{"paper":{"title":"The data geometry of masking diffusion: Certified-optimal schedules via unmasking growth complexity","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","cs.IT","math.IT","math.ST","stat.ML","stat.TH"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Martin J. Wainwright","submitted_at":"2026-08-13T17:40:17Z","abstract_excerpt":"We study masking diffusion for discrete sampling and introduce a path-resolved measure of data geometry called the \\emph{unmasking growth complexity} ({\\textsf{UGC}\\xspace}). Its local increments directly control Kullback--Leibler (KL) discretization error, yielding a unified analysis of Bernoulli-subset and fixed-cardinality unmasking schemes. In log-reveal-odds coordinates, this structure yields optimized single-block and multi-block schedules, and quantifies the gains from adapting computational effort to data geometry. Crucially, we show how {\\textsf{UGC}\\xspace} increments can be estimate"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2608.13520","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2608.13520/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}