English

Testing Properties of Multiple Distributions with Few Samples

Data Structures and Algorithms 2019-11-19 v1 Discrete Mathematics Machine Learning Machine Learning

Abstract

We propose a new setting for testing properties of distributions while receiving samples from several distributions, but few samples per distribution. Given samples from ss distributions, p1,p2,,psp_1, p_2, \ldots, p_s, we design testers for the following problems: (1) Uniformity Testing: Testing whether all the pip_i's are uniform or ϵ\epsilon-far from being uniform in 1\ell_1-distance (2) Identity Testing: Testing whether all the pip_i's are equal to an explicitly given distribution qq or ϵ\epsilon-far from qq in 1\ell_1-distance, and (3) Closeness Testing: Testing whether all the pip_i's are equal to a distribution qq which we have sample access to, or ϵ\epsilon-far from qq in 1\ell_1-distance. By assuming an additional natural condition about the source distributions, we provide sample optimal testers for all of these problems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.07324,
  title  = {Testing Properties of Multiple Distributions with Few Samples},
  author = {Maryam Aliakbarpour and Sandeep Silwal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.07324},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

ITCS 2020

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:18:33.784Z