New estimator reduces kernel mean estimation error.
problem Kernel mean estimation in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces.
method Corrupt data with known distributions and estimate kernel mean under the corrupted distribution.
result The marginalized kernel mean estimator achieves lower estimation error.
The paper examines conditions for linearity in a conditional mean estimator under vector Poisson noise.
problem Conditions for linearity of the conditional mean estimator in vector Poisson noise.
method Analyzes prior distributions and their impact on the conditional mean estimator's linearity.
result The only prior distribution that induces linearity is a product gamma distribution, and non-zero dark current parameter prevents linearity.
New collaborative algorithm improves personalized mean estimation in online settings.
problem Online estimation of means from multiple, possibly overlapping distributions.
method Novel collaborative strategy for active querying and mean estimation.
result Algorithm improves mean estimates through communication among agents.
New method improves mean estimation for heavy-tailed data.
problem Estimating mean of heavy-tailed distributions.
method Median-of-Means (MoM) with symmetrization technique.
result Improved sample complexity bound for mean estimation.
New estimator accurately estimates mean of real-valued distributions without variance knowledge.
problem Estimating the mean of real-valued distributions without prior variance knowledge.
method Introduces a novel estimator that converges sub-Gaussian and works across distributions with bounded variance.
result The estimator achieves accuracy of σ·(1+o(1))√(2log(1/δ)/n) with parameters n, δ, and σ².
New bounds on private mean estimation for heavy-tailed distributions.
problem Estimating the mean of heavy-tailed distributions under differential privacy constraints.
method Upper and lower bounds on sample complexity for differentially private mean estimation.
result Qualitatively different sample complexity compared to non-private estimation, with a factor of O(d) larger for multivariate cases. Efficiently estimates sparse mean from heavy-tailed data.
problem Robustly estimating sparse mean from heavy-tailed distributions.
method Stability-based approach adapted for heavy-tailed data.
result Optimal sample complexity with logarithmic dependence on dimension.
The study examines conditions for achieving a simple lower bound in estimating mean from samples.
problem Achieving a simple lower bound for estimating the mean of a distribution.
method Analyzes conditions for nearly attaining Le Cam's two-point testing lower bound for mean estimation.
result An algorithm nearly attains the two-point testing rate for mixtures of symmetric, log-concave distributions with a common mean.
A new algorithm estimates mean under varying user data sizes with local differential privacy.
problem Mean estimation with user-level local differential privacy under varying data sizes.
method Distribution-aware mean estimation algorithm for users with varying data sizes.
result Upper and lower bounds on the worst-case risk for mean estimation are derived.
We study the problem of robust mean estimation and introduce a novel Hamming distance-based measure of distribution shift for coordinate-level corruptions. We show that this measure yields adversary models that capture more realistic corruptions than those used in prior works, and present an information-theoretic analy…
Robustly estimates mean in incomplete data with corrupted examples.
problem Estimating mean in data with missing values and outliers.
method Algorithms for robust estimation with optimal error guarantees in nearly-linear time.
result Information-theoretically optimal error guarantees for mean estimation.
Efficiently estimates distributed mean with side information, near-optimal and universal.
problem Distributed mean estimation with side information in communication constrained settings.
method Wyner-Ziv estimators for communication and computation efficiency.
result Near-optimal and universal recovery guarantees for distributed optimization and compression.
Paper improves statistical efficiency of median-of-means estimator for Byzantine robust distributed inference.
problem Byzantine robustness in distributed learning systems.
method Variance reduced median-of-means (VRMOM) estimator for Byzantine robust distributed inference.
result Achieves a fast convergence rate with only a constant number of rounds of communications.
A new method estimates the number of clusters on spherical data.
problem Estimating the number of clusters in spherical data.
method Spherical X-means (SX-means) method assuming von Mises-Fisher distributions.
result Shows the performance of SX-means in estimating the number of clusters.
New study shows mean estimation algorithms can't beat sub-Gaussian rate in general.
problem Improving mean estimation beyond worst-case scenarios.
method Constructing counterexamples and introducing neighborhood optimality.
result No reasonable estimator can achieve better than sub-Gaussian error rate for any distribution.
Quantum algorithm estimates mean with sub-Gaussian error.
problem Estimating mean of quantum-computed random variables.
method Quantum mean estimation algorithm with sub-Gaussian error rate.
result Achieves nearly-optimal quadratic speedup over classical methods.
Robust diffusion adaptive estimation algorithms based on the maximum correntropy criterion (MCC), including adaptation to combination MCC and combination to adaptation MCC, are developed to deal with the distributed estimation over network in impulsive (long-tailed) noise environments. The cost functions used in distri…
We solve the mean parametrization of von Mises-Fisher distribution.
problem No closed-form normalization function for mean parameters exists.
method Derived a second-order ODE for mean normalizer and provided approximations.
result Rapid evaluation of densities and natural parameters in terms of mean parameters.
New recursive algorithm estimates conditional kernel mean embeddings in Hilbert space.
problem Estimating conditional distributions in RKHS for supervised learning.
method Recursive algorithm in L2 space for conditional kernel mean map. result Strong L2 consistency of recursive estimator proved. New compression schemes save communication in distributed mean estimation.
problem Efficiently compressing vectors for mean estimation in a limited communication setting.
method Collaborative compression schemes that exploit vector similarities without requiring known correlations.
result Analysis shows varying error types with vector similarity.
Study robust estimation under varying corruption probabilities in data.
problem Robust estimation in scenarios with heterogeneous corruption rates.
method Developed estimators for mean and regression under various corruption patterns.
result Optimal estimators can discard corrupted samples beyond a specific threshold.
Improved mean estimation for symmetric distributions with finite-sample guarantees.
problem Estimating the mean of a symmetric distribution from samples.
method Using Fisher information rate for finite-sample guarantees.
result Finite-sample convergence close to subgaussian with variance 1/(n * I_r), where I_r is r-smoothed Fisher information.
HAVER improves error bounds for estimating the largest mean in machine learning tasks.
problem Estimating the largest mean among multiple distributions.
method Proposes HAVER, a novel algorithm for maximum mean estimation.
result HAVER achieves better error bounds than the oracle in many cases.
New tests for distributional causal effects using improved kernel estimators.
problem Testing for higher-order moments and multidimensional outcomes affected by treatment.
method Improved kernel estimators based on doubly robust mean embeddings.
result New permutation-based tests for distributional causal effects with improved convergence rates.
Paper proposes a 1-bit mean estimation method with near-optimal sample complexity.
problem Distributed mean estimation with 1-bit communication constraints.
method Randomized and sequentially-chosen interval queries to estimate mean.
result Sample complexity bound matches minimax lower bound with logarithmic factors.
We study the tradeoff between the statistical error and communication cost of distributed statistical estimation problems in high dimensions. In the distributed sparse Gaussian mean estimation problem, each of the m machines receives n data points from a d-dimensional Gaussian distribution with unknown mean θ w…
Estimates mean of distributed vectors with sparsification and spatial/temporal correlations.
problem Estimating mean of high-dimensional vectors distributed across nodes with low communication cost.
method Modifies decoding method to leverage spatial and temporal correlations in sparsified vectors.
result Estimators consistently outperform more sophisticated sparsification methods.
The study establishes risk bounds for distributional regression estimators.
problem Estimating distributional regression models with nonparametric methods.
method Theoretical bounds for CRPS and MSE are derived for convex and non-convex constraints.
result Theoretical risk bounds are validated through experiments on simulated and real data.
We provide a theoretical foundation for non-parametric estimation of functions of random variables using kernel mean embeddings. We show that for any continuous function f, consistent estimators of the mean embedding of a random variable X lead to consistent estimators of the mean embedding of f(X). For Matérn ke…
We survey some of the recent advances in mean estimation and regression function estimation. In particular, we describe sub-Gaussian mean estimators for possibly heavy-tailed data both in the univariate and multivariate settings. We focus on estimators based on median-of-means techniques but other methods such as the t…
Faster convergence of kernel mean embeddings using variance information.
problem Speeding up the convergence rate of kernel mean embeddings.
method Leveraging variance information in reproducing kernel Hilbert space and estimating variance from data.
result Efficiently estimate variance information from data to achieve distribution-agnostic convergence bounds.
Paper proposes robust gossip algorithms for mean and trimmed mean estimation.
problem Vulnerability of mean-based gossip algorithms to malicious nodes.
method Developed extsc{GoRank} for rank estimation and extsc{GoTrim} for trimmed mean estimation.
result Established convergence rates for rank and trimmed mean estimation.
Proposes CCME framework for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects.
problem Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects in complex distributions.
method Embeds conditional distributions into RKHS, develops meta-estimators for CCME.
result Establishes finite-sample convergence rates and double robustness for CCME estimators.
Proves subgaussian distributions are SoS-certifiably subgaussian, enabling efficient algorithms for various statistical tasks.
problem Efficiently learning from subgaussian distributions in high dimensions.
method Universal constant C and polynomial sum of squares (SoS) approach. result Proves subgaussian distributions are SoS-certifiably subgaussian.
Study on estimating Gaussian mean from coarse data, resolving identifiability and computational efficiency questions.
problem Estimating the mean of a Gaussian distribution from coarse data (sets containing true samples rather than exact values).
method Analyzes the conditions for mean identifiability and computable estimation under convex partitions.
result Resolves the identifiability and computational efficiency questions for Gaussian mean estimation from coarse data.
A new method estimates marginal likelihood using normalizing flows.
problem Estimating marginal likelihood in Bayesian model selection.
method Learned harmonic mean estimator using normalizing flows.
result Normalizing flows avoid the exploding variance problem.
A method for estimating parameters from entangled single-sample distributions, robust to high-noise data.
problem Estimating common parameters from entangled single-sample distributions.
method Iterative trimming of samples to estimate the parameter.
result The method can tolerate a constant fraction of high-noise data points.
A method for converting NIW parameters for better estimation.
problem Estimating parameters of multivariate normal distribution.
method Convergent procedure for converting mean parameters to natural parameters in NIW family.
result Maximum likelihood estimation of natural parameters from observed statistics.
Paper improves distributed mean estimation and variance reduction without relying on input norm.
problem Distributed mean estimation and variance reduction with large input norms.
method Quantization and lattice theory connection for improved error bounds.
result Output error bounds depend only on input distance, not norm.
A new method for distribution regression using sliced Wasserstein distance.
problem Learning functions over spaces of probabilities.
method Proposes an OT-based estimator using the Sliced Wasserstein distance.
result Proves universal consistency and excess risk bounds for the proposed estimator.
New method estimates sparse mean from noisy data without knowing sparsity level.
problem Sparse mean estimation under adversarial corruptions.
method Incremental learning approach to nonconvex optimization.
result Achieves optimal statistical rate under moderate signal-to-noise ratio.
Improved median of means estimator with tighter bounds.
problem Improving the efficiency and reliability of median of means estimator.
method Modification of the median of means estimator with sub-Gaussian deviation bounds.
result Achieves nearly optimal constants under minimal assumptions.
This paper considers statistical estimation problems where the probability distribution of the observed random variable is invariant with respect to actions of a finite topological group. It is shown that any such distribution must satisfy a restricted finite mixture representation. When specialized to the case of dist…
Private statistics estimation faces a bias, accuracy, and privacy trilemma.
problem Balancing privacy, accuracy, and bias in statistical estimation.
method Use differential privacy (DP) for private statistics, but clip samples to control sensitivity and add noise for privacy, introducing bias.
result No algorithm can simultaneously have low bias, low error, and low privacy loss for arbitrary distributions.
A mean function in reproducing kernel Hilbert space, or a kernel mean, is an important part of many applications ranging from kernel principal component analysis to Hilbert-space embedding of distributions. Given finite samples, an empirical average is the standard estimate for the true kernel mean. We show that this e…
New private mean estimation method works well for anisotropic data.
problem Private mean estimation for high-dimensional anisotropic distributions.
method Developed (ε,δ)-differentially private estimators with dimension-independent sample complexity. result Achieved optimal sample complexity for anisotropic subgaussian distributions.
The stochastic multi-armed bandit problem is well understood when the reward distributions are sub-Gaussian. In this paper we examine the bandit problem under the weaker assumption that the distributions have moments of order 1+ε, for some ε∈(0,1]. Surprisingly, moments of order 2 (i.e., finite variance) are suffi…
A new algorithm estimates mean adaptively to covariance, faster and more flexible than existing methods.
problem Estimating mean of a distribution with unknown covariance efficiently and privately.
method Adaptive differentially private algorithm with optimal convergence rates and near-linear sample complexity.
result Achieves optimal rates of convergence with respect to the Mahalanobis norm ∣∣⋅∣∣Σ.