Minimax Number of Strata for Online Stratified Sampling given Noisy Samples

We consider the problem of online stratified sampling for Monte Carlo integration of a function given a finite budget of $n$ noisy evaluations to the function. More precisely we focus on the problem of choosing the number of strata $K$ as a function of the budget $n$. We provide asymptotic and finite-time results on how an oracle that has access to the function would choose the partition optimally. In addition we prove a \textit{lower bound} on the learning rate for the problem of stratified Monte-Carlo. As a result, we are able to state, by improving the bound on its performance, that algorithm MC-UCB, defined in~\citep{MC-UCB}, is minimax optimal both in terms of the number of samples n and the number of strata K, up to a $\sqrt{\log(nK)}$. This enables to deduce a minimax optimal bound on the difference between the performance of the estimate outputted by MC-UCB, and the performance of the estimate outputted by the best oracle static strategy, on the class of Hölder continuous functions, and upt to a $\sqrt{\log(n)}$.

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Source https://inria.hal.science/hal-00698517
Author Carpentier, Alexandra, Munos, Rémi
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 18, 2026, 10:14 (UTC)
Created May 18, 2026, 10:14 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00698517
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Sequential Learning (SEQUEL) ; Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale de Lille (LIFL) ; Université de Lille, Sciences et Technologies-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Université de Lille, Sciences Humaines et Sociales-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Lille, Sciences et Technologies-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Université de Lille, Sciences Humaines et Sociales-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Centre Inria de l'Université de Lille ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Laboratoire d'Automatique, Génie Informatique et Signal (LAGIS) ; Université de Lille, Sciences et Technologies-Centrale Lille-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Centrale Lille-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Carpentier, Alexandra
date 2012-05-16T00:00:00
harvest_object_id cb53731a-92b1-4665-a949-83772b4d9215
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-02-26T00:00:00
relation info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/1205.4095
set_spec type:UNDEFINED