Comparing Distributions: Invariance Principles & Mismatched Guesswork

We study two different ways of measuring the similarity between distributions over a finite alphabet. The first is an invariance principle which gives a quantitative bound on the expected difference between general functions of two finite sequences of random variables. This result is one way to generalize the foundational basic invariance principle to a particular multivariate setting. The second framework is based on guesswork, which is one way to measure the randomness of a distribution, similar to but notably distinct from the Shannon entropy. Given a bound on the total variation distance between two finite distributions, we give a bound on the difference in guesswork between those distributions and study the geometrical properties of the problem in the non-asymptotic setting.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Mariona, Alexander

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Médard, Muriel

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/154158

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/154158