Unified Unbiased Variance Estimation for MMD: Robust Finite-Sample Performance with Imbalanced Data and Exact Acceleration under Null and Alternative Hypotheses

Abstract: The maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) is a kernel-based nonparametric statistic for two-sample testing, whose inferential accuracy depends critically on variance characterization. Existing work provides various finite-sample estimators of the MMD variance, often differing under the null and alternative hypotheses and across balanced or imbalanced sampling schemes. In this paper, we study the variance of the MMD statistic through its U-statistic representation and Hoeffding decomposition, and establish a unified finite-sample characterization covering different hypotheses and sample configurations. Building on this analysis, we propose an exact acceleration method for the univariate case under the Laplacian kernel, which reduces the overall computational complexity from $\mathcal O(n^2)$ to $\mathcal O(n \log n)$.