Probability Estimation with Truncated Inverse Binomial Sampling

Abstract: In this paper, we develop a general theory of truncated inverse binomial sampling. In this theory, the fixed-size sampling and inverse binomial sampling are accommodated as special cases. In particular, the classical Chernoff-Hoeffding bound is an immediate consequence of the theory. Moreover, we propose a rigorous and efficient method for probability estimation, which is an adaptive Monte Carlo estimation method based on truncated inverse binomial sampling. Our proposed method of probability estimation can be orders of magnitude more efficient as compared to existing methods in literature and widely used software.