Sutanu Gayen

Total Variation Distance for Product Distributions is $\#\mathsf{P}$-Complete

2024 · arXiv (Cornell University)

We show that computing the total variation distance between two product distributions is $\#\mathsf{P}$-complete. This is in stark contrast with other distance measures such as Kullback-Leibler, Chi-square, and Hellinger, which tensorize over the marginals leading …