A methodology to estimate from samples the probability density of a random variable x conditional to the values of a set of covariates {z l } is proposed. The methodology relies on a data-driven formulation of the Wasserstein barycenter, posed as a minimax problem in terms of the conditional map carrying each sample point to the barycenter and a potential characterizing the inverse of this map. This minimax problem is solved through the alternation of a flow developing the map in time and the maximization of the potential through an alternate projection procedure. The dependence on the covariates {z l } is formulated in terms of convex combinations, so that it can be applied to variables of nearly any type, including real, categorical and distributional. The methodology is illustrated through numerical examples on synthetic and real data. The real-world example chosen is meteorological, forecasting the temperature distribution at a given location as a function of time, and estimating the joint distribution at a location of the highest and lowest daily temperatures as a function of the date.
A data driven procedure is developed to compute the optimal map between two conditional probabilities ρ(x|z 1 , ..., z L ) and µ(y|z 1 , ..., z L ) depending on a set of covariates z i . The procedure is tested on synthetic data from the ACIC Data Analysis Challenge 2017 and it is applied to non uniform lightness transfer between images. Exactly solvable examples and simulations are performed to highlight the differences with ordinary optimal transport.
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