Statistical design and analysis of computer experiments is a growing area in statistics. Computer models with structural invariance properties now appear frequently in materials science, physics, biology, and other fields. These properties are consequences of dependency on structural geometry, and cannot be accommodated by standard statistical emulation methods. In this article, we propose a statistical framework for building emulators to preserve invariance. The framework…
We introduce a new shrinkage prior on function spaces, called the functional horseshoe prior (fHS), that encourages shrinkage towards parametric classes of functions. Unlike other shrinkage priors for parametric models, the fHS shrinkage acts on the shape of the function rather than inducing sparsity on model parameters. We study the efficacy of the proposed approach by showing an adaptive posterior concentration property on the function. We also demonstrate consistency of…
The perturbation of a transcription factor should affect the expression levels of its direct targets. However, not all genes showing changes in expression are direct targets. To increase the chance of detecting direct targets, we propose a modified two-group model where the null group corresponds to genes which are not direct targets, but can have small nonzero effects. We model the behavior of genes from the null set by a Gaussian distribution with unknown variance τ 2 . To…
–Latent factor models are widely used to measure unobserved latent traits in social and behavioral sciences, including psychology, education, and marketing. When used in a confirmatory manner, design information is incorporated as zero constraints on corresponding parameters, yielding structured (confirmatory) latent factor models. In this article, we study how such design information affects the identifiability and the estimation of a structured latent factor model.…
A fundamental challenge in observational causal inference is that assumptions about unconfoundedness are not testable from data. Assessing sensitivity to such assumptions is therefore important in practice. Unfortunately, some existing sensitivity analysis approaches inadvertently impose restrictions that are at odds with modern causal inference methods, which emphasize flexible models for observed data. To address this issue, we propose a framework that allows (1) flexible…
Abstract This paper estimates neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment. We propose and implement a new strategy for identifying transition-specific effects that exploits identification of the unobserved component of a neighborhood choice model. Estimated local average treatment effects (LATEs) are large, result from moves between the first and second deciles of the national distribution of…
Abstract The traditional approach to obtain valid confidence intervals for non-parametric quantities is to select a smoothing parameter such that the bias of the estimator is negligible relative to its standard deviation. While this approach is apparently simple, it has two drawbacks: first, the question of optimal bandwidth selection is no longer well-defined, as it is not clear what ratio of bias to standard deviation should be considered negligible. Second, since the…
Mean square error (MSE) of the estimator can be used to evaluate the performance of a regression model. In this paper, we derive the asymptotic MSE of $l_{1}$-penalized robust estimators in the limit of both sample size $n$ and dimension $p$ going to infinity with fixed ratio $n/p\rightarrow \delta $. We focus on the $l_{1}$-penalized least absolute deviation and $l_{1}$-penalized Huber’s regressions. Our analytic study shows the appearance of a sharp phase transition in the…
Anthony Lee · Sumeetpal S. Singh · Matti Vihola·刊期 2020-10-01 · 卷 48(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
耦合条件后向抽样粒子滤波器AI 解读
The conditional particle filter (CPF) is a promising algorithm for general hidden Markov model smoothing. Empirical evidence suggests that the variant of CPF with backward sampling (CBPF) performs well even with long time series. Previous theoretical results have not been able to demonstrate the improvement brought by backward sampling, whereas we provide rates showing that CBPF can remain effective with a fixed number of particles independent of the time horizon. Our result…
This paper establishes the first analytical formula for nonlinear shrinkage estimation of large-dimensional covariance matrices. We achieve this by identifying and mathematically exploiting a deep connection between nonlinear shrinkage and nonparametric estimation of the Hilbert transform of the sample spectral density. Previous nonlinear shrinkage methods were of numerical nature: QuEST requires numerical inversion of a complex equation from random matrix theory whereas…
Chao Gao · Aad W. van der Vaart · Harrison H. Zhou·刊期 2020-10-01 · 卷 48(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
贝叶斯结构化线性模型的一般框架AI 解读
High dimensional statistics deals with the challenge of extracting structured information from complex model settings. Compared with a large number of frequentist methodologies, there are rather few theoretically optimal Bayes methods for high dimensional models. This paper provides a unified approach to both Bayes high dimensional statistics and Bayes nonparametrics in a general framework of structured linear models. With a proposed two-step prior, we prove a general oracle…
Shuaiwen Wang · Haolei Weng · Arian Maleki·刊期 2020-10-01 · 卷 48(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
哪种桥估计量最适合变量选择?AI 解读
We study the problem of variable selection for linear models under the high-dimensional asymptotic setting, where the number of observations $n$ grows at the same rate as the number of predictors $p$. We consider two-stage variable selection techniques (TVS) in which the first stage uses bridge estimators to obtain an estimate of the regression coefficients, and the second stage simply thresholds this estimate to select the “important” predictors. The asymptotic false…
We propose a unified framework for establishing existence of nonparametric $M$-estimators, computing the corresponding estimates, and proving their strong consistency when the class of functions is exceptionally rich. In particular, the framework addresses situations where the class of functions is complex involving information and assumptions about shape, pointwise bounds, location of modes, height at modes, location of level-sets, values of moments, size of subgradients,…
Sophie Donnet · Vincent Rivoirard · Judith Rousseau·刊期 2020-10-01 · 卷 48(5)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
多元 Hawkes 过程的非参数贝叶斯估计AI 解读
This paper studies nonparametric estimation of parameters of multivariate Hawkes processes. We consider the Bayesian setting and derive posterior concentration rates. First, rates are derived for $\mathbb{L}_{1}$-metrics for stochastic intensities of the Hawkes process. We then deduce rates for the $\mathbb{L}_{1}$-norm of interactions functions of the process. Our results are exemplified by using priors based on piecewise constant functions, with regular or random…
This paper develops a foundation of methodology and theory for the estimation of structured nonparametric regression models with Hilbertian responses. Our method and theory are focused on the additive model, while the main ideas may be adapted to other structured models. For this, the notion of Bochner integration is introduced for Banach-space-valued maps as a generalization of Lebesgue integration. Several statistical properties of Bochner integrals, relevant for our…
The mean field variational Bayes method is becoming increasingly popular in statistics and machine learning. Its iterative coordinate ascent variational inference algorithm has been widely applied to large scale Bayesian inference. See Blei et al. (2017) for a recent comprehensive review. Despite the popularity of the mean field method, there exist remarkably little fundamental theoretical justifications. To the best of our knowledge, the iterative algorithm has never been…
We develop a semiparametric Bayesian approach for estimating the mean response in a missing data model with binary outcomes and a nonparametrically modelled propensity score. Equivalently, we estimate the causal effect of a treatment, correcting nonparametrically for confounding. We show that standard Gaussian process priors satisfy a semiparametric Bernstein–von Mises theorem under smoothness conditions. We further propose a novel propensity score-dependent prior that…
Motivated by the fact that circular or spherical data are often much concentrated around a location $\pmb{\theta }$, we consider inference about $\pmb{\theta }$ under high concentration asymptotic scenarios for which the probability of any fixed spherical cap centered at $\pmb{\theta }$ converges to one as the sample size $n$ diverges to infinity. Rather than restricting to Fisher–von Mises–Langevin distributions, we consider a much broader, semiparametric, class of…
We study the problem of estimating a functional $\theta ({\mathbb{P}})$ of an unknown probability distribution ${\mathbb{P}}\in {\mathcal{P}}$ in which the original iid sample $X_{1},\dots ,X_{n}$ is kept private even from the statistician via an $\alpha $-local differential privacy constraint. Let $\omega _{\mathrm{TV}}$ denote the modulus of continuity of the functional $\theta $ over ${\mathcal{P}}$ with respect to total variation distance. For a large class of loss…
This paper concerns statistical inference for longitudinal data with ultrahigh dimensional covariates. We first study the problem of constructing confidence intervals and hypothesis tests for a low dimensional parameter of interest. The major challenge is how to construct a powerful test statistic in the presence of high-dimensional nuisance parameters and sophisticated within-subject correlation of longitudinal data. To deal with the challenge, we propose a new quadratic…
We propose a formal definition of transparency in empirical research and apply it to structural estimation in economics. We discuss how some existing practices can be understood as attempts to improve transparency, and we suggest ways to improve current practice, emphasizing approaches that impose a minimal computational burden on the researcher. We illustrate with examples.
We propose and study properties of an estimator of the forecast error variance decomposition in the local projections framework. We find for empirically relevant sample sizes that, after being bias-corrected with bootstrap, our estimator performs well in simulations. We also illustrate the workings of our estimator empirically for monetary policy and productivity shocks. KEYWORDS: Forecast error variance decomposition; Local projections.
We consider the problem of assessing the effects of a treatment on duration outcomes using data from a randomized evaluation with noncompliance. For such settings, we derive nonparametric sharp bounds for average and quantile treatment effects addressing three pervasive problems simultaneously: self-selection into the spell of interest, endogenous censoring of the duration outcome, and noncompliance with the assigned treatment. Ignoring any of these issues could yield biased…
We develop and exemplify application of new classes of dynamic models for time series of nonnegative counts. Our novel univariate models combine dynamic generalized linear models for binary and conditionally Poisson time series, with dynamic random effects for over-dispersion. These models estimate dynamic regression coefficients in both binary and nonzero count components. Sequential Bayesian analysis allows fast, parallel analysis of sets of decoupled time series. New…
Asymptotic risk and phase transition of l1-penalized robust estimator
Mean square error (MSE) of the estimator can be used to evaluate the performance of a regression model. In this paper, we derive the asymptotic MSE of l1-penalized robust estimators in the limit of both sample size n and dimension p going to infinity with fixed ratio n/p→δ. We focus on the l1-penalized least absolute deviation and l1-penalized Huber’s regressions. Our analytic study shows the appearance of a sharp phase transition in the…
We study the problem of variable selection for linear models under the high-dimensional asymptotic setting, where the number of observations n grows at the same rate as the number of predictors p. We consider two-stage variable selection techniques (TVS) in which the first stage uses bridge estimators to obtain an estimate of the regression coefficients, and the second stage simply thresholds this estimate to select the “important” predictors. The asymptotic false…
We propose a unified framework for establishing existence of nonparametric M-estimators, computing the corresponding estimates, and proving their strong consistency when the class of functions is exceptionally rich. In particular, the framework addresses situations where the class of functions is complex involving information and assumptions about shape, pointwise bounds, location of modes, height at modes, location of level-sets, values of moments, size of subgradients,…
This paper studies nonparametric estimation of parameters of multivariate Hawkes processes. We consider the Bayesian setting and derive posterior concentration rates. First, rates are derived for L1-metrics for stochastic intensities of the Hawkes process. We then deduce rates for the L1-norm of interactions functions of the process. Our results are exemplified by using priors based on piecewise constant functions, with regular or random…
Motivated by the fact that circular or spherical data are often much concentrated around a location θ, we consider inference about θ under high concentration asymptotic scenarios for which the probability of any fixed spherical cap centered at θ converges to one as the sample size n diverges to infinity. Rather than restricting to Fisher–von Mises–Langevin distributions, we consider a much broader, semiparametric, class of…
We study the problem of estimating a functional θ(P) of an unknown probability distribution P∈P in which the original iid sample X1,…,Xn is kept private even from the statistician via an α-local differential privacy constraint. Let ωTV denote the modulus of continuity of the functional θ over P with respect to total variation distance. For a large class of loss…