Reducing Estimation Uncertainty Using Normalizing Flows and Stratification

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Lorek, Paweł, Nowak, Rafał, Topolnicki, Rafał, Trzciński, Tomasz, Zięba, Maciej, Krystecka, Aleksandra
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Lorek, Paweł
Nowak, Rafał
Topolnicki, Rafał
Trzciński, Tomasz
Zięba, Maciej
Krystecka, Aleksandra
author_facet Lorek, Paweł
Nowak, Rafał
Topolnicki, Rafał
Trzciński, Tomasz
Zięba, Maciej
Krystecka, Aleksandra
contents Estimating the expectation of a real-valued function of a random variable from sample data is a critical aspect of statistical analysis, with far-reaching implications in various applications. Current methodologies typically assume (semi-)parametric distributions such as Gaussian or mixed Gaussian, leading to significant estimation uncertainty if these assumptions do not hold. We propose a flow-based model, integrated with stratified sampling, that leverages a parametrized neural network to offer greater flexibility in modeling unknown data distributions, thereby mitigating this limitation. Our model shows a marked reduction in estimation uncertainty across multiple datasets, including high-dimensional (30 and 128) ones, outperforming crude Monte Carlo estimators and Gaussian mixture models. Reproducible code is available at https://github.com/rnoxy/flowstrat.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_10706
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reducing Estimation Uncertainty Using Normalizing Flows and Stratification
Lorek, Paweł
Nowak, Rafał
Topolnicki, Rafał
Trzciński, Tomasz
Zięba, Maciej
Krystecka, Aleksandra
Machine Learning
65C05
Estimating the expectation of a real-valued function of a random variable from sample data is a critical aspect of statistical analysis, with far-reaching implications in various applications. Current methodologies typically assume (semi-)parametric distributions such as Gaussian or mixed Gaussian, leading to significant estimation uncertainty if these assumptions do not hold. We propose a flow-based model, integrated with stratified sampling, that leverages a parametrized neural network to offer greater flexibility in modeling unknown data distributions, thereby mitigating this limitation. Our model shows a marked reduction in estimation uncertainty across multiple datasets, including high-dimensional (30 and 128) ones, outperforming crude Monte Carlo estimators and Gaussian mixture models. Reproducible code is available at https://github.com/rnoxy/flowstrat.
title Reducing Estimation Uncertainty Using Normalizing Flows and Stratification
topic Machine Learning
65C05
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10706