New theoretical tools simplify kernel-based tests analysis.
problem Asymptotic behavior of kernel-based tests in various scenarios.
method Avoids complex expansions and limit theorems, works directly with Hilbert spaces random functionals.
result Framework leads to simpler analysis with minimal regularity conditions.
Unified framework for optimal kernel tests across MMD, HSIC, and KSD.
problem Optimal testing in kernel-based hypothesis testing frameworks.
method Unified derivation of minimax rates, adaptive kernel selection methods.
result Unified power results across MMD, HSIC, and KSD.
A new method for kernel tests without data splitting increases power.
problem Lack of power in kernel-based tests due to data splitting.
method Selective inference framework to learn hyperparameters and test on full sample.
result Empirically larger test power without data splitting, regardless of split proportion.
We propose a class of kernel-based two-sample tests, which aim to determine whether two sets of samples are drawn from the same distribution. Our tests are constructed from kernels parameterized by deep neural nets, trained to maximize test power. These tests adapt to variations in distribution smoothness and shape ove…
A new kernel-based CI test improves on existing methods.
problem Testing conditional independence (CI) in a broad range of dependencies.
method Regression-model-agnostic kernel-based CI test using reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces.
result GKCM outperforms state-of-the-art CI tests in simulations.
A new framework improves kernel Stein discrepancy tests for validating distributions.
problem Improving goodness-of-fit testing for non-normal distributions.
method Introducing Sf-KSD, a unifying framework for studying Stein operators in KSD-based tests.
result Sf-KSD guides the development of new tests and outperforms existing methods.
A new MMD-based test combines kernels for two-sample testing without splitting data.
problem Efficiently testing if two datasets come from the same distribution without splitting data.
method Proposes a novel statistic based on Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) that combines kernels, proving concentration bounds and showing data-dependent kernel selection.
result Exponential concentration bounds and improved test power compared to existing methods.
Distance-based tests, also called "energy statistics", are leading methods for two-sample and independence tests from the statistics community. Kernel-based tests, developed from "kernel mean embeddings", are leading methods for two-sample and independence tests from the machine learning community. A fixed-point transf…
Boosts kernel two-sample test power with multiple kernels.
problem Detecting differences between two distributions over metric spaces.
method Combining MMD estimates over multiple kernels using Mahalanobis distance.
result More powerful in detecting a wide range of alternatives in finite samples.
CTT compresses samples to test distributions near-linearly, outperforming existing methods.
problem Efficiently testing distributions with high power and near-linear runtime.
method Sample compression followed by permutation testing.
result CTT achieves near-linear runtime while maintaining high statistical power.
Meta two-sample testing uses auxiliary data to quickly find powerful tests from limited samples.
problem Challenges in identifying powerful kernels for distinguishing complex distributions with limited data.
method Introduces meta two-sample testing (M2ST) to leverage abundant auxiliary data on related tasks.
result Proposed algorithms improve over baselines and identify powerful tests from scarce observations.
New test assesses probabilistic model calibration without expensive approximations.
problem Assessing calibration of probabilistic models with scores.
method Kernel Calibration Conditional Stein Discrepancy (KCCSD) test using new score-based kernels.
result Control over type-I error with improved scalability and efficiency.
Proposes practical kernel tests for f-divergences with theoretical guarantees.
problem Two-sample testing and machine unlearning evaluation.
method Regularized f-divergence kernel tests, adaptive to hyperparameters. result Different f-divergences highlight localized differences. A new, fast kernel test for large data.
problem Efficient kernel two-sample tests for high-dimensional, large-scale data.
method A new kernel-based test that is computationally efficient and robust to high dimensions.
result The new test performs well across various alternatives and dimensions.
Two-sample tests using MMD control type I error and achieve optimal power.
problem Developing reliable nonparametric two-sample tests for small sample sizes.
method Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) for constructing novel nonparametric tests, proving non-asymptotic error control and optimality.
result MMDAgg test controls type I error and achieves minimax rate over Sobolev balls, outperforming other tests.
A new sequential test for unnormalized densities.
problem Testing unnormalized densities with adaptive stopping.
method Sequential kernelized Stein discrepancy test, using non-uniform Stein kernels.
result Valid test with asymptotic lower bound for growth.
Improved KSD test for better detection of differences in distributions.
problem Low power of KSD test when distributions have same modes but different mixing proportions.
method Perturb the observed sample using Markov transition kernels to improve KSD test power.
result Perturbed KSD test can lead to substantially higher power than the original KSD test.
Kernel tests assess equivalence between distributions without assuming specific moments.
problem Traditional goodness-of-fit tests fail to detect meaningful distributional differences.
method Proposes kernel-based tests using kernel Stein discrepancy and Maximum Mean Discrepancy.
result Tests assess the absence of meaningful distributional differences under controlled error rates.
We introduce kernel nonparametric tests for Lancaster three-variable interaction and for total independence, using embeddings of signed measures into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. The resulting test statistics are straightforward to compute, and are used in powerful interaction tests, which are consistent against…
Robust hypothesis testing designs a test for worst-case distributions using kernel methods.
problem Design a robust test for hypothesis testing under uncertainty sets.
method Data-driven uncertainty sets constructed using kernel mean embeddings and maximum mean discrepancy (MMD). Bayesian and Neyman-Pearson settings investigated.
result Proposed robust kernel tests are exponentially consistent and asymptotically optimal.
New robustness test for kernel goodness-of-fit tests.
problem Lack of robustness in existing kernel goodness-of-fit tests.
method Proposes a new robust kernel goodness-of-fit test using kernel Stein discrepancy (KSD) balls.
result First robust kernel goodness-of-fit test addressing both qualitative and quantitative robustness.
Study on kernel tests for high-dimensional data, focusing on MMD and CLT.
problem Asymptotic behavior of kernel two-sample tests in high dimensions and large samples.
method Maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) with isotropic kernels, deriving asymptotic expansions and CLT.
result Interplay between moment discrepancy and dimension-and-sample orders in kernel tests.
A new kernel test reduces noise in MMD by focusing on leading eigen-directions.
problem Noise in trailing directional components degrades power of standard kernel two-sample tests.
method Truncate MMD spectral decomposition, retaining only leading eigen-directions.
result Our method achieves superior power and robustness, especially in high-dimensional and unbalanced settings.
Kernel test detects manifold data differences with high-dimensional noise.
problem Detecting differences between manifold data samples.
method Kernel-based two-sample test statistic related to MMD for manifold data.
result The test power exceeds a threshold depending on manifold dimensionality, Hölder order, and squared divergence.
A new method optimizes MMD test power by dynamically selecting kernels, overcoming traditional trade-offs.
problem Fixed kernels fail to distinguish certain distributions, leading to overfitting and variance collapse.
method Complexity-Penalized MMD (CP-MMD) criterion, derived from concentration inequality, optimizes kernel selection.
result CP-MMD maximizes true test power while ensuring unconditional Type-I validity, matching or exceeding state-of-the-art performance.
Given two sets of independent samples from unknown distributions P and Q, a two-sample test decides whether to reject the null hypothesis that P=Q. Recent attention has focused on kernel two-sample tests as the test statistics are easy to compute, converge fast, and have low bias with their finite sample estimate…
Detecting the emergence of abrupt property changes in time series is a challenging problem. Kernel two-sample test has been studied for this task which makes fewer assumptions on the distributions than traditional parametric approaches. However, selecting kernels is non-trivial in practice. Although kernel selection fo…
This paper introduces differentially private permutation tests for hypothesis testing.
problem Privacy concerns in sensitive data analysis.
method Differentially private permutation tests for kernel methods.
result Proposes dpMMD and dpHSIC for two-sample and independence testing, achieving optimal power.
New test for conditional independence using kernel embeddings.
problem Testing conditional independence in high-dimensional settings.
method Analytic kernel embeddings, asymptotic distribution.
result New test outperforms existing methods in high-dimensional settings.
Improved deep kernel machine achieves 94.5% test accuracy on CIFAR-10.
problem Achieving high accuracy on complex tasks like image classification.
method Stochastic kernel regularisation to add noise to learned Gram matrices.
result 94.5% test accuracy on CIFAR-10.
KSDAgg combines multiple KSD tests to improve goodness-of-fit testing without splitting data.
problem Improving goodness-of-fit testing without data splitting.
method KSDAgg aggregates multiple KSD tests with different kernels to maximize power.
result KSDAgg achieves the smallest uniform separation rate of the collection, up to a logarithmic term.
A novel kernel-based test detects equality versus singularity of two probability measures.
problem Detecting equality versus singularity of two probability distributions.
method Combines kernel mean and kernel covariance embeddings to construct a likelihood ratio test statistic.
result The test statistic satisfies a '0/\infty' law, vanishing under the null and diverging under the alternative.
A family of maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) kernel two-sample tests is introduced. Members of the test family are called Block-tests or B-tests, since the test statistic is an average over MMDs computed on subsets of the samples. The choice of block size allows control over the tradeoff between test power and computatio…
New test for binary treatment effects using kernel methods.
problem Testing distributional effects of binary treatments.
method Kernel-based doubly-robust test, avoiding permutations.
result Valid type-I error with computational efficiency.
Efficient tests for various statistical problems using incomplete U-statistics.
problem Nonparametric tests for two-sample, independence, and goodness-of-fit problems.
method Proposes MMDAggInc, HSICAggInc, and KSDAggInc tests aggregating over multiple kernel bandwidths.
result Aggregated tests provide a solution to the kernel selection problem and achieve optimal rates.
A new witness two-sample test improves data efficiency and power.
problem Nonparametric two-sample testing.
method Optimizes kernel and defines weights and basis points using training data.
result The new test is consistent, has well-controlled type-I error, and has comparable or higher power.
Sharp bounds derived for test error of finite-rank kernel ridge regression.
problem Loose bounds on test error for finite-rank kernels in machine learning.
method Sharp non-asymptotic upper and lower bounds for KRR test error.
result Tighter bounds on finite-rank KRR test error, valid for any regularization parameters.
Kernel testing compares cell states in single-cell data.
problem Comparing non-linear cell states in single-cell data.
method Kernel-based testing framework for non-linear distribution comparison.
result Identifies subtle population variations in cell states.
A test for comparing function samples using MMD.
problem Testing if two functional data samples come from the same distribution.
method Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) for functional data, with theoretical scaling analysis.
result The proposed test is effective and robust to functional reconstructions.
Sliced kernelized Stein discrepancy improves goodness-of-fit tests and model learning in high dimensions.
problem The curse-of-dimensionality in kernelized Stein discrepancy (KSD).
method Sliced Stein discrepancy and its scalable variants using optimal one-dimensional projections.
result Significantly outperforms KSD and baselines in goodness-of-fit tests and improves model learning.
Discusses MultiFIT for multivariate dependence, comparing it to HSIC tests.
problem Comparing Multiscale Fisher's Independence Test (MultiFIT) to HSIC tests for multivariate dependence.
method Compares MultiFIT to HSIC tests, highlighting exact level control and performance limitations.
result Observes performance limitations of MultiFIT in terms of test power.
Nonparametric tests via kernel embedding of distributions have witnessed a great deal of practical successes in recent years. However, statistical properties of these tests are largely unknown beyond consistency against a fixed alternative. To fill in this void, we study here the asymptotic properties of goodness-of-fi…
Study evaluates RKHS choices for assessing graph models using KSD tests.
problem Effect of RKHS choice on KSD tests for graph model assessment.
method Investigated power performance and computational runtime of KSD tests for ERGMs and synthetic graph generators.
result Different RKHS choices affect KSD test performance and computational runtime.
A statistical test of independence may be constructed using the Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC) as a test statistic. The HSIC is defined as the distance between the embedding of the joint distribution, and the embedding of the product of the marginals, in a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS). It has …
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.
A wild bootstrap method for nonparametric hypothesis tests based on kernel distribution embeddings is proposed. This bootstrap method is used to construct provably consistent tests that apply to random processes, for which the naive permutation-based bootstrap fails. It applies to a large group of kernel tests based on…
Robust tests control type I error under data corruption.
problem Effective hypothesis testing under data corruption.
method General permutation tests using kernel MMD and HSIC metrics.
result Robust tests are minimax optimal and outperform private tests.
Develops hypothesis tests for conditional distributions using learning-theoretic bounds.
problem Testing differences in conditional distributions and functionals.
method Transforming learning-theoretic bounds into hypothesis tests for conditional expectations.
result Establishes comprehensive foundation for conditional testing, including theoretical guarantees and practical implementations.