Unifying computational entropies via Kullback-Leibler divergence

We introduce hardness in relative entropy, a new notion of hardness for search problems which on the one hand is satisfied by all one-way functions and on the other hand implies both next-block pseudoentropy and inaccessible entropy, two forms of computational entropy used in recent constructions of pseudorandom generators and statistically hiding commitment schemes, respectively. Thus, hardness in relative entropy unifies the latter two notions of computational entropy and sheds light on the apparent "duality" between them. Additionally, it yields a more modular and illuminating proof that one-way functions imply next-block inaccessible entropy, similar in structure to the proof that one-way functions imply next-block pseudoentropy (Vadhan and Zheng, STOC '12)

Extropy: Complementary Dual of Entropy

This article provides a completion to theories of information based on entropy, resolving a longstanding question in its axiomatization as proposed by Shannon and pursued by Jaynes. We show that Shannon's entropy function has a complementary dual function which we call "extropy." The entropy and the extropy of a binary distribution are identical. However, the measure bifurcates into a pair of distinct measures for any quantity that is not merely an event indicator. As with entropy, the maximum extropy distribution is also the uniform distribution, and both measures are invariant with respect to permutations of their mass functions. However, they behave quite differently in their assessments of the refinement of a distribution, the axiom which concerned Shannon and Jaynes. Their duality is specified via the relationship among the entropies and extropies of course and fine partitions. We also analyze the extropy function for densities, showing that relative extropy constitutes a dual to the Kullback-Leibler divergence, widely recognized as the continuous entropy measure. These results are unified within the general structure of Bregman divergences. In this context they identify half the $L_2$ metric as the extropic dual to the entropic directed distance. We describe a statistical application to the scoring of sequential forecast distributions which provoked the discovery.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-STS430 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The Burbea-Rao and Bhattacharyya centroids

We study the centroid with respect to the class of information-theoretic Burbea-Rao divergences that generalize the celebrated Jensen-Shannon divergence by measuring the non-negative Jensen difference induced by a strictly convex and differentiable function. Although those Burbea-Rao divergences are symmetric by construction, they are not metric since they fail to satisfy the triangle inequality. We first explain how a particular symmetrization of Bregman divergences called Jensen-Bregman distances yields exactly those Burbea-Rao divergences. We then proceed by defining skew Burbea-Rao divergences, and show that skew Burbea-Rao divergences amount in limit cases to compute Bregman divergences. We then prove that Burbea-Rao centroids are unique, and can be arbitrarily finely approximated by a generic iterative concave-convex optimization algorithm with guaranteed convergence property. In the second part of the paper, we consider the Bhattacharyya distance that is commonly used to measure overlapping degree of probability distributions. We show that Bhattacharyya distances on members of the same statistical exponential family amount to calculate a Burbea-Rao divergence in disguise. Thus we get an efficient algorithm for computing the Bhattacharyya centroid of a set of parametric distributions belonging to the same exponential families, improving over former specialized methods found in the literature that were limited to univariate or "diagonal" multivariate Gaussians. To illustrate the performance of our Bhattacharyya/Burbea-Rao centroid algorithm, we present experimental performance results for $k$-means and hierarchical clustering methods of Gaussian mixture models.Comment: 13 page

Editorial Comment on the Special Issue of "Information in Dynamical Systems and Complex Systems"

This special issue collects contributions from the participants of the "Information in Dynamical Systems and Complex Systems" workshop, which cover a wide range of important problems and new approaches that lie in the intersection of information theory and dynamical systems. The contributions include theoretical characterization and understanding of the different types of information flow and causality in general stochastic processes, inference and identification of coupling structure and parameters of system dynamics, rigorous coarse-grain modeling of network dynamical systems, and exact statistical testing of fundamental information-theoretic quantities such as the mutual information. The collective efforts reported herein reflect a modern perspective of the intimate connection between dynamical systems and information flow, leading to the promise of better understanding and modeling of natural complex systems and better/optimal design of engineering systems

vsgoftest: An R Package for Goodness-of-Fit Testing Based on Kullback-Leibler Divergence

The R package vsgoftest performs goodness-of-fit (GOF) tests, based on Shannon entropy and Kullback-Leibler divergence, developed by Vasicek (1976) and Song (2002), of various classical families of distributions. The so-called Vasicek-Song (VS) tests are intended to be applied to continuous data - typically drawn from a density distribution, even including ties. Their excellent properties - they exhibit high power in a large variety of situations, make them relevant alternatives to classical GOF tests in any domain of application requiring statistical processing. The theoretical framework of VS tests is summarized and followed by a detailed description of the different features of the package. The power and computational time performances of VS tests are studied through their comparison with other GOF tests. Application to real datasets illustrates the easy-to-use functionalities of the vsgoftest package

On a generalization of the Jensen-Shannon divergence and the JS-symmetrization of distances relying on abstract means

The Jensen-Shannon divergence is a renown bounded symmetrization of the unbounded Kullback-Leibler divergence which measures the total Kullback-Leibler divergence to the average mixture distribution. However the Jensen-Shannon divergence between Gaussian distributions is not available in closed-form. To bypass this problem, we present a generalization of the Jensen-Shannon (JS) divergence using abstract means which yields closed-form expressions when the mean is chosen according to the parametric family of distributions. More generally, we define the JS-symmetrizations of any distance using generalized statistical mixtures derived from abstract means. In particular, we first show that the geometric mean is well-suited for exponential families, and report two closed-form formula for (i) the geometric Jensen-Shannon divergence between probability densities of the same exponential family, and (ii) the geometric JS-symmetrization of the reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence. As a second illustrating example, we show that the harmonic mean is well-suited for the scale Cauchy distributions, and report a closed-form formula for the harmonic Jensen-Shannon divergence between scale Cauchy distributions. We also define generalized Jensen-Shannon divergences between matrices (e.g., quantum Jensen-Shannon divergences) and consider clustering with respect to these novel Jensen-Shannon divergences.Comment: 30 page

Formal Groups and ZZ-Entropies

We shall prove that the celebrated R\'enyi entropy is the first example of a new family of infinitely many multi-parametric entropies. We shall call them the $Z$-entropies. Each of them, under suitable hypotheses, generalizes the celebrated entropies of Boltzmann and R\'enyi. A crucial aspect is that every $Z$-entropy is composable [1]. This property means that the entropy of a system which is composed of two or more independent systems depends, in all the associated probability space, on the choice of the two systems only. Further properties are also required, to describe the composition process in terms of a group law. The composability axiom, introduced as a generalization of the fourth Shannon-Khinchin axiom (postulating additivity), is a highly non-trivial requirement. Indeed, in the trace-form class, the Boltzmann entropy and Tsallis entropy are the only known composable cases. However, in the non-trace form class, the $Z$-entropies arise as new entropic functions possessing the mathematical properties necessary for information-theoretical applications, in both classical and quantum contexts. From a mathematical point of view, composability is intimately related to formal group theory of algebraic topology. The underlying group-theoretical structure determines crucially the statistical properties of the corresponding entropies.Comment: 20 pages, no figure