The paper focuses on the problem of model selection in linear Gaussian regression with unknown possibly inhomogeneous noise. For a given family of linear estimators $\{\widetilde{\boldsymbol{{\theta}}}_{m},m\in\mathscr{M}\}$, ordered by their variance, we offer a new “smallest accepted” approach motivated by Lepski’s device and the multiple testing idea. The procedure selects the smallest model which satisfies the acceptance rule based on comparison with all larger models.…
We consider the estimation of large covariance and precision matrices from high-dimensional sub-Gaussian or heavier-tailed observations with slowly decaying temporal dependence. The temporal dependence is allowed to be long-range so with longer memory than those considered in the current literature. We show that several commonly used methods for independent observations can be applied to the temporally dependent data. In particular, the rates of convergence are obtained for…
Joris Bierkens · Paul Fearnhead · Gareth Roberts·刊期 2019-06-01 · 卷 47(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
Zig-Zag 过程与大数据贝叶斯分析的超高效抽样AI 解读
Standard MCMC methods can scale poorly to big data settings due to the need to evaluate the likelihood at each iteration. There have been a number of approximate MCMC algorithms that use sub-sampling ideas to reduce this computational burden, but with the drawback that these algorithms no longer target the true posterior distribution. We introduce a new family of Monte Carlo methods based upon a multidimensional version of the Zig-Zag process of [Ann. Appl. Probab. 27 (2017)…
George Deligiannidis · Alexandre Bouchard-Côté · Arnaud Doucet·刊期 2019-06-01 · 卷 47(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
弹跳粒子采样器的指数遍历性AI 解读
Nonreversible Markov chain Monte Carlo schemes based on piecewise deterministic Markov processes have been recently introduced in applied probability, automatic control, physics and statistics. Although these algorithms demonstrate experimentally good performance and are accordingly increasingly used in a wide range of applications, geometric ergodicity results for such schemes have only been established so far under very restrictive assumptions. We give here verifiable…
Unsupervised learning is an important problem in statistics and machine learning with a wide range of applications. In this paper, we study clustering of high-dimensional Gaussian mixtures and propose a procedure, called CHIME, that is based on the EM algorithm and a direct estimation method for the sparse discriminant vector. Both theoretical and numerical properties of CHIME are investigated. We establish the optimal rate of convergence for the excess misclustering error…
Dominik Rothenhäusler · Peter Bühlmann · Nicolai Meinshausen·刊期 2019-06-01 · 卷 47(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
因果 Dantzig:加性干预下含隐藏变量线性结构方程模型的快速推断AI 解读
Causal inference is known to be very challenging when only observational data are available. Randomized experiments are often costly and impractical and in instrumental variable regression the number of instruments has to exceed the number of causal predictors. It was recently shown in Peters, Bühlmann and Meinshausen (2016) (J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. B. Stat. Methodol. 78 947–1012) that causal inference for the full model is possible when data from distinct observational…
Stanislav Volgushev · Shih-Kang Chao · Guang Cheng·刊期 2019-06-01 · 卷 47(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
分位数回归过程的分布式推断AI 解读
The increased availability of massive data sets provides a unique opportunity to discover subtle patterns in their distributions, but also imposes overwhelming computational challenges. To fully utilize the information contained in big data, we propose a two-step procedure: (i) estimate conditional quantile functions at different levels in a parallel computing environment; (ii) construct a conditional quantile regression process through projection based on these estimated…
In this paper, we present a general convex optimization approach for solving high-dimensional multiple response tensor regression problems under low-dimensional structural assumptions. We consider using convex and weakly decomposable regularizers assuming that the underlying tensor lies in an unknown low-dimensional subspace. Within our framework, we derive general risk bounds of the resulting estimate under fairly general dependence structure among covariates. Our framework…
Mathias Drton · Christopher Fox · Andreas Käufl · Guillaume Pouliot·刊期 2019-06-01 · 卷 47(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
路径图的极大似然阈值AI 解读
Linear structural equation models postulate noisy linear relationships between variables of interest. Each model corresponds to a path diagram, which is a mixed graph with directed edges that encode the domains of the linear functions and bidirected edges that indicate possible correlations among noise terms. Using this graphical representation, we determine the maximum likelihood threshold, that is, the minimum sample size at which the likelihood function of a Gaussian…
Although the methods of bagging and random forests are some of the most widely used prediction methods, relatively little is known about their algorithmic convergence. In particular, there are not many theoretical guarantees for deciding when an ensemble is “large enough”—so that its accuracy is close to that of an ideal infinite ensemble. Due to the fact that bagging and random forests are randomized algorithms, the choice of ensemble size is closely related to the notion…
Hsiang-Ling Hsu · Ching-Kang Ing · Howell Tong·刊期 2019-04-01 · 卷 47(2)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
从有限个可能误设的时间序列模型中进行模型选择AI 解读
Consider finite parametric time series models. “I have $n$ observations and $k$ models, which model should I choose on the basis of the data alone” is a frequently asked question in many practical situations. This poses the key problem of selecting a model from a collection of candidate models, none of which is necessarily the true data generating process (DGP). Although existing literature on model selection is vast, there is a serious lacuna in that the above problem does…
This paper develops a nonparametric estimator for the Lévy density of an asset price, following an Itô semimartingale, implied by short-maturity options. The asymptotic setup is one in which the time to maturity of the available options decreases, the mesh of the available strike grid shrinks and the strike range expands. The estimation is based on aggregating the observed option data into nonparametric estimates of the conditional characteristic function of the return…
Yuting Wei · Martin J. Wainwright · Adityanand Guntuboyina·刊期 2019-04-01 · 卷 47(2)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
凸锥假设检验的几何:广义似然比检验与极小极大半径AI 解读
We consider a compound testing problem within the Gaussian sequence model in which the null and alternative are specified by a pair of closed, convex cones. Such cone testing problem arises in various applications, including detection of treatment effects, trend detection in econometrics, signal detection in radar processing and shape-constrained inference in nonparametric statistics. We provide a sharp characterization of the GLRT testing radius up to a universal…
In observational studies, propensity scores are commonly estimated by maximum likelihood but may fail to balance high-dimensional pretreatment covariates even after specification search. We introduce a general framework that unifies and generalizes several recent proposals to improve covariate balance when designing an observational study. Instead of the likelihood function, we propose to optimize special loss functions—covariate balancing scoring rules (CBSR)—to estimate…
Signal aliasing is an inevitable consequence of using fractional factorial designs. Unlike linear models with fixed factorial effects, for Gaussian random field models advocated in some Bayesian design and computer experiment literature, the issue of signal aliasing has not received comparable attention. In the present article, this issue is tackled for experiments with qualitative factors. The signals in a Gaussian random field can be characterized by the random effects…
We study the asymptotic behavior of predictions from partial least squares (PLS) regression as the sample size and number of predictors diverge in various alignments. We show that there is a range of regression scenarios where PLS predictions have the usual root-$n$ convergence rate, even when the sample size is substantially smaller than the number of predictors, and an even wider range where the rate is slower but may still produce practically useful results. We show also…
We study estimation and prediction of Gaussian random fields with covariance models belonging to the generalized Wendland (GW) class, under fixed domain asymptotics. As for the Matérn case, this class allows for a continuous parameterization of smoothness of the underlying Gaussian random field, being additionally compactly supported. The paper is divided into three parts: first, we characterize the equivalence of two Gaussian measures with GW covariance function, and we…
We propose a new family of combinatorial inference problems for graphical models. Unlike classical statistical inference where the main interest is point estimation or parameter testing, combinatorial inference aims at testing the global structure of the underlying graph. Examples include testing the graph connectivity, the presence of a cycle of certain size, or the maximum degree of the graph. To begin with, we study the information-theoretic limits of a large family of…
We study the problem of estimating the mean of a random vector $X$ given a sample of $N$ independent, identically distributed points. We introduce a new estimator that achieves a purely sub-Gaussian performance under the only condition that the second moment of $X$ exists. The estimator is based on a novel concept of a multivariate median.
Mathias Drton · Christopher Fox · Y. Samuel Wang·刊期 2019-04-01 · 卷 47(2)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
含反馈环的结构方程模型中最大似然估计的计算AI 解读
Software for computation of maximum likelihood estimates in linear structural equation models typically employs general techniques from nonlinear optimization, such as quasi-Newton methods. In practice, careful tuning of initial values is often required to avoid convergence issues. As an alternative approach, we propose a block-coordinate descent method that cycles through the considered variables, updating only the parameters related to a given variable in each step. We…
Susan Athey · Julie Tibshirani · Stefan Wager·刊期 2019-04-01 · 卷 47(2)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
广义随机森林AI 解读
We propose generalized random forests, a method for nonparametric statistical estimation based on random forests (Breiman [Mach. Learn. 45 (2001) 5–32]) that can be used to fit any quantity of interest identified as the solution to a set of local moment equations. Following the literature on local maximum likelihood estimation, our method considers a weighted set of nearby training examples; however, instead of using classical kernel weighting functions that are prone to a…
François Monard · Richard Nickl · Gabriel P. Paternain·刊期 2019-04-01 · 卷 47(2)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
We consider the statistical inverse problem of recovering a function $f:M\to \mathbb{R}$, where $M$ is a smooth compact Riemannian manifold with boundary, from measurements of general $X$-ray transforms $I_{a}(f)$ of $f$, corrupted by additive Gaussian noise. For $M$ equal to the unit disk with “flat” geometry and $a=0$ this reduces to the standard Radon transform, but our general setting allows for anisotropic media $M$ and can further model local “attenuation” effects—both…
We consider the problem of estimating the support size of a discrete distribution whose minimum nonzero mass is at least $\frac{1}{k}$. Under the independent sampling model, we show that the sample complexity, that is, the minimal sample size to achieve an additive error of $\varepsilon k$ with probability at least 0.1 is within universal constant factors of $\frac{k}{\log k}\log^{2}\frac{1}{\varepsilon }$, which improves the state-of-the-art result of $\frac{k}{\varepsilon^{2}\log k}$…
We study how the divide and conquer principle works in non-standard problems where rates of convergence are typically slower than $\sqrt{n}$ and limit distributions are non-Gaussian, and provide a detailed treatment for a variety of important and well-studied problems involving nonparametric estimation of a monotone function. We find that for a fixed model, the pooled estimator, obtained by averaging nonstandard estimates across mutually exclusive subsamples, outperforms the…
The paper focuses on the problem of model selection in linear Gaussian regression with unknown possibly inhomogeneous noise. For a given family of linear estimators {θm,m∈M}, ordered by their variance, we offer a new “smallest accepted” approach motivated by Lepski’s device and the multiple testing idea. The procedure selects the smallest model which satisfies the acceptance rule based on comparison with all larger models.…
Consider finite parametric time series models. “I have n observations and k models, which model should I choose on the basis of the data alone” is a frequently asked question in many practical situations. This poses the key problem of selecting a model from a collection of candidate models, none of which is necessarily the true data generating process (DGP). Although existing literature on model selection is vast, there is a serious lacuna in that the above problem does…
We study the asymptotic behavior of predictions from partial least squares (PLS) regression as the sample size and number of predictors diverge in various alignments. We show that there is a range of regression scenarios where PLS predictions have the usual root-n convergence rate, even when the sample size is substantially smaller than the number of predictors, and an even wider range where the rate is slower but may still produce practically useful results. We show also…
We study the problem of estimating the mean of a random vector X given a sample of N independent, identically distributed points. We introduce a new estimator that achieves a purely sub-Gaussian performance under the only condition that the second moment of X exists. The estimator is based on a novel concept of a multivariate median.
Efficient nonparametric Bayesian inference for X-ray transforms
We consider the statistical inverse problem of recovering a function f:M→R, where M is a smooth compact Riemannian manifold with boundary, from measurements of general X-ray transforms Ia(f) of f, corrupted by additive Gaussian noise. For M equal to the unit disk with “flat” geometry and a=0 this reduces to the standard Radon transform, but our general setting allows for anisotropic media M and can further model local “attenuation” effects—both…
We consider the problem of estimating the support size of a discrete distribution whose minimum nonzero mass is at least k1. Under the independent sampling model, we show that the sample complexity, that is, the minimal sample size to achieve an additive error of εk with probability at least 0.1 is within universal constant factors of logkklog2ε1, which improves the state-of-the-art result of ε2logkk…
We study how the divide and conquer principle works in non-standard problems where rates of convergence are typically slower than n and limit distributions are non-Gaussian, and provide a detailed treatment for a variety of important and well-studied problems involving nonparametric estimation of a monotone function. We find that for a fixed model, the pooled estimator, obtained by averaging nonstandard estimates across mutually exclusive subsamples, outperforms the…