Performance of test supermartingale confidence intervals for the success probability of bernoulli trials

Peter Wills, Emanuel Knill, Kevin Coakley, Yanbao Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Given a composite null hypothesis H0, test supermartingales are non-negative supermartingales with respect to H0 with an initial value of 1. Large values of test supermartingales provide evidence against H0. As a result, test supermartingales are an effective tool for rejecting H0, particularly when the p-values obtained are very small and serve as certificates against the null hypothesis. Examples include the rejection of local realism as an explanation of Bell test experiments in the foundations of physics and the certification of entanglement in quantum information science. Test supermartingales have the advantage of being adaptable during an experiment and allowing for arbitrary stopping rules. By inversion of acceptance regions, they can also be used to determine confidence sets. We used an example to compare the performance of test supermartingales for computing p-values and confidence intervals to Chernoff-Hoeffding bounds and the "exact" p-value. The example is the problem of inferring the probability of success in a sequence of Bernoulli trials. There is a cost in using a technique that has no restriction on stopping rules, and, for a particular test supermartingale, our study quantifies this cost.

Original languageEnglish
Article number125003
JournalJournal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Volume125
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 5 2020
Externally publishedYes

Funding

Y. Z. acknowledges support from the Ontario Research Fund (ORF), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and Industry Canada.

FundersFunder number
Ontario Research Fund
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Industry Canada

    Keywords

    • Asymptotics
    • Bernoulli Trials
    • Chernoff-Hoeffding Bounds
    • Confidence Intervals
    • Hypothesis Tests
    • Large Deviations
    • P-Values
    • Test Supermartingales

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Performance of test supermartingale confidence intervals for the success probability of bernoulli trials'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this