We study a likelihood ratio test for the location of the mode of a log-concave density. Our test is based on comparison of the log-likelihoods corresponding to the unconstrained maximum likelihood estimator of a log-concave density and the constrained maximum likelihood estimator where the constraint is that the mode of the density is fixed, say at $m$. The constrained estimation problem is studied in detail in Doss and Wellner (2018). Here, the results of that paper are…
In this paper, we consider the local asymptotics of the nonparametric function in a partially linear model, within the framework of the divide-and-conquer estimation. Unlike the fixed-dimensional setting in which the parametric part does not affect the nonparametric part, the high-dimensional setting makes the issue more complicated. In particular, when a sparsity-inducing penalty such as lasso is used to make the estimation of the linear part feasible, the bias introduced…
Testing correlation structures has attracted extensive attention in the literature due to both its importance in real applications and several major theoretical challenges. The aim of this paper is to develop a general framework of testing correlation structures for the one-, two-, and multiple sample testing problems under a high-dimensional setting when both the sample size and data dimension go to infinity. Our test statistics are designed to deal with both the dense and…
We study the spectra of MANOVA estimators for variance component covariance matrices in multivariate random effects models. When the dimensionality of the observations is large and comparable to the number of realizations of each random effect, we show that the empirical spectra of such estimators are well-approximated by deterministic laws. The Stieltjes transforms of these laws are characterized by systems of fixed-point equations, which are numerically solvable by a…
We provide an exact nonasymptotic lower bound on the minimax expected excess risk (EER) in the agnostic probably-approximately-correct (PAC) machine learning classification model and identify minimax learning algorithms as certain maximally symmetric and minimally randomized “voting” procedures. Based on this result, an exact asymptotic lower bound on the minimax EER is provided. This bound is of the simple form $c_{\infty}/\sqrt{\nu}$ as $\nu\to\infty$, where $c_{\infty}=0.16997\dots$…
Aaditya K. Ramdas · Rina F. Barber · Martin J. Wainwright · Michael I. Jordan·刊期 2019-10-01 · 卷 47(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
利用 p-filter 统一处理含先验知识的多重检验AI 解读
There is a significant literature on methods for incorporating knowledge into multiple testing procedures so as to improve their power and precision. Some common forms of prior knowledge include (a) beliefs about which hypotheses are null, modeled by nonuniform prior weights; (b) differing importances of hypotheses, modeled by differing penalties for false discoveries; (c) multiple arbitrary partitions of the hypotheses into (possibly overlapping) groups and (d) knowledge of…
We consider the problem of detecting a deformation from a symmetric Gaussian random $p$-tensor $(p\geq3)$ with a rank-one spike sampled from the Rademacher prior. Recently, in Lesieur et al. (Barbier, Krzakala, Macris, Miolane and Zdeborová (2017)), it was proved that there exists a critical threshold $\beta_{p}$ so that when the signal-to-noise ratio exceeds $\beta_{p}$, one can distinguish the spiked and unspiked tensors and weakly recover the prior via the minimal…
When estimating finite mixture models, it is common to make assumptions on the mixture components, such as parametric assumptions. In this work, we make no distributional assumptions on the mixture components and instead assume that observations from the mixture model are grouped, such that observations in the same group are known to be drawn from the same mixture component. We precisely characterize the number of observations $n$ per group needed for the mixture model to be…
Chengchun Shi · Rui Song · Zhao Chen · Runze Li·刊期 2019-10-01 · 卷 47(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
高维广义线性模型的线性假设检验AI 解读
This paper is concerned with testing linear hypotheses in high dimensional generalized linear models. To deal with linear hypotheses, we first propose the constrained partial regularization method and study its statistical properties. We further introduce an algorithm for solving regularization problems with folded-concave penalty functions and linear constraints. To test linear hypotheses, we propose a partial penalized likelihood ratio test, a partial penalized score test…
We study the behavior of a real $p$-dimensional Wishart random matrix with $n$ degrees of freedom when $n,p\rightarrow\infty$ but $p/n\rightarrow0$. We establish the existence of phase transitions when $p$ grows at the order $n^{(K+1)/(K+3)}$ for every $K\in\mathbb{N}$, and derive expressions for approximating densities between every two phase transitions. To do this, we make use of a novel tool we call the $\mathcal{F}$-conjugate of an absolutely continuous distribution,…
Bo Zhou · Ramon van den Akker · Bas J. M. Werker·刊期 2019-10-01 · 卷 47(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
单位根的半参数点最优混合秩检验AI 解读
We propose a new class of unit root tests that exploits invariance properties in the Locally Asymptotically Brownian Functional limit experiment associated to the unit root model. The invariance structures naturally suggest tests that are based on the ranks of the increments of the observations, their average and an assumed reference density for the innovations. The tests are semiparametric in the sense that they are valid, that is, have the correct (asymptotic) size,…
Additive regression provides an extension of linear regression by modeling the signal of a response as a sum of functions of covariates of relatively low complexity. We study penalized estimation in high-dimensional nonparametric additive regression where functional semi-norms are used to induce smoothness of component functions and the empirical $L_{2}$ norm is used to induce sparsity. The functional semi-norms can be of Sobolev or bounded variation types and are allowed to…
Anru Zhang · Lawrence D. Brown · T. Tony Cai·刊期 2019-10-01 · 卷 47(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
半监督推断:一般理论与总体均值估计AI 解读
We propose a general semi-supervised inference framework focused on the estimation of the population mean. As usual in semi-supervised settings, there exists an unlabeled sample of covariate vectors and a labeled sample consisting of covariate vectors along with real-valued responses (“labels”). Otherwise, the formulation is “assumption-lean” in that no major conditions are imposed on the statistical or functional form of the data. We consider both the ideal semi-supervised…
This paper explores the information-theoretic limitations of graph property testing in zero-field Ising models. Instead of learning the entire graph structure, sometimes testing a basic graph property such as connectivity, cycle presence or maximum clique size is a more relevant and attainable objective. Since property testing is more fundamental than graph recovery, any necessary conditions for property testing imply corresponding conditions for graph recovery, while custom…
Qiyang Han · Tengyao Wang · Sabyasachi Chatterjee · Richard J. Samworth·刊期 2019-10-01 · 卷 47(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
一般维度下的保序回归AI 解读
We study the least squares regression function estimator over the class of real-valued functions on $[0,1]^{d}$ that are increasing in each coordinate. For uniformly bounded signals and with a fixed, cubic lattice design, we establish that the estimator achieves the minimax rate of order $n^{-\min\{2/(d+2),1/d\}}$ in the empirical $L_{2}$ loss, up to polylogarithmic factors. Further, we prove a sharp oracle inequality, which reveals in particular that when the true…
Björn Böttcher · Martin Keller-Ressel · René L. Schilling·刊期 2019-10-01 · 卷 47(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
距离多重方差:随机向量的新依赖度量AI 解读
We introduce two new measures for the dependence of $n\ge2$ random variables: distance multivariance and total distance multivariance. Both measures are based on the weighted $L^{2}$-distance of quantities related to the characteristic functions of the underlying random variables. These extend distance covariance (introduced by Székely, Rizzo and Bakirov) from pairs of random variables to $n$-tuplets of random variables. We show that total distance multivariance can be used…
This paper develops a framework for testing for associations in a possibly high-dimensional linear model where the number of features/variables may far exceed the number of observational units. In this framework, the observations are split into two groups, where the first group is used to screen for a set of potentially relevant variables, whereas the second is used for inference over this reduced set of variables; we also develop strategies for leveraging information from…
The singular value matrix decomposition plays a ubiquitous role throughout statistics and related fields. Myriad applications including clustering, classification, and dimensionality reduction involve studying and exploiting the geometric structure of singular values and singular vectors. This paper provides a novel collection of technical and theoretical tools for studying the geometry of singular subspaces using the two-to-infinity norm. Motivated by preliminary…
We propose an adaptive bandwidth selector via cross validation for local M-estimators in locally stationary processes. We prove asymptotic optimality of the procedure under mild conditions on the underlying parameter curves. The results are applicable to a wide range of locally stationary processes such linear and nonlinear processes. A simulation study shows that the method works fairly well also in misspecified situations.
Precision medicine is an emerging medical paradigm that focuses on finding the most effective treatment strategy tailored for individual patients. In the literature, most of the existing works focused on estimating the optimal treatment regime. However, there has been less attention devoted to hypothesis testing regarding the optimal treatment regime. In this paper, we first introduce the notion of conditional qualitative treatment effects (CQTE) of a set of variables given…
We study the performance of the least squares estimator (LSE) in a general nonparametric regression model, when the errors are independent of the covariates but may only have a $p$th moment ($p\geq1$). In such a heavy-tailed regression setting, we show that if the model satisfies a standard “entropy condition” with exponent $\alpha\in(0,2)$, then the $L_{2}$ loss of the LSE converges at a rate \[\mathcal{O}_{\mathbf{P}}\bigl(n^{-\frac{1}{2+\alpha}}\vee n^{-\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{2p}}\bigr).\]…
Mathieu Gerber · Nicolas Chopin · Nick Whiteley·刊期 2019-08-01 · 卷 47(4)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
重抽样方法的负相依性、排序与收敛AI 解读
We study convergence and convergence rates for resampling schemes. Our first main result is a general consistency theorem based on the notion of negative association, which is applied to establish the almost sure weak convergence of measures output from Kitagawa’s [J. Comput. Graph. Statist. 5 (1996) 1–25] stratified resampling method. Carpenter, Ckiffird and Fearnhead’s [IEE Proc. Radar Sonar Navig. 146 (1999) 2–7] systematic resampling method is similar in structure but…
In this paper we study the $\alpha $-cluster tree ($\alpha $-tree) under both singular and nonsingular measures. The $\alpha $-tree uses probability contents within a set created by the ordering of points to construct a cluster tree so that it is well defined even for singular measures. We first derive the convergence rate for a density level set around critical points, which leads to the convergence rate for estimating an $\alpha $-tree under nonsingular measures. For…
Pierre Alquier · Vincent Cottet · Guillaume Lecué·刊期 2019-08-01 · 卷 47(4)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
Lipschitz 损失正则化方法的估计界与尖锐预言不等式AI 解读
We obtain estimation error rates and sharp oracle inequalities for regularization procedures of the form \begin{equation*}\hat{f}\in\mathop{\operatorname{argmin}}_{f\in F}\Bigg(\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^{N}\ell_{f}(X_{i},Y_{i})+\lambda \Vert f\Vert \Bigg)\end{equation*} when $\Vert \cdot \Vert $ is any norm, $F$ is a convex class of functions and $\ell$ is a Lipschitz loss function satisfying a Bernstein condition over $F$. We explore both the bounded and sub-Gaussian stochastic…
We study a likelihood ratio test for the location of the mode of a log-concave density. Our test is based on comparison of the log-likelihoods corresponding to the unconstrained maximum likelihood estimator of a log-concave density and the constrained maximum likelihood estimator where the constraint is that the mode of the density is fixed, say at m. The constrained estimation problem is studied in detail in Doss and Wellner (2018). Here, the results of that paper are…
We provide an exact nonasymptotic lower bound on the minimax expected excess risk (EER) in the agnostic probably-approximately-correct (PAC) machine learning classification model and identify minimax learning algorithms as certain maximally symmetric and minimally randomized “voting” procedures. Based on this result, an exact asymptotic lower bound on the minimax EER is provided. This bound is of the simple form c∞/ν as ν→∞, where c∞=0.16997……
We consider the problem of detecting a deformation from a symmetric Gaussian random p-tensor (p≥3) with a rank-one spike sampled from the Rademacher prior. Recently, in Lesieur et al. (Barbier, Krzakala, Macris, Miolane and Zdeborová (2017)), it was proved that there exists a critical threshold βp so that when the signal-to-noise ratio exceeds βp, one can distinguish the spiked and unspiked tensors and weakly recover the prior via the minimal…
When estimating finite mixture models, it is common to make assumptions on the mixture components, such as parametric assumptions. In this work, we make no distributional assumptions on the mixture components and instead assume that observations from the mixture model are grouped, such that observations in the same group are known to be drawn from the same mixture component. We precisely characterize the number of observations n per group needed for the mixture model to be…
We study the behavior of a real p-dimensional Wishart random matrix with n degrees of freedom when n,p→∞ but p/n→0. We establish the existence of phase transitions when p grows at the order n(K+1)/(K+3) for every K∈N, and derive expressions for approximating densities between every two phase transitions. To do this, we make use of a novel tool we call the F-conjugate of an absolutely continuous distribution,…
Additive regression provides an extension of linear regression by modeling the signal of a response as a sum of functions of covariates of relatively low complexity. We study penalized estimation in high-dimensional nonparametric additive regression where functional semi-norms are used to induce smoothness of component functions and the empirical L2 norm is used to induce sparsity. The functional semi-norms can be of Sobolev or bounded variation types and are allowed to…
We study the least squares regression function estimator over the class of real-valued functions on [0,1]d that are increasing in each coordinate. For uniformly bounded signals and with a fixed, cubic lattice design, we establish that the estimator achieves the minimax rate of order n−min{2/(d+2),1/d} in the empirical L2 loss, up to polylogarithmic factors. Further, we prove a sharp oracle inequality, which reveals in particular that when the true…
We introduce two new measures for the dependence of n≥2 random variables: distance multivariance and total distance multivariance. Both measures are based on the weighted L2-distance of quantities related to the characteristic functions of the underlying random variables. These extend distance covariance (introduced by Székely, Rizzo and Bakirov) from pairs of random variables to n-tuplets of random variables. We show that total distance multivariance can be used…
We study the performance of the least squares estimator (LSE) in a general nonparametric regression model, when the errors are independent of the covariates but may only have a pth moment (p≥1). In such a heavy-tailed regression setting, we show that if the model satisfies a standard “entropy condition” with exponent α∈(0,2), then the L2 loss of the LSE converges at a rate OP(n−2+α1∨n−21+2p1).…
In this paper we study the α-cluster tree (α-tree) under both singular and nonsingular measures. The α-tree uses probability contents within a set created by the ordering of points to construct a cluster tree so that it is well defined even for singular measures. We first derive the convergence rate for a density level set around critical points, which leads to the convergence rate for estimating an α-tree under nonsingular measures. For…
We obtain estimation error rates and sharp oracle inequalities for regularization procedures of the form f^∈argminf∈F(N1i=1∑Nℓf(Xi,Yi)+λ∥f∥) when ∥⋅∥ is any norm, F is a convex class of functions and ℓ is a Lipschitz loss function satisfying a Bernstein condition over F. We explore both the bounded and sub-Gaussian stochastic…