Quantization of Probability Distributions via Divide-and-Conquer: Convergence and Error Propagation under Distributional Arithmetic Operations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bilgin, Bilgesu Arif, Elias, Olof Hallqvist, Selby, Michael, Stanley-Marbell, Phillip
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bilgin, Bilgesu Arif
Elias, Olof Hallqvist
Selby, Michael
Stanley-Marbell, Phillip
author_facet Bilgin, Bilgesu Arif
Elias, Olof Hallqvist
Selby, Michael
Stanley-Marbell, Phillip
contents This article studies a general divide-and-conquer algorithm for approximating continuous one-dimensional probability distributions with finite mean. The article presents a numerical study that compares pre-existing approximation schemes with a special focus on the stability of the discrete approximations when they undergo arithmetic operations. The main results are a simple upper bound of the approximation error in terms of the Wasserstein-1 distance that is valid for all continuous distributions with finite mean. In many use-cases, the studied method achieve optimal rate of convergence, and numerical experiments show that the algorithm is more stable than pre-existing approximation schemes in the context of arithmetic operations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_15283
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantization of Probability Distributions via Divide-and-Conquer: Convergence and Error Propagation under Distributional Arithmetic Operations
Bilgin, Bilgesu Arif
Elias, Olof Hallqvist
Selby, Michael
Stanley-Marbell, Phillip
Probability
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Numerical Analysis
This article studies a general divide-and-conquer algorithm for approximating continuous one-dimensional probability distributions with finite mean. The article presents a numerical study that compares pre-existing approximation schemes with a special focus on the stability of the discrete approximations when they undergo arithmetic operations. The main results are a simple upper bound of the approximation error in terms of the Wasserstein-1 distance that is valid for all continuous distributions with finite mean. In many use-cases, the studied method achieve optimal rate of convergence, and numerical experiments show that the algorithm is more stable than pre-existing approximation schemes in the context of arithmetic operations.
title Quantization of Probability Distributions via Divide-and-Conquer: Convergence and Error Propagation under Distributional Arithmetic Operations
topic Probability
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Numerical Analysis
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.15283