We develop a general approach to estimating the derivative of a function-valued parameter θo(u) that is identified for every value of u as the solution to a moment condition. This setup in particular covers interesting models for conditional distributions, such as quantile regression or distribution regression. Exploiting that θo(u) solves a moment condition, we obtain an explicit expression for its derivative from the Implicit Function Theorem, and then estimate the…
We congratulate the authors for their exciting paper (Li et al., 2020) on the difficult problem of network model selection. The authors have proposed an interesting cross-validation procedure that selects the best network model according to the criterion ... One of the main novelties of the method is the use of matrix completion to reconstruct a full network |$\{\skew6\hat{A}_{ij}\}_{1\leq i\neq j\leq n}$| from the partial set of observations |$\{A_{ij}\}_{(i,\,j)\in\Omega}$|…
J Lei · K Z Lin·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
《通过边抽样进行网络交叉验证》的讨论AI 解读
We congratulate the authors for a nice contribution to the literature on model selection and assessment for complex network data. The article of Li et al. (2020) enriches the collection of tools available for network data analysis, bringing together different fields such as low-rank matrix estimation, cross-validation and network modelling. This discussion will focus on the |$V$|-fold variant of the edge sampling cross-validation method and its combination with other…
C Heuchenne · J De Uña-Álvarez · G Laurent·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
半参数截断模型下基于横截面数据的估计AI 解读
Summary Cross-sectional sampling is often used when investigating inter-event times, resulting in left-truncated and right-censored data. In this paper, we consider a semiparametric truncation model in which the truncating variable is assumed to belong to a certain parametric family. We examine two methods of estimating both the truncation and the lifetime distributions. We obtain asymptotic representations of the estimators for the lifetime distribution and establish their…
Housen Li · Axel Munk · Hannes Sieling · Guenther Walther·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
本质直方图AI 解读
Summary The histogram is widely used as a simple, exploratory way of displaying data, but it is usually not clear how to choose the number and size of the bins. We construct a confidence set of distribution functions that optimally deal with the two main tasks of the histogram: estimating probabilities and detecting features such as increases and modes in the distribution. We define the essential histogram as the histogram in the confidence set with the fewest bins. Thus the…
David E Tyler · Mengxi Yi·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
特征值的 Lasso 收缩AI 解读
Summary The properties of penalized sample covariance matrices depend on the choice of the penalty function. In this paper, we introduce a class of nonsmooth penalty functions for the sample covariance matrix and demonstrate how their use results in a grouping of the estimated eigenvalues. We refer to the proposed method as lassoing eigenvalues, or the elasso.
Xinghao Qiao · Cheng Qian · Gareth M James · Shaojun Guo·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
高维双重函数型图模型AI 解读
Summary We consider estimating a functional graphical model from multivariate functional observations. In functional data analysis, the classical assumption is that each function has been measured over a densely sampled grid. However, in practice the functions have often been observed, with measurement error, at a relatively small number of points. We propose a class of doubly functional graphical models to capture the evolving conditional dependence relationship among a…
Matti Vihola · Jordan Franks·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
放宽容差并作事后校正的近似贝叶斯计算马尔可夫链蒙特卡洛AI 解读
Summary Approximate Bayesian computation enables inference for complicated probabilistic models with intractable likelihoods using model simulations. The Markov chain Monte Carlo implementation of approximate Bayesian computation is often sensitive to the tolerance parameter: low tolerance leads to poor mixing and large tolerance entails excess bias. We propose an approach that involves using a relatively large tolerance for the Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler to ensure…
S Sugasawa·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
基于密度幂散度的稳健经验贝叶斯小区域估计AI 解读
Summary A two-stage normal hierarchical model called the Fay–Herriot model and the empirical Bayes estimator are widely used to obtain indirect and model-based estimates of means in small areas. However, the performance of the empirical Bayes estimator can be poor when the assumed normal distribution is misspecified. This article presents a simple modification that makes use of density power divergence and proposes a new robust empirical Bayes small area estimator. The mean…
Oscar Hernan Madrid Padilla · James Sharpnack · Yanzhen Chen · Daniela M Witten·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 107(2)·Biometrika已编入正刊
利用 K 近邻融合套索的自适应非参数回归AI 解读
Summary The fused lasso, also known as total-variation denoising, is a locally adaptive function estimator over a regular grid of design points. In this article, we extend the fused lasso to settings in which the points do not occur on a regular grid, leading to a method for nonparametric regression. This approach, which we call the $K$-nearest-neighbours fused lasso, involves computing the $K$-nearest-neighbours graph of the design points and then performing the fused lasso…
Haoran Li · Alexander Aue · Debashis Paul · Jie Peng · Pei Wang·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
高维 Hotelling T² 检验的自适应推广AI 解读
We propose a two-sample test for detecting the difference between mean vectors in a high-dimensional regime based on a ridge-regularized Hotelling’s $T^{2}$. To choose the regularization parameter, a method is derived that aims at maximizing power within a class of local alternatives. We also propose a composite test that combines the optimal tests corresponding to a specific collection of local alternatives. Weak convergence of the stochastic process corresponding to the…
Timothy I. Cannings · Thomas B. Berrett · Richard J. Samworth·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
局部最近邻分类及其半监督学习应用AI 解读
We derive a new asymptotic expansion for the global excess risk of a local-$k$-nearest neighbour classifier, where the choice of $k$ may depend upon the test point. This expansion elucidates conditions under which the dominant contribution to the excess risk comes from the decision boundary of the optimal Bayes classifier, but we also show that if these conditions are not satisfied, then the dominant contribution may arise from the tails of the marginal distribution of the…
We propose a new reconstruction operator that aims to recover the missing parts of a function given the observed parts. This new operator belongs to a new, very large class of functional operators which includes the classical regression operators as a special case. We show the optimality of our reconstruction operator and demonstrate that the usually considered regression operators generally cannot be optimal reconstruction operators. Our estimation theory allows for…
To segment a sequence of independent random variables at an unknown number of change-points, we introduce new procedures that are based on thresholding the likelihood ratio statistic, and give approximations for the probability of a false positive error when there are no change-points. We also study confidence regions based on the likelihood ratio statistic for the change-points and joint confidence regions for the change-points and the parameter values. Applications to…
This paper investigates the fundamental limits for detecting a high-dimensional sparse matrix contaminated by white Gaussian noise from both the statistical and computational perspectives. We consider $p\times p$ matrices whose rows and columns are individually $k$-sparse. We provide a tight characterization of the statistical and computational limits for sparse matrix detection, which precisely describe when achieving optimal detection is easy, hard or impossible,…
Kyongwon Kim · Bing Li · Zhou Yu · Lexin Li·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
降维后的统计推断AI 解读
The methodologies of sufficient dimension reduction have undergone extensive developments in the past three decades. However, there has been a lack of systematic and rigorous development of post dimension reduction inference, which has seriously hindered its applications. The current common practice is to treat the estimated sufficient predictors as the true predictors and use them as the starting point of the downstream statistical inference. However, this naive inference…
It is a common saying that testing for conditional independence, that is, testing whether whether two random vectors $X$ and $Y$ are independent, given $Z$, is a hard statistical problem if $Z$ is a continuous random variable (or vector). In this paper, we prove that conditional independence is indeed a particularly difficult hypothesis to test for. Valid statistical tests are required to have a size that is smaller than a pre-defined significance level, and different tests…
Emmanuel Abbe · Jianqing Fan · Kaizheng Wang · Yiqiao Zhong·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
期望低秩随机矩阵的特征向量逐元素分析AI 解读
Recovering low-rank structures via eigenvector perturbation analysis is a common problem in statistical machine learning, such as in factor analysis, community detection, ranking, matrix completion, among others. While a large variety of bounds are available for average errors between empirical and population statistics of eigenvectors, few results are tight for entrywise analyses, which are critical for a number of problems such as community detection. This paper…
Given data from a Poisson point process with intensity $(x,y)\mapston\mathbf{1}(f(x)\leq y)$, frequentist properties for the Bayesian reconstruction of the support boundary function $f$ are derived. We mainly study compound Poisson process priors with fixed intensity proving that the posterior contracts with nearly optimal rate for monotone support boundaries and adapts to Hölder smooth boundaries. We then derive a limiting shape result for a compound Poisson process prior…
Aymeric Dieuleveut · Alain Durmus · Francis Bach·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
连接恒定步长随机梯度下降与马尔可夫链AI 解读
We consider the minimization of a strongly convex objective function given access to unbiased estimates of its gradient through stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with constant step size. While the detailed analysis was only performed for quadratic functions, we provide an explicit asymptotic expansion of the moments of the averaged SGD iterates that outlines the dependence on initial conditions, the effect of noise and the step size, as well as the lack of convergence in the…
Francesco Giordano · Soumendra Nath Lahiri · Maria Lucia Parrella·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
GRID:高维非参数回归的变量选择与结构发现方法AI 解读
We consider nonparametric regression in high dimensions where only a relatively small subset of a large number of variables are relevant and may have nonlinear effects on the response. We develop methods for variable selection, structure discovery and estimation of the true low-dimensional regression function, allowing any degree of interactions among the relevant variables that need not be specified a-priori. The proposed method, called the GRID, combines empirical…
Lei Han · Kean Ming Tan · Ting Yang · Tong Zhang·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
A major challenge for building statistical models in the big data era is that the available data volume far exceeds the computational capability. A common approach for solving this problem is to employ a subsampled dataset that can be handled by available computational resources. We propose a general subsampling scheme for large-scale multiclass logistic regression and examine the variance of the resulting estimator. We show that asymptotically, the proposed method always…
Qingyuan Zhao · Jingshu Wang · Gibran Hemani · Jack Bowden · Dylan S. Small·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
利用稳健调整剖面得分进行双样本汇总数据孟德尔随机化推断AI 解读
Mendelian randomization (MR) is a method of exploiting genetic variation to unbiasedly estimate a causal effect in presence of unmeasured confounding. MR is being widely used in epidemiology and other related areas of population science. In this paper, we study statistical inference in the increasingly popular two-sample summary-data MR design. We show a linear model for the observed associations approximately holds in a wide variety of settings when all the genetic variants…
Matias D. Cattaneo · Max H. Farrell · Yingjie Feng·刊期 2020-06-01 · 卷 48(3)·The Annals of Statistics已编入正刊
基于分区的级数估计量的大样本性质AI 解读
We present large sample results for partitioning-based least squares nonparametric regression, a popular method for approximating conditional expectation functions in statistics, econometrics and machine learning. First, we obtain a general characterization of their leading asymptotic bias. Second, we establish integrated mean squared error approximations for the point estimator and propose feasible tuning parameter selection. Third, we develop pointwise inference methods…
We congratulate the authors for their exciting paper (Li et al., 2020) on the difficult problem of network model selection. The authors have proposed an interesting cross-validation procedure that selects the best network model according to the criterion ... One of the main novelties of the method is the use of matrix completion to reconstruct a full network |$\{\skew6\hat{A}_{ij}\}_{1\leq i\neq j\leq n}$| from the partial set of observations |{Aij}(i,j)∈Ω|…
We congratulate the authors for a nice contribution to the literature on model selection and assessment for complex network data. The article of Li et al. (2020) enriches the collection of tools available for network data analysis, bringing together different fields such as low-rank matrix estimation, cross-validation and network modelling. This discussion will focus on the |V|-fold variant of the edge sampling cross-validation method and its combination with other…
Summary The fused lasso, also known as total-variation denoising, is a locally adaptive function estimator over a regular grid of design points. In this article, we extend the fused lasso to settings in which the points do not occur on a regular grid, leading to a method for nonparametric regression. This approach, which we call the K-nearest-neighbours fused lasso, involves computing the K-nearest-neighbours graph of the design points and then performing the fused lasso…
An adaptable generalization of Hotelling’s T2 test in high dimension
We propose a two-sample test for detecting the difference between mean vectors in a high-dimensional regime based on a ridge-regularized Hotelling’s T2. To choose the regularization parameter, a method is derived that aims at maximizing power within a class of local alternatives. We also propose a composite test that combines the optimal tests corresponding to a specific collection of local alternatives. Weak convergence of the stochastic process corresponding to the…
We derive a new asymptotic expansion for the global excess risk of a local-k-nearest neighbour classifier, where the choice of k may depend upon the test point. This expansion elucidates conditions under which the dominant contribution to the excess risk comes from the decision boundary of the optimal Bayes classifier, but we also show that if these conditions are not satisfied, then the dominant contribution may arise from the tails of the marginal distribution of the…
This paper investigates the fundamental limits for detecting a high-dimensional sparse matrix contaminated by white Gaussian noise from both the statistical and computational perspectives. We consider p×p matrices whose rows and columns are individually k-sparse. We provide a tight characterization of the statistical and computational limits for sparse matrix detection, which precisely describe when achieving optimal detection is easy, hard or impossible,…
It is a common saying that testing for conditional independence, that is, testing whether whether two random vectors X and Y are independent, given Z, is a hard statistical problem if Z is a continuous random variable (or vector). In this paper, we prove that conditional independence is indeed a particularly difficult hypothesis to test for. Valid statistical tests are required to have a size that is smaller than a pre-defined significance level, and different tests…
Given data from a Poisson point process with intensity $(x,y)\mapston\mathbf{1}(f(x)\leq y)$, frequentist properties for the Bayesian reconstruction of the support boundary function f are derived. We mainly study compound Poisson process priors with fixed intensity proving that the posterior contracts with nearly optimal rate for monotone support boundaries and adapts to Hölder smooth boundaries. We then derive a limiting shape result for a compound Poisson process prior…