Efficient Importance Sampling for Wrong Exit Probabilities over Combinatorially Many Rare Regions

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Song, Yanglei, Fellouris, Georgios
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Song, Yanglei
Fellouris, Georgios
author_facet Song, Yanglei
Fellouris, Georgios
contents We consider importance sampling for estimating the probability that a light-tailed $d$-dimensional random walk exits through one of many disjoint rare-event regions before reaching an anticipated target. This problem arises in sequential multiple hypothesis testing, where the number of such regions may grow combinatorially and in some cases exponentially with the dimension. While mixtures over all associated exponential tilts are asymptotically efficient, they become computationally infeasible even for moderate values of $d$. We develop a method for constructing asymptotically efficient mixtures with substantially fewer components by combining optimal tilts for a small number of regions with additional proposals that control variance across a large collection of regions. The approach is applied to the estimation of three probabilities that arise in sequential multiple testing, including a multidimensional extension of Siegmund's classical exit problem, and is supported by both theoretical analysis and numerical experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14596
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficient Importance Sampling for Wrong Exit Probabilities over Combinatorially Many Rare Regions
Song, Yanglei
Fellouris, Georgios
Probability
Computation
65C05, 60F10, 62L10
We consider importance sampling for estimating the probability that a light-tailed $d$-dimensional random walk exits through one of many disjoint rare-event regions before reaching an anticipated target. This problem arises in sequential multiple hypothesis testing, where the number of such regions may grow combinatorially and in some cases exponentially with the dimension. While mixtures over all associated exponential tilts are asymptotically efficient, they become computationally infeasible even for moderate values of $d$. We develop a method for constructing asymptotically efficient mixtures with substantially fewer components by combining optimal tilts for a small number of regions with additional proposals that control variance across a large collection of regions. The approach is applied to the estimation of three probabilities that arise in sequential multiple testing, including a multidimensional extension of Siegmund's classical exit problem, and is supported by both theoretical analysis and numerical experiments.
title Efficient Importance Sampling for Wrong Exit Probabilities over Combinatorially Many Rare Regions
topic Probability
Computation
65C05, 60F10, 62L10
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14596