Weighted Asymptotically Optimal Sequential Testing
Abstract
This paper develops a framework for incorporating prior information into sequential multiple testing procedures while maintaining asymptotic optimality. We define a weighted log-likelihood ratio (WLLR) as an additive modification of the standard LLR and use it to construct two new sequential tests: the Weighted Gap and Weighted Gap-Intersection procedures. We prove that both procedures provide strong control of the family-wise error rate. Our main theoretical contribution is to show that these weighted procedures are asymptotically optimal; their expected stopping times achieve the theoretical lower bound as the error probabilities vanish. This first-order optimality is shown to be robust, holding in high-dimensional regimes where the number of null hypotheses grows and in settings with random weights, provided that mild, interpretable conditions on the weight distribution are met.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.07588,
title = {Weighted Asymptotically Optimal Sequential Testing},
author = {Soumyabrata Bose and Jay Bartroff},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.07588},
year = {2026}
}