用随机镜像下降法高效估计混合分布,提升样本效率与扩展性。
Estimating Mixture Distributions via Stochastic Mirror Descent

- 基于随机镜像下降优化混合模型的交叉熵损失,灵活选择散度函数。
- 在KL散度和ℓ₂范数下逼近最优收敛速率,支持大规模基函数。
- 无需已知分布支撑集,适合计算成本高、样本稀缺场景。
我们重新审视从样本中估计未知分布的经典问题,通过拟合最小化交叉熵损失的混合模型实现。将任务建模为在M分量混合分布空间上的随机凸优化问题,提出一类由随机镜像下降(SMD)算法导出的估计器。该方法提供了一个原则性强且灵活的框架,能推广传统估计器,并通过选择不同的Bregman散度提出多种新型估计器。关键优势在于其可高效扩展至候选成分数量 $ f_i $;即可以在不显著增加计算开销的情况下使用大量基分布,从而实现更丰富的近似与更高的估计精度。对于类别分布(离散结果),该方法无需严格下界,即不要求精确知道分布的支撑集。在温和条件下,所提出的 $ φ$-SMD 估计器在KL散度和 $ \\\\\\
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
We revisit the classical problem of estimating an unknown distribution from its samples by fitting a mixture model that minimizes cross-entropy loss. Framing the task as a stochastic convex optimization problem over the space of $ M $-component mixture distributions, we propose a family of estimators derived from the stochastic mirror descent (SMD) algorithm. This optimization-based approach provides a principled and flexible framework that generalizes traditional estimators and proposes a variety of novel estimators through the choice of Bregman divergences. A key advantage of our method is that it scales efficiently with the number of candidate components $ f_i $; that is, one can employ a large set of basis distributions in the mixture model without incurring significant computational overhead. This enables richer approximations and improved estimation accuracy. Moreover, in the case of categorical distribution (discrete outcomes) our estimators do not require a strict lower bound, in other words our framework does not require the precise knowledge of the support of the distribution. We demonstrate that, under mild conditions, the proposed $ φ$-SMD estimators achieve near-optimal convergence rates in both Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence and $ \ell_2 $-norm and offer practical benefits when computation is expensive. Our numerical analysis highlights improved performance guaranties over classical estimators, particularly in terms of sample efficiency and scalability.
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