All Questions
Tagged with pr.probability measure-concentration
324 questions
3
votes
2
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1k
views
Concentration of sum of concentrated random variables
I have a sum of positive random variables, they are not identically distributed, but even that case would be interesting. They are not necessarily independent, but I already have a concentration bound ...
1
vote
0
answers
334
views
Strong data-processing inequality ? Upper bound on a certain modified total-variation metric
Let $\mathcal X=(\mathcal X,d)$ be a Polish space equipped with the Borel sigma-algebra. Let $p\ge 1$ and $P_1,P_2$ be probability distributions on $\mathcal X$ such that $\max_{k=1,2}\int d(x,x_0)^...
0
votes
0
answers
221
views
Distance between two sample quantiles
Let $X_1,\dots X_n$ be i.i.d. samples from an unknown distribution. We know the distribution has uniformly bounded probability density function $f(x)$. Let $1>\tau_1>\tau_2>0$ be two quantile ...
0
votes
1
answer
115
views
Compute lower bound on $\min_{E} \mathcal N(0,\sigma^2 I_n)(E)$ subject to $vol(E \cap H_n(r)) / vol(H_n(r)) \ge p$ where $H_n(r)$ is $n$-hemisphere
Let $n \ge 2$ be an integer, which may be assumed to be very large. For $r > 0$, consider the hemi-sphere $H_n(r) := S_n(r) \cap (\mathbb R^+ \times \mathbb R^{n-1})$, where
$$
S_n(r):= \{x \in \...
2
votes
2
answers
468
views
Concentration bound on maximum subset sum of standard Gaussians
Let $X_1, \dots, X_n$ be standard Gaussians. Let $\mathcal{S} \subseteq \{A \in 2^{\{1, \dots, n\}} : |A| = k\} $ be a family of subsets of $\{1,\dots, n\}$ with fixed size $k$. [Note that $\mathcal{S}...
1
vote
1
answer
3k
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Tail bound regime for Binomial distribution in concentration paper
In paper 'Concentration Inequalities and Martingale Inequalities:A Survey' gives the following inequality:
My question is whether the inequality holds in regime $\lambda$ being $o(\sqrt n)$ (say $\...
4
votes
3
answers
428
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Maximum of independent, unit-variance Gaussians with non-zero means
Suppose $X_1,\dots,X_n$ are independent Gaussians, where $X_k \sim N(\mu_k,1)$. I am interested in
$$
Z \stackrel{\rm def}{=} \max_{1\leq k\leq n} X_k
$$
and specifically on the asymptotics of $\...
0
votes
0
answers
58
views
Bounds on $\inf_{x,x' \in \mathbb B_X}TV(P+x,Q+x')$, where $P$ and $Q$ are distributions with density on the space $X=(\mathbb R^n,\ell_p)$
Let $n \ge 1$ be an integer, $p \in [1,\infty]$, and $P$ and $Q$ be two (probability) measures on the metric space space $X=(\mathbb R^n,\ell_p)$ which have densities w.r.t the Lebesgue measure on $X$,...
3
votes
1
answer
307
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Concentration of monochromatic edges in a graph
Let $G$ be a graph of order $n$ with $m$ edges. Color each vertices uniformly at random with $q$ colors. It is easy to see that expected number of monochromatic edges (edge whose end vertices are of ...
2
votes
2
answers
539
views
Chaining tail bound for centered sub-Gaussian process?
On page 5 of a recent manuscript by Lugosi-Mendelson, a claim equivalent to the following statement is made:
Suppose $Z$ is a centered, $\mathbf{R}^d$-valued random variable with $\mathbf{E} e^{\...
2
votes
0
answers
222
views
Concentration inequalities for beta random variables
Let $X$ be a random variable having a beta distribution $$f(x)=\frac{\Gamma(\alpha)\Gamma(\beta)}{\Gamma(\alpha+\beta)}x^{\alpha-1}(1-x)^{\beta-1}$$with mean $\mu=\frac{\alpha}{\alpha+\beta}$, and ...
4
votes
1
answer
431
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Central limit theorem for resampling
This is a cross-post from stats.stackexchange.com. No answer has appeared there. Since this is a theoretical question, mathoverflow.net seems to be a more appropriate venue for it.
What is the analog ...
4
votes
1
answer
429
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Concentration inequality for the law of iterated logarithm
The following question arose in one of my research projects. Before stating it, let me give a short background. We all know the law of iterated logarithm. It states that if $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ are i.i.d. ...
1
vote
0
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176
views
Rate of convergence of empirical distribution with respect to Wasserstein distance induced by binary cost function
Let $\mathcal X=(\mathcal X, d)$ be a Polish space (i.e complete metric space), and let $\Omega$ be a non-empty subset. Consider the binary cost function $c_\Omega$ on $\mathcal X^2$ defined by $c_\...
3
votes
0
answers
187
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Concentration Inequalities for the Exponential of Weighted Bernoulli Sums
I want a concentration inequality for the exponential of a weighted sum of independent Bernoulli random variables around its mean, for one of my research works. I was wondering if there is a well ...
1
vote
1
answer
391
views
Sketching Frobenius norm of a tensor with a rank-1 random tensor
Let $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n^k}$ be a $k$-dimensional tensor with $n$ elements along each dimension. Moreover suppose $u_1,u_2,\dots,u_k\sim\text{Unif}(\pm1)^n$ are $n$ dimensional vectors with each of ...
1
vote
0
answers
136
views
Linearly independent functions evaluated at random points create full rank matrices
Assume $f_1, f_2,...,f_n: \mathbb{R}^d\mapsto\mathbb{R}^d$ are linearly independent functions. Now let $w_1,w_2,..,w_k\in\mathbb{R}^d$ be i.i.d. Gaussian random vectors distributed as $\mathcal{N}(0,\...
2
votes
1
answer
287
views
Bernstein Inequality for continous local martingale
I'm looking for a simple proof of the following fact, which is somehow Bernstein inequality in continuous time.
Let $(M_t)_{t\geq 0}$ be a continuous local martingale. Then :
$$P\left(\sup_{t\in [0,...
4
votes
0
answers
143
views
For a martingale $f_0,f_1,\ldots $ how can we bound $P(\frac{1}{n} \|f_n\| \le 1$ for all $ n \ge N)$?
Suppose $f_0,f_1, \ldots$ is a martingale (or i.i.d sequence) in $\mathbb R^d$ with $f_0=0$ and all $\|f_n - f_{n-1}\| \le L$ say. There are many concentration results for the initial segment of the ...
3
votes
1
answer
189
views
Isoperimetry on $[0, 1]^n$ w.r.t $\ell_p$ distance, with $p \in [1,\infty]$
Let $A$ be a measurable subset of the metric space $\mathcal X = ([0, 1]^n,\ell_p)$ with $1 \le p \le \infty$, and define its $\varepsilon$-blowup by $A^\varepsilon:=\{x \in \mathcal X \mid \|x-a\|_p \...
6
votes
1
answer
203
views
Good upper-bound for $\mathbb E[|X-np|^r]$ where $X \sim \text{Binomial}(n,p)$ and $r \ge 1$
Disclaimer. Question moved from SE.
Setup
Let $X \sim \text{Binomial}(p, n)$, and $r \ge 1$.
Question
What is a good upper-bound for $\mathbb E[|X-np|^r]$ ?
Solution for small $r$
If $r=2$, then ...
7
votes
1
answer
409
views
Do i.i.d. sums concentrate any faster than martingales?
Suppose $X_1,X_2, \ldots, X_N \in \mathbb R^d$ are random variables with each $\|X_n\|_2 \le 1/2$ (this choice of the constant simplifies later formulae).
The simplest concentration inequality I know ...
5
votes
0
answers
711
views
Concentration inequality for max component of a multivariate Gaussian in the general case
I am looking to bound the variance of the maximum component of a vector distributed multivariate Gaussian in the general case where the Gaussian distribution has arbitrary mean and full covariance ...
1
vote
0
answers
79
views
Showing that additive Gaussian noise never increases sparsity
Let $\mathbf{1}\in\mathbb{R}^d$ be the $d$-dimensional all-ones vector and let $n\sim\mathcal{N}(0, \sigma^2 I_{d\times d})$, show that
$$ \frac{\| \mathbf{1} + n \|_1}{\|\mathbf{1} + n \|_2} \ge c \...
1
vote
2
answers
250
views
Finite-sample deviation bound of empirical distribution from true distribution
Let $P=(p_1,\ldots,p_k) \in \Delta_k$ be distribution supported on set of size $k$ and let $\hat{P}_n$ be an empirical version of $P$ based on an iid sample of size $n$.
Question
What's a good non-...
4
votes
1
answer
239
views
Uniform inequality of the form $\text{Proba}(\sup_{v \in [-M,M]^k}|p^Tv-\hat{p}_n^Tv| \le \epsilon_n) \ge 1 - \delta$
Let $M > 0$, $k$ be a positive integer, and $\mathcal V:=[-M,M]^k$. Finally, let $p \in \Delta_k$, (where $\Delta_k$ is the $(k-1)$-dimensional probability simplex) and let $\hat{p}_n$ be an ...
1
vote
0
answers
109
views
Concentration inequality for Lipschitz functions with orthogonal gradients
Let $f_j:\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}$ be a set of 1-Lipschitz functions for $1\leq j\leq M$. From Gaussian isoperimetry or a log-Sobolev inequality, it can be shown that
$$
\mathbf{Pr}(|f_j(X)-\mathbf{...
1
vote
0
answers
123
views
Sanov-type finite-sample bound on $KL(P\|\hat{P}_n)$
Let $P$ be a distribution on an alphabet of size $k$ and let $\hat{P}_n$ be an empirical version of $P$ via $n$ i.i.d samples $a_1,\ldots,a_n \sim P$, i.e $\hat{P}_n := (1/n)\sum_{i=1}^n\delta_{a_i}$.
...
1
vote
1
answer
313
views
Bounds on difference between "logsumexp" and variance?
Let $Z$ be a random variable with finite moment-generating function $M_Z(\theta):=E[e^{\frac{1}{\theta}Z}]<\infty$ for all $\theta > 0$, and for $\delta \in (0,1]$, define
$C_Z^\delta := \inf_{\...
3
votes
2
answers
442
views
What happens to the Gaussian volume of a Borel set when it is translated?
Let $\gamma_n$ be the standard Gaussian measure on $\mathbb R^n$, $A \subseteq \mathbb R^n$ be Borel and $c \in \mathbb R^n$. Define the translate $A_c := c + A := \{c+a \mid a \in A\} = \{x \in \...
1
vote
0
answers
105
views
Gaussian isoperimetry for $\ell_p$ norms
Let $\gamma_n$ be the standard Gaussian measure on $\mathbb R^n$. It is well-known (e.g see Proposition 1) that for a given Gaussian volume content, half-spaces $H=\{x \in \mathbb R^n | a^Tx \le b\}$ ...
3
votes
1
answer
826
views
concentration inequality for a weighted sum of independent but not identical binary variables
Let $\alpha\in[0,1]$ be a fixed constant, and let
$w,x\in[0,1]^n$ be two vectors such that $\sum_i w_i x_i=\alpha$.
Define $Y = \sum_i w_i X_i$, where $X_i \sim \operatorname{Bernoulli}(x_i)$, so it ...
2
votes
1
answer
847
views
Concentration inequality for quadratic form of Gaussian variables with non-idempotent matrix
Given $y \sim N(0,\sigma^2 I)$, and $M$ that is a symmetric matrix (not necessarily idempotent)
what is the distribution of ${y^T M y}$?
is there a high probability bound on $|{y^T M y}|$?
Most ...
12
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Can we do better than Azuma-Hoeffding when the variance is small?
The Azuma-Hoeffding Inequality says that if $X_1,X_2, \ldots$ is a martingale and the differences are bounded by constants, $\|X_i - X_{i-1}\| \le 1$ say, then we should not expect the difference $\|...
1
vote
1
answer
365
views
Lower-bound probability of non-centered quadratic form
Let $X\sim N(\mu,\sigma^2I)\in \mathbb{R}^n$ be a non-centered ($\mu\neq 0$) Gaussian vector with independent coordinates. I'm wondering if there is any sharp lower bound of the following probability:
...
1
vote
1
answer
137
views
Approximate $\log \mathbb E_P[\exp(th(x)]$ for a function $h$ which is lipschitz and has finite moments of order 1 and 2 w.r.t $P$
Let $P$ be a probability measure on a space $\mathcal X$ and $h: \mathcal X \rightarrow \mathbb R$ is measurable function with finite moments of order 1 and 2. I'm interested in approximating the ...
4
votes
1
answer
206
views
Inner product of sorted Gaussian vector
Suppose $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ are i.i.d. standard normal. I'm wondering how to analyze the following quantity:
$$\left|\frac{X_{(1)}X_{(n)}+X_{(2)}X_{(n-1)}+\cdots+X_{(n)}X_{(1)}}{n}\right|$$
where $X_{(1)}...
2
votes
1
answer
187
views
Unconditional lower bound for volume of blowup $\mu(B^\epsilon)$ for $\mu(B) \in (0, 1)$ and $\epsilon > 0$ not "too large"
For a Borel subset $B$ of a metric space $X = (X,d)$ and $\epsilon>0$, recall the defintion of the $\epsilon$-blowup of $B$, namely $B^\epsilon = \{x \in X | d(x,B) \le \epsilon\}$. Let $\mu$ be a ...
1
vote
2
answers
327
views
Use covering number to get uniform concentration from pointwise concentration
Let $\Theta$ be a subset of a metric space. Suppose $(X_\theta)_{\theta \in \Theta}$ is a random process on $\Theta$ which is $L$-Lipschitz and with the property that there exists constants $A, B>0$...
9
votes
2
answers
4k
views
What is (approximately) the expected value of $X\log{ X}$ where $X$ is binomial (or Poisson)?
Let $X$ follow a binomial distribution with parameters $n$ and $p$. Are there any known bounds for the expected value of $X\log{X}$, for large $n$ and small (but fixed) $p$? A Poisson approximation ...
6
votes
1
answer
446
views
Is there a counterexample to the Thin Shell Conjecture for sub-exponential distributions?
The thin shell conjecture states that there exist universal constants $C,c>0$ such that every logconcave isotropic random vector $X$ in every Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^n$ satisfies
$$\mathbb{P}\...
0
votes
1
answer
239
views
Anti-concentration: upper bound for $P(\sup_{a \in \mathbb S_{n-1}}\sum_{i=1}^na_i^2Z_i^2 \ge \epsilon)$
Let $\mathbb S_{n-1}$ be the unit sphere in $\mathbb R^n$ and $z_1,\ldots,z_n$ be a i.i.d sample from $\mathcal N(0, 1)$.
Question
Given $\epsilon > 0$ (may be assumed to be very small), what is ...
1
vote
1
answer
467
views
Sharp tail bounds for the maximum of an iid sample of a random variable supported on $[0, 1]$
Let $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ be an iid sample from a distribution supported on $[0, 1]$.
Question
What are some sharp concentration inequalities (i.e tail bounds) empirical statistic defined by $Z_n := \max(...
1
vote
0
answers
686
views
Almost orthogonality of independent random vectors [closed]
If $X_1$ and $X_2$ are two independent isotropic random vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$,
then $\mathbb{E}\|X_i\|_{2}^{2}=n$, $\mathbb{E}\langle X_1,X_2\rangle^{2}=n$.
How can I show from the above result ...
2
votes
1
answer
180
views
Generalization of Komlós–Major–Tusnády Approximation
The Komlós–Major–Tusnády Approximation (see Wikipedia) considers the sum of uniform variables in $(0,1)$. There are also version where instead the sum of equiprobable $0/1$ variables is used ($p=1/2$)....
5
votes
3
answers
5k
views
Distribution of the individual coordinates of a uniform random vector on a high-dimensional sphere
Let $X=(X_1,\ldots,X_n)$ be a random vector uniformly distributed on the $n$-dimensional sphere of radius $R > 0$. Intuitively, i think that for large $p$ every coordinate $X_i$ is normally ...
11
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Maximal inequality for the average of i.i.d. random variables
Let $Z_i$ be i.i.d. random variables with $\mathbb{E}[Z_i] = 0$ and $\mathbb{E}|Z_i|^p< \infty$ for $p=1,2,3,\cdots$. I am looking for the following type of estimate if possible, and it is not like ...
5
votes
0
answers
1k
views
Asymptotic behavior of row sums in 2-d array of random variables
Set-up. Let $f : \mathbb{N} \to \mathbb{N}$ be increasing. For each $m \in [0,1]$, consider an infinite two-dimensional array of random variables, where row $n$ has $f(n)$ variables:
$B^m_{1,1}$ $B^...
3
votes
1
answer
178
views
Tail probability of random projection
Suppose $v\in R^n$ is a constant unit vector. $P_l$ is a random projection matrix to an $l$ dimensional subspace of $R^n$ which is uniformly sampled from $G(l,R^n)$ which is the collection of all $l$-...
0
votes
1
answer
254
views
Does log-concave approximable distribution satisfy transportation-cost inequality?
Definition: Recall that a distribution $\mu$ on $\mathbb R^d$ is said to be log-convave with constant $c > 0$, if density $d\nu \propto e^{-V}dvol$ satisfying the curvature condition
$$
\...