Efficient Distance Approximation for Structured High-Dimensional Distributions via Learning

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33 (NeurIPS 2020)

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Authors

Arnab Bhattacharyya, Sutanu Gayen, Kuldeep S Meel, N. V. Vinodchandran

Abstract

We design efficient distance approximation algorithms for several classes of well-studied structured high-dimensional distributions. Specifically, we present algorithms for the following problems (where dTV is the total variation distance):

The distance approximation algorithms immediately imply new tolerant closeness testers for the corresponding classes of distributions. Prior to our work, only non-tolerant testers were known for both Bayes net distributions and Ising models, and no testers with quantitative guarantee were known for interventional distributions. To best of our knowledge, efficient distance approximation algorithms for Gaussian distributions were not present in the literature. Our algorithms are designed using a conceptually simple but general framework that is applicable to a variety of scenarios.