Poster
Tue Aug 08 01:30 AM -- 05:00 AM (PDT) @ Gallery #128
A Unified Maximum Likelihood Approach for Estimating Symmetric Properties of Discrete Distributions
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Summary/Notes]
Symmetric distribution properties such as support size, support coverage, entropy, and proximity to uniformity, arise in many applications. Recently, researchers applied different estimators and analysis tools to derive asymptotically sample-optimal approximations for each of these properties. We show that a single, simple, plug-in estimator---\emph{profile maximum likelihood (PML)}--is sample competitive for all symmetric properties, and in particular is asymptotically sample-optimal for all the above properties.