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Consider a geometric range space (X,A) where X is comprised of the union of a red set R and blue set B. Let Phi(A) define the absolute difference between the fraction of red and fraction of blue points which fall in the range A. The maximum discrepancy range A^* = arg max_{A in (X,A)} Phi(A). Our goal is to find some A^ in (X,A) such that Phi(A^*) - Phi(A^) <= epsilon. We develop general algorithms for this approximation problem for range spaces with bounded VC-dimension, as well as significant improvements for specific geometric range spaces defined by balls, halfspaces, and axis-aligned rectangles. This problem has direct applications in discrepancy evaluation and classification, and we also show an improved reduction to a class of problems in spatial scan statistics.
@InProceedings{matheny_et_al:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2018.32,
author = {Matheny, Michael and Phillips, Jeff M.},
title = {{Computing Approximate Statistical Discrepancy}},
booktitle = {29th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2018)},
pages = {32:1--32:13},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-094-1},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2018},
volume = {123},
editor = {Hsu, Wen-Lian and Lee, Der-Tsai and Liao, Chung-Shou},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2018.32},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-99800},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2018.32},
annote = {Keywords: Scan Statistics, Discrepancy, Rectangles}
}