{ "schema_version": "1.0", "title": "Reproduction: Allocating Variance to Maximize Expectation", "emoji": "📊", "space_id": "snaykey/repro-variance-allocation", "paper": { "arxiv_id": "2502.18463", "openreview_id": "vqxprtjuKH" }, "tags": [ "icml2026-repro", "paper-vqxprtjuKH" ], "updated_at": "2026-07-29T12:00:00+00:00", "root": { "slug": "index", "title": "Reproduction: Allocating Variance to Maximize Expectation", "children": [ { "slug": "executive-summary", "title": "Executive summary", "children": [] }, { "slug": "claim-1-theorem-1-1-independent-ptas", "title": "For the independent Gaussian variance allocation problem, the paper gives a PTAS achieving E[max_i X_i] ≥ OPT - ε in polynomial time (Theorem 1.1, Section 1.2).", "children": [] }, { "slug": "claim-2-theorem-1-2-correlated-ptas", "title": "For correlated Gaussian variables, a PTAS with the same additive ε guarantee is established (Theorem 1.2, Section 1.2).", "children": [] }, { "slug": "claim-3-theorem-1-3-graph-ologn", "title": "For the GraphVarAlloc problem with multiple constraint sets (general m>1), the paper gives an O(log n) multiplicative approximation guaranteeing Ω(1/log n)·OPT (Theorem 1.3, Section 1.2).", "children": [] }, { "slug": "claim-4-theorem-1-6-concentration", "title": "Theorem 1.6 proves that in the optimal allocation, only Θ(1/p) variables receive variance Ω(p), i.e., the allocation concentrates on a shrinking subset as the constraint parameter p grows (Theorem 1.6, Section 1.3).", "children": [] }, { "slug": "claim-5-lemma-2-1-small-variance", "title": "Lemma 2.1 bounds the contribution of small-variance variables by O(ε√ln(1/ε)), which is used to limit the number of high-variance variables to O(1/ε²) and underlies the PTAS construction (Lemma 2.1, Section 2.1).", "children": [] }, { "slug": "claim-6-monte-carlo-er-figures", "title": "Monte Carlo simulations on Erdős–Rényi random graphs with n=8 nodes and edge probabilities p ranging from 1/8 to 8/8 are used to illustrate the concentration and concavity results across independent, positively, and negatively correlated settings (Figures 1-2, Section 1.3).", "children": [] }, { "slug": "conclusion", "title": "Conclusion", "children": [] } ] }, "revision": 2 }