Papers for

statistical sampling teams

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Sharp bounds on point discrepancy advance online sampling methods

Tusnády's problem and online two-sample thinning

Abstract: We determine the sharp order of discrepancy in Tusnády's problem in every fixed dimension $d\ge 2$. The largest combinatorial discrepancy of $N$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with respect to axis-parallel boxes is $Θ_d((\log N)^{d-1/2})$, extending Wei's planar result and matching Nikolov's upper bound. More strongly, with high probability, this lower bound holds simultaneously for every subset obtained by deleting at most a sufficiently small fixed fraction of a uniform $N$-point sample. We apply this geometric estimate to online thinning of two independent samples of size $n$ from an unknown common distribution, where observations must be kept or discarded upon arrival. For every fixed dimension $k\ge 1$ and expected deletion budget $ρn$, with $0<ρ<2$, we prove that the minimax expected prefix discrepancy over lower orthants is $Θ_{k,ρ}((\log n)^{k+1/2})$. In dimension one, the optimal terminal discrepancy is instead $Θ_ρ((\log\log n)^{3/2})$, giving a sharp separation between the prefix and terminal objectives. For $k\ge 2$, we obtain terminal bounds differing by a factor of $\log n$. The lower bounds are based on Gaussian small-ball estimates for box-incidence matrices, while the upper bounds use stationary Metropolis thinning and, in one dimension, a terminal cancellation procedure.

Thu 5 NovData Structures and Algorithms
The gist
This paper deals with measuring how unevenly points are spread in space, a problem important for statistics and computer science. The authors find exact rates for how this unevenness grows with more points, solving a longstanding question for multiple dimensions. They then apply these findings to improve ways to choose or discard points from two random groups as data arrives, optimizing how balanced these groups remain over time. The results show different behaviors depending on dimension and how many points can be discarded. They use advanced math tools involving probabilities and random processes to prove their results.
Open → 2611.08455v1