribution-is a fundamental problem in statistics and machine learning with broad scientific applications. In the context of nonparametric testing,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-21 Antoine Chatalic , Marco Letizia , Nicolas Schreuder , Lorenzo Rosasco

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

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

Empirical divergence maximization (EDM) refers to a recently proposed strategy for estimating f-divergences and likelihood ratio functions. This paper extends the idea to empirical vector quantization where one seeks to empirically derive…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2015-06-03 Michael A. Lexa

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

We study the quantitative convergence of Wasserstein gradient flows of Kernel Mean Discrepancy (KMD) (also known as Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD)) functionals. Our setting covers in particular the training dynamics of shallow neural…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2026-03-03 Lénaïc Chizat , Maria Colombo , Roberto Colombo , Xavier Fernández-Real

We study the convergence rate of the optimal quantization for a probability measure sequence $(\mu_{n})_{n\in\mathbb{N}^{*}}$ on $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ converging in the Wasserstein distance in two aspects: the first one is the convergence rate…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-02-20 Yating Liu , Gilles Pagès

While likelihood-based inference and its variants provide a statistically efficient and widely applicable approach to parametric inference, their application to models involving intractable likelihoods poses challenges. In this work, we…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-06-17 Francois-Xavier Briol , Alessandro Barp , Andrew B. Duncan , Mark Girolami

In real life, we frequently come across data sets that involve some independent explanatory variable(s) generating a set of ordinal responses. These ordinal responses may correspond to an underlying continuous latent variable, which is…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-01-08 Arijit Pyne , Subhrajyoty Roy , Abhik Ghosh , Ayanendranath Basu

Kernel methods provide a flexible and powerful framework for nonparametric statistical testing by embedding probability distributions into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). In this work, we study the kernel two-sample testing…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-04-09 Perrine Lacroix , Bertrand Michel , Franck Picard , Vincent Rivoirard

The kernel two-sample test based on the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) is one of the most popular methods for detecting differences between two distributions over general metric spaces. In this paper we propose a method to boost the power…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-09-06 Anirban Chatterjee , Bhaswar B. Bhattacharya

Maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) has enjoyed a lot of success in many machine learning and statistical applications, including non-parametric hypothesis testing, because of its ability to handle non-Euclidean data. Recently, it has been…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-01-24 Omar Hagrass , Bharath K. Sriperumbudur , Bing Li

We consider a Markov chain on $\mathbb{R}^d$ with invariant measure $\mu$. We are interested in the rate of convergence of the empirical measures towards the invariant measure with respect to various dual distances, including in particular…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-10-13 Adrian Riekert

We propose a novel kernel-based two-sample test that leverages the spectral decomposition of the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) statistic to identify and utilize well-estimated directional components in reproducing kernel Hilbert space…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-21 Rui Cui , Yuhao Li , Xiaojun Song

We present tight lower bounds on the number of kernel evaluations required to approximately solve kernel ridge regression (KRR) and kernel $k$-means clustering (KKMC) on $n$ input points. For KRR, our bound for relative error approximation…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-17 Manuel Fernandez , David P. Woodruff , Taisuke Yasuda

For a class of (non-symmetric) diffusion processes on a length space, which in particular include the (reflecting) diffusion processes on a connected compact Riemannian manifold, the exact convergence rate is derived for $({\mathbb E}…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-08-20 Feng-Yu Wang , Bingyao Wu , Jie-Xiang Zhu

Existing two-sample testing techniques, particularly those based on choosing a kernel for the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD), often assume equal sample sizes from the two distributions. Applying these methods in practice can require…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-17 Aaron Wei , Milad Jalali , Danica J. Sutherland