De Finetti's classical result of [18] identifying the law of an exchangeable family of random variables as a mixture of i.i.d. laws was extended to structure theorems for more complex notions of exchangeability by Aldous [1,2,3], Hoover [41,42], Kallenberg [44] and Kingman [47]. On the other hand, such exchangeable laws were first related to questions from combinatorics in an independent analysis by Fremlin and Talagrand [29], and again more recently in Tao [62], where they appear as a natural proxy for the `leading order statistics' of colourings of large graphs or hypergraphs. Moreover, this relation appears implicitly in the study of various more bespoke formalisms for handling `limit objects' of sequences of dense graphs or hypergraphs in a number of recent works, including Lovász and Szegedy [52], Borgs, Chayes, Lovász, Sós, Szegedy and Vesztergombi [17], Elek and Szegedy [24] and Razborov [54,55]. However, the connection between these works and the earlier probabilistic structural results seems to have gone largely unappreciated. In this survey we recall the basic results of the theory of exchangeable laws, and then explain the probabilistic versions of various interesting questions from graph and hypergraph theory that their connection motivates (particularly extremal questions on the testability of properties for graphs and hypergraphs). We also locate the notions of exchangeability of interest to us in the context of other classes of probability measures subject to various symmetries, in particular contrasting the methods employed to analyze exchangeable laws with related structural results in ergodic theory, particular the Furstenberg-Zimmer structure theorem for probability-preserving $\mathbb {Z}$-systems, which underpins Furstenberg's ergodic-theoretic proof of Szemerédi's Theorem. The forthcoming paper [10]--hereditarytest will make a much more elaborate appeal to the link between exchangeable laws and dense (directed) hypergraphs to establish various results in property testing.
A hypergraph $(V,E)$ is called an interval hypergraph if there exists a linear order $l$ on $V$ such that every edge $e\in E$ is an interval w.r.t. $l$; we also assume that $\{j\}\in E$ for every $j\in V$. Our main result is a de Finetti-type representation of random exchangeable interval hypergraphs on $\mathbb{N}$ (EIHs): the law of every EIH can be obtained by sampling from some random compact subset $K$ of the triangle $\{(x,y):0\leq x\leq y\leq 1\}$ at iid uniform positions $U_1,U_2,\dots$, in the sense that, restricted to the node set $[n]:=\{1,\dots,n\}$ every non-singleton edge is of t…
In a recent paper by the authors, a new approach--called the "embedding method"--was introduced, which allows to make use of exchangeable pairs for normal and multivariate normal approximation with Stein's method in cases where the corresponding couplings do not satisfy a certain linearity condition. The key idea is to embed the problem into a higher dimensional space in such a way that the linearity condition is then satisfied. Here we apply the embedding to U-statistics as well as to subgraph counts in random graphs.
Let $(X_1,\ldots,X_n)$ be an exchangeable random vector with distribution function $F$, and denote by $Y_1\leq \cdots\leq Y_n$ the corresponding order statistics. We show that the conditional distribution of $(X_1,\ldots,X_n)$ given $(Y_1,\ldots,Y_n)$ does not depend on $F$.
In this paper we establish a multivariate exchangeable pairs approach within the framework of Stein's method to assess distributional distances to potentially singular multivariate normal distributions. By extending the statistics into a higher-dimensional space, we also propose an embedding method which allows for a normal approximation even when the corresponding statistics of interest do not lend themselves easily to Stein's exchangeable pairs approach. To illustrate the method, we provide the examples of runs on the line as well as double-indexed permutation statistics.
Recent work has introduced sparse exchangeable graphs and the associated graphex framework, as a generalization of dense exchangeable graphs and the associated graphon framework. The development of this subject involves the interplay between the statistical modeling of network data, the theory of large graph limits, exchangeability, and network sampling. The purpose of the present paper is to clarify the relationships between these subjects by explaining each in terms of a certain natural sampling scheme associated with the graphex model. The first main technical contribution is the introducti…
Consider a (possibly infinite) exchangeable sequence X={X_n:1\leqn<N}, where N\in N\cup {\infty}, with values in a Borel space (A,A), and note X_n=(X_1,...,X_n). We say that X is Hoeffding decomposable if, for each n, every square integrable, centered and symmetric statistic based on X_n can be written as an orthogonal sum of n U-statistics with degenerated and symmetric kernels of increasing order. The only two examples of Hoeffding decomposable sequences studied in the literature are i.i.d. random variables and extractions without replacement from a finite population. In the first part of th…
This work focuses on Exchangeable Occupancy Models (EOM) and their relations with the Uniform Order Statistics Property (UOSP) for point processes in discrete time. As our main purpose, we show how definitions and results presented in Shaked, Spizzichino and Suter (2004) can be unified and generalized in the frame of occupancy models. We first show some general facts about EOM's. Then we introduce a class of EOM's, called $\mathcal{M}^{(a)}$-models, and a concept of generalized Uniform Order Statistics Property in discrete time. For processes with this property, we prove a general characteriza…
Let $(\mathbf{W,W'})$ be an exchangeable pair of vectors in $\mathbb{R}^k$. Suppose this pair satisfies \beas E(\mathbf{W}'|\mathbf{W})=(I_k-Λ)\mathbf{W}+\mathbf{R(W)}. \enas If $||\mathbf{W-W'}||_2\le K$ and $\mathbf{R(W)}=0$, then concentration of measure results of following form is proved for all $\mathbf{w}\succeq 0$ when the moment generating function of $\mathbf{W}$ is finite. \beas P(\mathbf{W}\succeq\mathbf{w}),P(\mathbf{W}\preceq -\mathbf{w})\le \exp(-\frac{||\mathbf{w}||_2^2}{2K^2ν_1}), \enas for an explicit constant $ν_1$, where $\succeq$ stands for coordinate wise $\ge$ ordering. …
We propose a new functional analytic approach to Stein's method of exchangeable pairs that does not require the pair at hand to satisfy any approximate linear regression property. We make use of this theory in order to derive abstract bounds on the normal and Gamma approximation of certain functionals in the Wasserstein distance. Moreover, we illustrate the relevance of this approach by means of three instances of situations to which it can be applied: Functionals of independent random variables, finite population statistics and functionals on finite groups. In the independent case, and in par…
In [14], Nourdin and Peccati combined the Malliavin calculus and Stein's method of normal approximation to associate a rate of convergence to the celebrated fourth moment theorem [19] of Nualart and Peccati. Their analysis, known as the Malliavin-Stein method nowadays, has found many applications towards stochastic geometry, statistical physics and zeros of random polynomials, to name a few. In this article, we further explore the relation between these two fields of mathematics. In particular, we construct exchangeable pairs of Brownian motions and we discover a natural link between Malliavin…
Motivated by statistical practice, category theory terminology is used to introduce Borel data structures and study exchangeability in an abstract framework. A generalization of de Finetti's theorem is shown and natural transformations are used to present functional representation theorems (FRTs). Proofs of the latter are based on a classical result by D.N.Hoover providing a functional representation for exchangeable arrays indexed by finite tuples of integers, together with an universality result for Borel data structures. A special class of Borel data structures are array-type data structure…
Consider a population of individuals belonging to an infinity number of types, and assume that type proportions follow the two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet distribution. A sample of size n is selected from the population. The total number of different types and the number of types appearing in the sample with a fixed frequency are important statistics. In this paper we establish the moderate deviation principles for these quantities. The corresponding rate functions are explicitly identified, which help revealing a critical scale and understanding the exact role of the parameters. Conditional, …
"Ever since the advent of modern quantum mechanics in the late 1920's, the idea has been prevalent that the classical laws of probability cease, in some sense, to be valid in the new theory. [...] The primary object of this presentation is to show that the thesis in question is entirely without validity and is the product of a confused view of the laws of probability" (Koopman, 1957). The secondary objects are: to show that quantum inferences are cases of partially exchangeable statistical models with particular prior constraints; to wonder about such constraints; and to plead for a dialogue b…
We consider a process of noncolliding $q$-exchangeable random walks on $\mathbb{Z}$ making steps $0$ (straight) and $-1$ (down). A single random walk is called $q$-exchangeable if under an elementary transposition of the neighboring steps (down, straight) $\to$ (straight, down) the probability of the trajectory is multiplied by a parameter $q\in(0,1)$. Our process of $m$ noncolliding $q$-exchangeable random walks is obtained from the independent $q$-exchangeable walks via the Doob's $h$-transform for a certain nonnegative eigenfunction $h$ with the eigenvalue less than $1$. The system of $m$ w…
We introduce and study a class of exchangeable random graph ensembles. They can be used as statistical null models for empirical networks, and as a tool for theoretical investigations. We provide general theorems that carachterize the degree distribution of the ensemble graphs, together with some features that are important for applications, such as subgraph distributions and kernel of the adjacency matrix. These results are used to compare to other models of simple and complex networks. A particular case of directed networks with power-law out--degree is studied in more detail, as an example …
Gibbs-type exchangeable random partitions, which is a class of multiplicative measures on the set of positive integer partitions, appear in various contexts, including Bayesian statistics, random combinatorial structures, and stochastic models of diversity in various phenomena. Some distributional results on ordered sizes in the Gibbs partition are established by introducing associated partial Bell polynomials and analysis of the generating functions. The combinatorial approach is applied to derive explicit results on asymptotic behavior of the extreme sizes in the Gibbs partition. Especially,…
We present a novel analogue for finite exchangeable sequences of the de Finetti, Hewitt and Savage theorem and investigate its implications for multi-marginal optimal transport (MMOT) and Bayesian statistics. If $(Z_1,...,Z_N)$ is a finitely exchangeable sequence of $N$ random variables taking values in some Polish space $X$, we show that the law $μ_k$ of the first $k$ components has a representation of the form $μ_k=\int_{{\mathcal P}_{\frac{1}{N}}(X)} F_{N,k}(λ) \, \mbox{d} α(λ)$ for some probability measure $α$ on the set of $1/N$-quantized probability measures on $X$ and certain universal …
In this paper, we establish optimal Berry--Esseen bounds for the generalized $U$-statistics. The proof is based on a new Berry--Esseen theorem for exchangeable pair approach by Stein's method under a general linearity condition setting. As applications, an optimal convergence rate of the normal approximation for subgraph counts in Erdös--Rényi graphs and graphon-random graph is obtained.
We study the dynamics of erasing randomly chosen letters from words by introducing a certain class of discrete-time stochastic processes, general erased-word processes(GEWPs), and investigating three closely related topics: Representation, Martin boundary and filtration theory. We use de Finetti's theorem and the random exchangeable linear order to obtain a de Finetti-type representation of GEWPs involving induced order statistics. Our studies expose connections between exchangeability theory and certain poly-adic filtrations that can be found in other exchangeable random objects as well. We s…
Many empirical networks are intrinsically polyadic, with interactions occurring within groups of agents of arbitrary size. There are, however, few flexible null models that can support statistical inference for such polyadic networks. We define a class of null random hypergraphs that hold constant both the node degree and edge dimension sequences, generalizing the classical dyadic configuration model. We provide a Markov Chain Monte Carlo scheme for sampling from these models, and discuss connections and distinctions between our proposed models and previous approaches. We then illustrate these…
We study a dynamical system motivated by our earlier work on the statistical physics of social balance on graphs that can be viewed as a generalization of annihilating walks along two directions: first, the interaction topology is a hypergraph; second, the ``number of particles`` at a vertex of the hypergraph is an element of a finite field ${\bf Z}_{p}$ of integers modulo $p$, $p\geq 3$. Equivalently, particles move on a hypergraph, with a moving particle at a vertex being replaced by one indistinguishable copy at each neighbor in a given hyperedge; particles at a vertex collectively annihila…
We study the locations of complex zeroes of independence polynomials of bounded degree hypergraphs. For graphs, this is a long-studied subject with applications to statistical physics, algorithms, and combinatorics. Results on zero-free regions for bounded-degree graphs include Shearer's result on the optimal zero-free disk, along with several recent results on other zero-free regions. Much less is known for hypergraphs. We make some steps towards an understanding of zero-free regions for bounded-degree hypergaphs by proving that all hypergraphs of maximum degree $Δ$ have a zero-free disk almo…
It is known that the fluctuations of suitable linear statistics of Haar distributed elements of the compact classical groups satisfy a central limit theorem. We show that if the corresponding test functions are sufficiently smooth, a rate of convergence of order almost $1/n$ can be obtained using a quantitative multivariate CLT for traces of powers that was recently proven using Stein's method of exchangeable pairs.
Cramér-type moderate deviation for double index permutation statistics
School of Mathematical Sciences, Dalian University of Technology（大连理工大学数学科学学院）；Department of Statistics and Data Science, Shenzhen International Center for Mathematics, Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学深圳国际数学中心统计与数据科学系）；Department of Statistics and Data Science, Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学统计与数据科学系）
