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Related papers: Entropy Equivalence Testing

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This paper considers the estimation of Shannon entropy for discrete distributions with countably infinite support. While minimax rates for finite-support distributions are established, infinite-support distributions present distinct…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-12-03 Octavio César Mesner

Shannon Entropy is the preeminent tool for measuring the level of uncertainty (and conversely, information content) in a random variable. In the field of communications, entropy can be used to express the information content of given…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2024-11-06 Bill Kay , Audun Myers , Thad Boydston , Emily Ellwein , Cameron Mackenzie , Iliana Alvarez , Erik Lentz

We design, implement and test a simple algorithm which computes the approximate entropy of a finite binary string of arbitrary length. The algorithm uses a weighted average of the Shannon Entropies of the string and all but the last binary…

Other Computer Science · Computer Science 2013-09-17 Grenville J. Croll

The scientific method relies on the iterated processes of inference and inquiry. The inference phase consists of selecting the most probable models based on the available data; whereas the inquiry phase consists of using what is known about…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-05-19 N. K. Malakar , K. H. Knuth

We study distribution testing without direct access to a source of relevant data, but rather to one where only a tiny fraction is relevant. To enable this, we introduce the following verification query model. The goal is to perform a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Hadley Black , Christopher Ye

Evidence theory is that the extension of probability can better deal with unknowns and inaccurate information. Uncertainty measurement plays a vital role in both evidence theory and probability theory. Approximate Entropy (ApEn) is proposed…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-05-19 Tianxiang Zhan , Yuanpeng He , Hanwen Li , Fuyuan Xiao

A Poisson Binomial distribution over $n$ variables is the distribution of the sum of $n$ independent Bernoullis. We provide a sample near-optimal algorithm for testing whether a distribution $P$ supported on $\{0,...,n\}$ to which we have…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-10-15 Jayadev Acharya , Constantinos Daskalakis

Given $m \ge 2$ discrete probability distributions over $n$ states each, the minimum-entropy coupling is the minimum-entropy joint distribution whose marginals are the same as the input distributions. Computing the minimum-entropy coupling…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Spencer Compton

It is well known that to estimate the Shannon entropy for symbolic sequences accurately requires a large number of samples. When some aspects of the data are known it is plausible to attempt to use this to more efficiently compute entropy.…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2018-05-18 Andrew D. Back , Daniel Angus , Janet Wiles

We study the problem of testing discrete distributions with a focus on the high probability regime. Specifically, given samples from one or more discrete distributions, a property $\mathcal{P}$, and parameters $0< \epsilon, \delta <1$, we…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-09-15 Ilias Diakonikolas , Themis Gouleakis , Daniel M. Kane , John Peebles , Eric Price

In this paper, we show an interesting connection between a quantum sampling technique and quantum uncertainty. Namely, we use the quantum sampling technique, introduced by Bouman and Fehr, to derive a novel entropic uncertainty relation…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-02-05 Walter O. Krawec

We present new algorithms for estimating and testing \emph{collision probability}, a fundamental measure of the spread of a discrete distribution that is widely used in many scientific fields. We describe an algorithm that satisfies…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-21 Robert Busa-Fekete , Umar Syed

In this paper, we obtain a new characterization result for symmetric distributions based on the entropy measure. Using the characterization, we propose a nonparametric test to test the symmetry of a distribution. We also develop the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-05-14 Ganesh Vishnu Avhad , Ananya Lahiri , Sudheesh K. Kattumannil

The problem of Shannon entropy estimation in countable infinite alphabets is addressed from the study and use of convergence results of the entropy functional, which is known to be discontinuous with respect to the total variation distance…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2018-04-03 Jorge F. Silva

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-01-17 Ilias Diakonikolas , Themis Gouleakis , John Peebles , Eric Price

We revisit the problem of tolerant distribution testing. That is, given samples from an unknown distribution $p$ over $\{1, \dots, n\}$, is it $\varepsilon_1$-close to or $\varepsilon_2$-far from a reference distribution $q$ (in total…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-11-10 Clément L. Canonne , Ayush Jain , Gautam Kamath , Jerry Li

We propose novel kernel-based tests for assessing the equivalence between distributions. Traditional goodness-of-fit testing is inappropriate for concluding the absence of distributional differences, because failure to reject the null…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-17 Xing Liu , Axel Gandy

We investigate distribution testing with access to non-adaptive conditional samples. In the conditional sampling model, the algorithm is given the following access to a distribution: it submits a query set $S$ to an oracle, which returns a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-11-06 Gautam Kamath , Christos Tzamos

Distribution testing is a fundamental statistical task with many applications, but we are interested in a variety of problems where systematic mislabelings of the sample prevent us from applying the existing theory. To apply distribution…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-04-05 Renato Ferreira Pinto , Nathaniel Harms

We propose a new setting for testing properties of distributions while receiving samples from several distributions, but few samples per distribution. Given samples from $s$ distributions, $p_1, p_2, \ldots, p_s$, we design testers for the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Maryam Aliakbarpour , Sandeep Silwal