Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jaffe, Adam Quinn
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.14239
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909672484634624
author Jaffe, Adam Quinn
author_facet Jaffe, Adam Quinn
contents We introduce and study a notion of duality for two classes of optimization problems commonly occurring in probability theory. That is, on an abstract measurable space $(Ω,\mathcal{F})$, we consider pairs $(E,\mathcal{G})$ where $E$ is an equivalence relation on $Ω$ and $\mathcal{G}$ is a sub-$σ$-algebra of $\mathcal{G}$; we say that $(E,\mathcal{F})$ satisfies "strong duality" if $E$ is $(\mathcal{F}\otimes\mathcal{F})$-measurable and if for all probability measures $\mathbb{P},\mathbb{P}'$ on $(Ω,\mathcal{F})$ we have $$\max_{A\in\mathcal{G}}\vert \mathbb{P}(A)-\mathbb{P}'(A)\vert = \min_{\tilde{\mathbb{P}}\inΠ(\mathbb{P},\mathbb{P}')}(1-\tilde{\mathbb{P}}(E)),$$ where $Π(\mathbb{P},\mathbb{P}')$ denotes the space of couplings of $\mathbb{P}$ and $\mathbb{P}'$, and where "max" and "min" assert that the supremum and infimum are in fact achieved. The results herein give wide sufficient conditions for strong duality to hold, thereby extending a form of Kantorovich duality to a class of cost functions which are irregular from the point of view of topology but regular from the point of view of descriptive set theory. The given conditions recover or strengthen classical results, and they have novel consequences in stochastic calculus, point process theory, and random sequence simulation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2207_14239
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Strong Duality Principle for Equivalence Couplings and Total Variation
Jaffe, Adam Quinn
Probability
60A10, 03E15, 28A35, 90C46
We introduce and study a notion of duality for two classes of optimization problems commonly occurring in probability theory. That is, on an abstract measurable space $(Ω,\mathcal{F})$, we consider pairs $(E,\mathcal{G})$ where $E$ is an equivalence relation on $Ω$ and $\mathcal{G}$ is a sub-$σ$-algebra of $\mathcal{G}$; we say that $(E,\mathcal{F})$ satisfies "strong duality" if $E$ is $(\mathcal{F}\otimes\mathcal{F})$-measurable and if for all probability measures $\mathbb{P},\mathbb{P}'$ on $(Ω,\mathcal{F})$ we have $$\max_{A\in\mathcal{G}}\vert \mathbb{P}(A)-\mathbb{P}'(A)\vert = \min_{\tilde{\mathbb{P}}\inΠ(\mathbb{P},\mathbb{P}')}(1-\tilde{\mathbb{P}}(E)),$$ where $Π(\mathbb{P},\mathbb{P}')$ denotes the space of couplings of $\mathbb{P}$ and $\mathbb{P}'$, and where "max" and "min" assert that the supremum and infimum are in fact achieved. The results herein give wide sufficient conditions for strong duality to hold, thereby extending a form of Kantorovich duality to a class of cost functions which are irregular from the point of view of topology but regular from the point of view of descriptive set theory. The given conditions recover or strengthen classical results, and they have novel consequences in stochastic calculus, point process theory, and random sequence simulation.
title A Strong Duality Principle for Equivalence Couplings and Total Variation
topic Probability
60A10, 03E15, 28A35, 90C46
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.14239