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We derive quantitative bounds on the rate of convergence in $L^1$ Wasserstein distance of general M-estimators, with an almost sharp (up to a logarithmic term) behavior in the number of observations. We focus on situations where the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-11-19 François Bachoc , Max Fathi

We suggest that the tools of contraction analysis for deterministic systems can be applied towards studying the convergence behavior of stochastic dynamical systems in the Wasserstein metric. In particular, we consider the case of Ito…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-01 Jake Bouvrie , Jean-Jacques Slotine

We introduce the Wasserstein Transform (WT), a general unsupervised framework for updating distance structures on given data sets with the purpose of enhancing features and denoising. Our framework represents each data point by a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Kun Jin , Facundo Mémoli , Zane Smith , Zhengchao Wan

Bayesian inference problems require sampling or approximating high-dimensional probability distributions. The focus of this paper is on the recently introduced Stein variational gradient descent methodology, a class of algorithms that rely…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-14 A. Duncan , N. Nuesken , L. Szpruch

The Wasserstein distance received a lot of attention recently in the community of machine learning, especially for its principled way of comparing distributions. It has found numerous applications in several hard problems, such as domain…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-10-23 Nicolas Courty , Rémi Flamary , Mélanie Ducoffe

We propose a general purpose variational inference algorithm that forms a natural counterpart of gradient descent for optimization. Our method iteratively transports a set of particles to match the target distribution, by applying a form of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-10 Qiang Liu , Dilin Wang

In this paper we propose an algorithm for aligning three-dimensional objects when represented as density maps, motivated by applications in cryogenic electron microscopy. The algorithm is based on minimizing the 1-Wasserstein distance…

Image and Video Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-13 Amit Singer , Ruiyi Yang

We consider the optimization problem of minimizing a functional defined over a family of probability distributions, where the objective functional is assumed to possess a variational form. Such a distributional optimization problem arises…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Zhuoran Yang , Yufeng Zhang , Yongxin Chen , Zhaoran Wang

This paper deals with the estimation of a probability measure on the real line from data observed with an additive noise. We are interested in rates of convergence for the Wasserstein metric of order $p\geq 1$. The distribution of the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-03-05 Jérôme Dedecker , Aurélie Fischer , Bertrand Michel

Covariate shift arises when covariate distributions differ between source and target populations while the conditional distribution of the response remains invariant, and it underlies problems in missing data and causal inference. We…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-13 Junjun Lang , Qiong Zhang , Yukun Liu

Wasserstein barycenters provide a geometrically meaningful way to aggregate probability distributions, built on the theory of optimal transport. They are difficult to compute in practice, however, leading previous work to restrict their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Lingxiao Li , Aude Genevay , Mikhail Yurochkin , Justin Solomon

In inverse problems, many conditional generative models approximate the posterior measure by minimizing a distance between the joint measure and its learned approximation. While this approach also controls the distance between the posterior…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-28 Jannis Chemseddine , Paul Hagemann , Gabriele Steidl , Christian Wald

Wasserstein distances are widely used in modern data analysis but pose significant computational and statistical challenges in high dimensions. The sliced Wasserstein distance alleviates these challenges by leveraging one-dimensional…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-05-21 David Rodríguez-Vítores , Eustasio del Barrio , Jean-Michel Loubes

Particle-based variational inference offers a flexible way of approximating complex posterior distributions with a set of particles. In this paper we introduce a new particle-based variational inference method based on the theory of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-05-16 Luca Ambrogioni , Umut Guclu , Marcel van Gerven

We present a framework for obtaining explicit bounds on the rate of convergence to equilibrium of a Markov chain on a general state space, with respect to both total variation and Wasserstein distances. For Wasserstein bounds, our main tool…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2011-02-28 Neal Madras , Deniz Sezer

Let $(X_n)_{n=0}^\infty$ denote a Markov chain on a Polish space that has a stationary distribution $\varpi$. This article concerns upper bounds on the Wasserstein distance between the distribution of $X_n$ and $\varpi$. In particular, an…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-02-16 Qian Qin , James P. Hobert

In this paper, we study higher-order-accurate-in-time minimizing movements schemes for Wasserstein gradient flows. We introduce a novel accelerated second-order scheme, leveraging the differential structure of the Wasserstein space in both…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Raymond Chu , Matt Jacobs

We study optimization problems whereby the optimization variable is a probability measure. Since the probability space is not a vector space, many classical and powerful methods for optimization (e.g., gradients) are of little help. Thus,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-18 Nicolas Lanzetti , Antonio Terpin , Florian Dörfler

We present a framework that allows for the non-asymptotic study of the $2$-Wasserstein distance between the invariant distribution of an ergodic stochastic differential equation and the distribution of its numerical approximation in the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-09-27 J. M. Sanz-Serna , Konstantinos C. Zygalakis

Sliced Wasserstein distances preserve properties of classic Wasserstein distances while being more scalable for computation and estimation in high dimensions. The goal of this work is to quantify this scalability from three key aspects: (i)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-10-18 Sloan Nietert , Ritwik Sadhu , Ziv Goldfeld , Kengo Kato