Related papers: A Kiefer--Wolfowitz theorem for convex densities
Given a random sample from a distribution with density function that depends on an unknown parameter $\theta$, we are interested in accurately estimating the true parametric density function at a future observation from the same…
Langevin diffusion is a commonly used tool for sampling from a given distribution. In this work, we establish that when the target density $p^*$ is such that $\log p^*$ is $L$ smooth and $m$ strongly convex, discrete Langevin diffusion…
Using an approach based, amongst other things, on Proposition 1 of Kaluza (1928), Goldie (1967) and, using a different approach based especially on zeros of polynomials, Steutel (1967) have proved that each nondegenerate distribution…
We revisit the problem of sampling from a target distribution that has a smooth strongly log-concave density everywhere in $\mathbb R^p$. In this context, if no additional density information is available, the randomized midpoint…
We offer a new proof of Furstenberg and Katznelson's density version of the Hales-Jewett Theorem: For any $\delta > 0$ there is some $N_0 \geq 1$ such that whenever $A \subseteq [k]^N$ with $N \geq N_0$ and $|A|\geq \delta k^N$, $A$…
Sampling from various kinds of distributions is an issue of paramount importance in statistics since it is often the key ingredient for constructing estimators, test procedures or confidence intervals. In many situations, the exact sampling…
The k-monotone classes of densities defined on (0, \infty) have been known in the mathematical literature but were for the first time considered from a statistical point of view by Balabdaoui and Wellner (2007, 2010). In these works, the…
We study the problem of sampling from a distribution $\mu$ with density $\propto e^{-V}$ for some potential function $V:\mathbb R^d\to \mathbb R$ with query access to $V$ and $\nabla V$. We start with the following standard assumptions: (1)…
Shape constraints yield flexible middle grounds between fully nonparametric and fully parametric approaches to modeling distributions of data. The specific assumption of log-concavity is motivated by applications across economics, survival…
This paper proposes and studies new quantum version of $f$-divergences, a class of convex functionals of a pair of probability distributions including Kullback-Leibler divergence, Rnyi-type relative entropy and so on. There are several…
We propose a new discretization of the mirror-Langevin diffusion and give a crisp proof of its convergence. Our analysis uses relative convexity/smoothness and self-concordance, ideas which originated in convex optimization, together with a…
By the Pr\'ekopa-Leindler inequality, the difference $X-X'$ has a log-concave density provided that $X$ has a log-concave density and $X, X'$ are independent and identically distributed. We prove that the opposite direction does not always…
Assume that $(X_t)_{t\in\Z}$ is a real valued time series admitting a common marginal density $f$ with respect to Lebesgue's measure. Donoho {\it et al.} (1996) propose a near-minimax method based on thresholding wavelets to estimate $f$ on…
We study a sampling problem whose target distribution is $\pi \propto \exp(-f-r)$ where the data fidelity term $f$ is Lipschitz smooth while the regularizer term $r=r_1-r_2$ is a non-smooth difference-of-convex (DC) function, i.e.,…
We study the problem of sampling from a probability distribution $\pi$ on $\rset^d$ which has a density \wrt\ the Lebesgue measure known up to a normalization factor $x \mapsto \rme^{-U(x)} / \int_{\rset^d} \rme^{-U(y)} \rmd y$. We analyze…
We study the topology of the space of probability measures invariant under the geodesic flow, defined on the unit-tangent bundle of a compact Riemannian manifold with non-positive curvature. Building on a previous work by Coud\`ene and…
We prove an exponential deviation inequality for the convex hull of a finite sample of i.i.d. random points with a density supported on an arbitrary convex body in $\R^d$, $d\geq 2$. When the density is uniform, our result yields rate…
We prove the following type of discrete entropy monotonicity for sums of isotropic, log-concave, independent and identically distributed random vectors $X_1,\dots,X_{n+1}$ on $\mathbb{Z}^d$: $$ H(X_1+\cdots+X_{n+1}) \geq H(X_1+\cdots+X_{n})…
It has been conjectured by W. Chen that the distribution of the length of the longest increasing subsequence in a uniformly random permutation is log-concave. We propose a stronger version of this conjecture which involves the Kronecker…
Suppose that $\m{U} = (U_1, \ldots , U_d) $ has a Uniform$([0,1]^d)$ distribution, that $\m{Y} = (Y_1 , \ldots , Y_d) $ has the distribution $G$ on $\RR_+^d$, and let $\m{X} = (X_1 , \ldots , X_d) = (U_1 Y_1 , \ldots , U_d Y_d )$. The…