We study the problem of minimizing non-convex functionals on the space of probability measures, regularized by the relative entropy (KL divergence) with respect to a fixed reference measure, as well as the corresponding problem of solving entropy-regularized non-convex-non-concave min-max problems. We utilize the Best Response flow (also known in the literature as the fictitious play flow) and study how its convergence is influenced by the relation between the degree of non-convexity of the functional under consideration, the regularization parameter and the tail behaviour of the reference measure. In particular, we demonstrate how to choose the regularizer, given the non-convex functional, so that the Best Response operator becomes a contraction with respect to the $L^1$-Wasserstein distance, which ensures the existence of its unique fixed point that is then shown to be the unique global minimizer for our optimization problem. This extends recent results where the Best Response flow was applied to solve convex optimization problems regularized by the relative entropy with respect to arbitrary reference measures, and with arbitrary values of the regularization parameter. Our results explain precisely how the assumption of convexity can be relaxed, at the expense of making a specific choice of the regularizer. Additionally, we demonstrate how these results can be applied in reinforcement learning in the context of policy optimization for Markov Decision Processes and Markov games with softmax parametrized policies in the mean-field regime.

This manuscript contains preprint of a chapter under consideration for inclusion in the forthcoming third edition of {\em Cover and Thomas's Elements of Information Theory}, posted with permission from Wiley. The table of contents EIT-3 ToC of the new edition can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L-m4oQEJw1PJhoxBeMwrrBD8S_HmvzMEkPbYvS24980/edit?usp=sharing . For feedback, please contact abbas@ee.stanford.edu Learning and information theory intersect in both model training and the characterization of fundamental performance limits. This manuscript provides a concise and accessible treatment of the first intersection, requiring only basic background in information theory and statistics at the senior undergraduate or first-year graduate level. End-of-chapter exercises make the material well suited for classroom use as well as self-study. The chapter focuses on the role of divergence measures in model training, with examples ranging from linear and logistic regression to autoregressive models, variational autoencoders, diffusion models, generative adversarial networks, and score-based models. It introduces the evidence lower bound (ELBO), $f$\!-divergences, and the Fisher divergence. In particular, the treatment of the generative diffusion model provides a more systematic and explicit derivation than is typical in the literature.

Many common types of data can be represented as functions that map coordinates to signal values, such as pixel locations to RGB values in the case of an image. Based on this view, data can be compressed by overfitting a compact neural network to its functional representation and then encoding the network weights. However, most current solutions for this are inefficient, as quantization to low-bit precision substantially degrades the reconstruction quality. To address this issue, we propose overfitting variational Bayesian neural networks to the data and compressing an approximate posterior weight sample using relative entropy coding instead of quantizing and entropy coding it. This strategy enables direct optimization of the rate-distortion performance by minimizing the β-ELBO, and target different rate-distortion trade-offs for a given network architecture by adjusting β. Moreover, we introduce an iterative algorithm for learning prior weight distributions and employ a progressive refinement process for the variational posterior that significantly enhances performance. Experiments show that our method achieves strong performance on image and audio compression while retaining simplicity.

This work presents several expected generalization error bounds based on the Wasserstein distance.

We investigate neural network representations from a probabilistic perspective.

In this paper, the solution to the empirical risk minimization problem with $f$-divergence regularization (ERM-$f$DR) is presented and conditions under which the solution also serves as the solution to the minimization of the expected empirical risk subject to an $f$-divergence constraint are established. The proposed approach extends applicability to a broader class of $f$-divergences than previously reported and yields theoretical results that recover previously known results. Additionally, the difference between the expected empirical risk of the ERM-$f$DR solution and that of its reference measure is characterized, providing insights into previously studied cases of $f$-divergences. A central contribution is the introduction of the normalization function, a mathematical object that is critical in both the dual formulation and practical computation of the ERM-$f$DR solution. This work presents an implicit characterization of the normalization function as a nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE), establishes its key properties, and subsequently leverages them to construct a numerical algorithm for approximating the normalization factor under mild assumptions. Further analysis demonstrates structural equivalences between ERM-$f$DR problems with different $f$-divergences via transformations of the empirical risk. Finally, the proposed algorithm is used to compute the training and test risks of ERM-$f$DR solutions under different $f$-divergence regularizers. This numerical example highlights the practical implications of choosing different functions $f$ in ERM-$f$DR problems.

We consider the problem of designing optimal level-$α$ power-one tests for composite nulls. Given a parameter $α\in (0,1)$ and a stream of $\mathcal{X}$-valued observations $\{X_n: n \geq 1\} \overset{i.i.d.}{\sim} P$, the goal is to design a level-$α$ power-one test $τ_α$ for the null $H_0: P \in \mathcal{P}_0 \subset \mathcal{P}(\mathcal{X})$. Prior works have shown that any such $τ_α$ must satisfy $\mathbb{E}_P[τ_α] \geq \tfrac{\log(1/α)}{γ^*(P, \mathcal{P}_0)}$, where $γ^*(P, \mathcal{P}_0)$ is the so-called $\mathrm{KL}_{\inf}$ or minimum divergence of $P$ to the null class. In this paper, our objective is to develop and analyze constructive schemes that match this lower bound as $α\downarrow 0$. We first consider the finite-alphabet case~($|\mathcal{X}| = m < \infty$), and show that a test based on \emph{universal} $e$-process~(formed by the ratio of a universal predictor and the running null MLE) is optimal in the above sense. The proof relies on a Donsker-Varadhan~(DV) based saddle-point representation of $\mathrm{KL}_{\inf}$, and an application of Sion's minimax theorem. This characterization motivates a general method for arbitrary $\mathcal{X}$: construct an $e$-process based on the empirical solutions to the saddle-point representation over a sufficiently rich class of test functions. We give sufficient conditions for the optimality of this test for compact convex nulls, and verify them for Hölder smooth density models. We end the paper with a discussion on the computational aspects of implementing our proposed tests in some practical settings.

Estimating quantum entropies and divergences is an important problem in quantum physics, information theory, and machine learning. Quantum neural estimators (QNEs), which utilize a hybrid classical-quantum architecture, have recently emerged as an appealing computational framework for estimating these measures. Such estimators combine classical neural networks with parametrized quantum circuits, and their deployment typically entails tedious tuning of hyperparameters controlling the sample size, network architecture, and circuit topology. This work initiates the study of formal guarantees for QNEs of measured (Rényi) relative entropies in the form of non-asymptotic error risk bounds. We further establish exponential tail bounds showing that the error is sub-Gaussian, and thus sharply concentrates about the ground truth value. For an appropriate sub-class of density operator pairs on a space of dimension $d$ with bounded Thompson metric, our theory establishes a copy complexity of $O(|Θ(\mathcal{U})|d/ε^2)$ for QNE with a quantum circuit parameter set $Θ(\mathcal{U})$, which has minimax optimal dependence on the accuracy $ε$. Additionally, if the density operator pairs are permutation invariant, we improve the dimension dependence above to $O(|Θ(\mathcal{U})|\mathrm{polylog}(d)/ε^2)$. Our theory aims to facilitate principled implementation of QNEs for measured relative entropies and guide hyperparameter tuning in practice.