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  1. Suppose I know the true distribution, $P^*(x)$ and I have approximated the true distribution with $\tilde{P}(x|D)$, which is the predictive posterior density. Does the relative entropy of $\tilde{P}(x|D)$ with respect to $P^*(x)$ become: $$D_{KL}(P^{*}||\tilde{P})=\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}P^{*}(x)\,\log\frac{P^*(x)}{\tilde{P}(x|D)} dx$$

  2. Also, does a smaller relative entropy in this case also imply a smaller distance between my hypothesis and the true distribution?

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1 Answer 1

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  1. Yes, by definition of the Kullback-Leibler divergence.

  2. Yes, since $D_{KL}(P^{*}||\tilde{P})=0$ if and only if $P^{*}=\tilde{P}$ almost surely.

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  • $\begingroup$ @mackbox You may also want to consider other distances such as the Total Variation distance, which is the L1 distance in unidimensional models $\int\vert P^*(x)-\tilde{P}(x)\vert dx$. $\endgroup$
    – Kassio
    Aug 26, 2016 at 15:38

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