Robust Binary Hypothesis Testing Under Contaminated Likelihoods

Abstract: In hypothesis testing, the phenomenon of label noise, in which hypothesis labels are switched at random, contaminates the likelihood functions. In this paper, we develop a new method to determine the decision rule when we do not have knowledge of the uncontaminated likelihoods and contamination probabilities, but only have knowledge of the contaminated likelihoods. In particular we pose a minimax optimization problem that finds a decision rule robust against this lack of knowledge. The method simplifies by application of linear programming theory. Motivation for this investigation is provided by problems encountered in workforce analytics.