On the consistency of the Kozachenko-Leonenko entropy estimate

We revisit the problem of the estimation of the differential entropy $H(f)$ of a random vector $X$ in $R^d$ with density $f$, assuming that $H(f)$ exists and is finite. In this note, we study the consistency of the popular nearest neighbor estimate $H_n$ of Kozachenko and Leonenko. Without any smoothness condition we show that the estimate is consistent ($E\{|H_n - H(f)|\} \to 0$ as $n \to \infty$) if and only if $\mathbb{E} \{ \log ( \| X \| + 1 )\} < \infty$. Furthermore, if $X$ has compact support, then $H_n \to H(f)$ almost surely.

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