# Norms of sums of random vectors sampled without replacement

Let $$\mathbb{P}_{WOR(\ell)}$$ denote a probability under the model where a set $$I$$ of $$\ell$$ indices is sampled without replacement from $$\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$$, and $$\mathbb{P}_{WR(\ell)}$$ denote a probability under the model where the $$\ell$$ indices are chosen with replacement. Then is it the case that, for any collection $$\vec{v}_i$$ of $$n$$ vectors in a vector space,
$\mathbb{P}_{WOR(\ell)}\left(\left\| \sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| \geq t \right) \leq \mathbb{P}_{WR(\ell)}\left(\left\| \sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| \geq t \right)$
up to constants?
In general, the $$WOR(\ell)$$ model is harder to work with, because the terms in the resulting sum are dependent, whereas the terms in the $$WR(\ell)$$ sum are independent. So if this inequality held, it would make life easier.

I don’t know if this inequality is true in general, but there are classical exponential tail bounds for the rhs, and I believe that those bounds hold up to constants for the lhs. Here’s an outline of the argument. The key fact is that
$\E_{WOR(\ell)}f\left(\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i\right) \leq \E_{WR(\ell)}f\left(\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i\right)$
for any convex function $$f.$$ This was originally realized by Hoeffding, but Gross provides a more readable account. Take $$f(x) = \exp(\|x\|)$$ to see that the moment generating function under the $$WOR(\ell)$$ model is dominated by the moment generating function under the $$WR(\ell)$$ model.

Next step. We know that the deviation of the norm of the sum from its expectation under the $$WR(\ell)$$ model satisfies a Bennett inequality (see Ledoux and Talagrand, chapter 6):
$\mathbb{P}_{WR(\ell)}\left( \left|\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i\right\| – \E_{WR(\ell)} \left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| \right| \geq t \right) \leq \exp\left[\frac{t}{2a} – \left(\frac{t}{2a} + \frac{b^2}{4a^2} \right) \log\left(1 + \frac{2 a t}{b^2} \right) \right].$
Here $$a$$ is a bound on the norms of the individual summands and $$b^2 = \ell/n \cdot \sum_{i=1}^n \|\vec{v}_i\|^2.$$
From the tail bound/moment/mgf connection, we know that from this tail bound we can recover a bound on the mgf of this deviation under the $$WR(\ell)$$ model that allows recovery of the Bennett inequality from the usual Chernoff arguments (up to changes in the constants).

(Alternatively, I realized latterly, you can just look for a proof this or a similar inequality which proceeds by bounding the mgf, and use that bound directly rather than reverse engineering to get a similar but looser bound. The issue here is that you have to find a proof of this inequality with uses the mgf. I was not able to do this, but I didn’t try too hard, and there are similar results in chapter 1 of Ledoux and Talagrand which are good enough for my purposes)

Now we do some algebra to bound an mgf involving the norm of the sum formed under the $$WOR(\ell)$$ model:
$\E_{WOR(\ell)} \exp\left(\lambda \left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\|\right) \leq \E_{WR(\ell)} \exp\left(\lambda \left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\|\right)$
from our first observation, and the right hand side is smaller than
$\E_{WR(\ell)} \exp\left(\lambda \bigg|\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| – \E_{WR(\ell)}\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\|\bigg| \right) \exp\left(\lambda \E_{WR(\ell)}\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\|\right),$
so rearranging gives
$\E_{WOR(\ell)} \exp\left(\lambda \left[\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| – \E_{WR(\ell)}\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\|\right] \right) \leq \E_{WR(\ell)} \exp\left(\lambda \bigg|\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| – \E_{WR(\ell)}\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\|\bigg| \right).$

Recall that we have a bound on the rhs from the Bennett inequality. Thus we have a bound on the mgf of the deviation of the norm of the sum under the $$WOR(\ell)$$ model above the expectation of the norm of the sum under the $$WR(\ell)$$ model, and this bound is sufficiently strong to generate a Bennett inequality. Thus, caveat! up to changes in the constants (since I have not done the calculations), we have that
$\mathbb{P}_{WOR(\ell)}\left(\left\| \sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| \geq t + \E_{WR(\ell)}\left\|\sum\nolimits_{i \in I} \vec{v}_i \right\| \right) \leq \exp\left[\frac{t}{2a} – \left(\frac{t}{2a} + \frac{b^2}{4a^2} \right) \log\left(1 + \frac{2 a t}{b^2} \right) \right].$