Let $X_1,..., X_n \in \mathbb{R}^d$ be independent Gaussian random vectors with independent entries and variance profile $(b_{ij})_{i \in [d],j \in [n]}$. A major question in the study of covariance estimation is to give precise control on the deviation of $\sum_{j \in [n]}X_jX_j^T-\mathbb{E} X_jX_j^T$. We show that under mild conditions, we have \begin{align*} \mathbb{E} \left\|\sum_{j \in [n]}X_jX_j^T-\mathbb{E} X_jX_j^T\right\| \lesssim \max_{i \in [d]}\left(\sum_{j \in [n]}\sum_{l \in [d]}b_{ij}^2b_{lj}^2\right)^{1/2}+\max_{j \in [n]}\sum_{i \in [d]}b_{ij}^2+\text{error}. \end{align*} The error is quantifiable, and we often capture the $4$th-moment dependency already presented in the literature for some examples. The proofs are based on the moment method and a careful analysis of the structure of the shapes that matter. We also provide examples showing improvement over the past works and matching lower bounds.
Let $E$ be a separable Banach space and let $X, X_1,\dots, X_n, \dots$ be i.i.d. Gaussian random variables taking values in $E$ with mean zero and unknown covariance operator $\Sigma: E^{\ast}\mapsto E.$ The complexity of estimation of $\Sigma$ based on observations $X_1,\dots, X_n$ is naturally characterized by the so called effective rank of $\Sigma:$ ${\bf r}(\Sigma):= \frac{{\mathbb E}_{\Sigma}\|X\|^2}{\|\Sigma\|},$ where $\|\Sigma\|$ is the operator norm of $\Sigma.$ Given a smooth real valued functional $f$ defined on the space $L(E^{\ast},E)$ of symmetric linear operators from $E^{\ast}$ into $E$ (equipped with the operator norm), our goal is to study the problem of estimation of $f(\Sigma)$ based on $X_1,\dots, X_n.$ The estimators of $f(\Sigma)$ based on jackknife type bias reduction are considered and the dependence of their Orlicz norm error rates on effective rank ${\bf r}(\Sigma),$ the sample size $n$ and the degree of H\"older smoothness $s$ of functional $f$ are studied. In particular, it is shown that, if ${\bf r}(\Sigma)\lesssim n^{\alpha}$ for some $\alpha\in (0,1)$ and $s\geq \frac{1}{1-\alpha},$ then the classical $\sqrt{n}$-rate is attainable and, if $s> \frac{1}{1-\alpha},$ then asymptotic normality and asymptotic efficiency of the resulting estimators hold. Previously, the results of this type (for different estimators) were obtained only in the case of finite dimensional Euclidean space $E={\mathbb R}^d$ and for covariance operators $\Sigma$ whose spectrum is bounded away from zero (in which case, ${\bf r}(\Sigma)\asymp d$).
Let $f:[0,1]^d\to\mathbb{R}$ be a completely monotone integrand as defined by Aistleitner and Dick (2015) and let points $\boldsymbol{x}_0,\dots,\boldsymbol{x}_{n-1}\in[0,1]^d$ have a non-negative local discrepancy (NNLD) everywhere in $[0,1]^d$. We show how to use these properties to get a non-asymptotic and computable upper bound for the integral of $f$ over $[0,1]^d$. An analogous non-positive local discrepancy (NPLD) property provides a computable lower bound. It has been known since Gabai (1967) that the two dimensional Hammersley points in any base $b\ge2$ have non-negative local discrepancy. Using the probabilistic notion of associated random variables, we generalize Gabai's finding to digital nets in any base $b\ge2$ and any dimension $d\ge1$ when the generator matrices are permutation matrices. We show that permutation matrices cannot attain the best values of the digital net quality parameter when $d\ge3$. As a consequence the computable absolutely sure bounds we provide come with less accurate estimates than the usual digital net estimates do in high dimensions. We are also able to construct high dimensional rank one lattice rules that are NNLD. We show that those lattices do not have good discrepancy properties: any lattice rule with the NNLD property in dimension $d\ge2$ either fails to be projection regular or has all its points on the main diagonal.
Suppose that $S \subseteq [n]^2$ contains no three points of the form $(x,y), (x,y+\delta), (x+\delta,y')$, where $\delta \neq 0$. How big can $S$ be? Trivially, $n \le |S| \le n^2$. Slight improvements on these bounds are obtained from Shkredov's upper bound for the corners problem [Shk06], which shows that $|S| \le O(n^2/(\log \log n)^c)$ for some small $c > 0$, and a construction due to Petrov [Pet23], which shows that $|S| \ge \Omega(n \log n/\sqrt{\log \log n})$. Could it be that for all $\varepsilon > 0$, $|S| \le O(n^{1+\varepsilon})$? We show that if so, this would rule out obtaining $\omega = 2$ using a large family of abelian groups in the group-theoretic framework of Cohn, Kleinberg, Szegedy and Umans [CU03,CKSU05] (which is known to capture the best bounds on $\omega$ to date), for which no barriers are currently known. Furthermore, an upper bound of $O(n^{4/3 - \varepsilon})$ for any fixed $\varepsilon > 0$ would rule out a conjectured approach to obtain $\omega = 2$ of [CKSU05]. Along the way, we encounter several problems that have much stronger constraints and that would already have these implications.
Let $\{\Lambda_n=\{\lambda_{1,n},\ldots,\lambda_{d_n,n}\}\}_n$ be a sequence of finite multisets of real numbers such that $d_n\to\infty$ as $n\to\infty$, and let $f:\Omega\subset\mathbb R^d\to\mathbb R$ be a Lebesgue measurable function defined on a domain $\Omega$ with $0<\mu_d(\Omega)<\infty$, where $\mu_d$ is the Lebesgue measure in $\mathbb R^d$. We say that $\{\Lambda_n\}_n$ has an asymptotic distribution described by $f$, and we write $\{\Lambda_n\}_n\sim f$, if \[ \lim_{n\to\infty}\frac1{d_n}\sum_{i=1}^{d_n}F(\lambda_{i,n})=\frac1{\mu_d(\Omega)}\int_\Omega F(f({\boldsymbol x})){\rm d}{\boldsymbol x}\qquad\qquad(*) \] for every continuous function $F$ with bounded support. If $\Lambda_n$ is the spectrum of a matrix $A_n$, we say that $\{A_n\}_n$ has an asymptotic spectral distribution described by $f$ and we write $\{A_n\}_n\sim_\lambda f$. In the case where $d=1$, $\Omega$~is a bounded interval, $\Lambda_n\subseteq f(\Omega)$ for all $n$, and $f$ satisfies suitable conditions, Bogoya, B\"ottcher, Grudsky, and Maximenko proved that the asymptotic distribution (*) implies the uniform convergence to $0$ of the difference between the properly sorted vector $[\lambda_{1,n},\ldots,\lambda_{d_n,n}]$ and the vector of samples $[f(x_{1,n}),\ldots,f(x_{d_n,n})]$, i.e., \[ \lim_{n\to\infty}\,\max_{i=1,\ldots,d_n}|f(x_{i,n})-\lambda_{\tau_n(i),n}|=0, \qquad\qquad(**) \] where $x_{1,n},\ldots,x_{d_n,n}$ is a uniform grid in $\Omega$ and $\tau_n$ is the sorting permutation. We extend this result to the case where $d\ge1$ and $\Omega$ is a Peano--Jordan measurable set (i.e., a bounded set with $\mu_d(\partial\Omega)=0$). See the rest of the abstract in the manuscript.
A new numerical continuum \textit{one-domain} approach (ODA) solver is presented for the simulation of the transfer processes between a free fluid and a porous medium. The solver is developed in the \textit{mesoscopic} scale framework, where a continuous variation of the physical parameters of the porous medium (e.g., porosity and permeability) is assumed. The Navier-Stokes-Brinkman equations are solved along with the continuity equation, under the hypothesis of incompressible fluid. The porous medium is assumed to be fully saturated and can potentially be anisotropic. The domain is discretized with unstructured meshes allowing local refinements. A fractional time step procedure is applied, where one predictor and two corrector steps are solved within each time iteration. The predictor step is solved in the framework of a marching in space and time procedure, with some important numerical advantages. The two corrector steps require the solution of large linear systems, whose matrices are sparse, symmetric and positive definite, with $\mathcal{M}$-matrix property over Delaunay-meshes. A fast and efficient solution is obtained using a preconditioned conjugate gradient method. The discretization adopted for the two corrector steps can be regarded as a Two-Point-Flux-Approximation (TPFA) scheme, which, unlike the standard TPFA schemes, does not require the grid mesh to be $\mathbf{K}$-orthogonal, (with $\mathbf{K}$ the anisotropy tensor). As demonstrated with the provided test cases, the proposed scheme correctly retains the anisotropy effects within the porous medium. Furthermore, it overcomes the restrictions of existing mesoscopic scale one-domain approachs proposed in the literature.
In 1-equation URANS models of turbulence the eddy viscosity is given by $\nu_{T}=0.55l(x,t)\sqrt{k(x,t)}$ . The length scale $l$ must be pre-specified and $k(x,t)$ is determined by solving a nonlinear partial differential equation. We show that in interesting cases the spacial mean of $k(x,t)$ satisfies a simple ordinary differential equation. Using its solution in $\nu_{T}$ results in a 1/2-equation model. This model has attractive analytic properties. Further, in comparative tests in 2d and 3d the velocity statistics produced by the 1/2-equation model are comparable to those of the full 1-equation model.
Interpolators are unstable. For example, the mininum $\ell_2$ norm least square interpolator exhibits unbounded test errors when dealing with noisy data. In this paper, we study how ensemble stabilizes and thus improves the generalization performance, measured by the out-of-sample prediction risk, of an individual interpolator. We focus on bagged linear interpolators, as bagging is a popular randomization-based ensemble method that can be implemented in parallel. We introduce the multiplier-bootstrap-based bagged least square estimator, which can then be formulated as an average of the sketched least square estimators. The proposed multiplier bootstrap encompasses the classical bootstrap with replacement as a special case, along with a more intriguing variant which we call the Bernoulli bootstrap. Focusing on the proportional regime where the sample size scales proportionally with the feature dimensionality, we investigate the out-of-sample prediction risks of the sketched and bagged least square estimators in both underparametrized and overparameterized regimes. Our results reveal the statistical roles of sketching and bagging. In particular, sketching modifies the aspect ratio and shifts the interpolation threshold of the minimum $\ell_2$ norm estimator. However, the risk of the sketched estimator continues to be unbounded around the interpolation threshold due to excessive variance. In stark contrast, bagging effectively mitigates this variance, leading to a bounded limiting out-of-sample prediction risk. To further understand this stability improvement property, we establish that bagging acts as a form of implicit regularization, substantiated by the equivalence of the bagged estimator with its explicitly regularized counterpart. We also discuss several extensions.
We prove that if $X,Y$ are positive, independent, non-Dirac random variables and if for $\alpha,\beta\ge 0$, $\alpha\neq \beta$, $$ \psi_{\alpha,\beta}(x,y)=\left(y\,\tfrac{1+\beta(x+y)}{1+\alpha x+\beta y},\;x\,\tfrac{1+\alpha(x+y)}{1+\alpha x+\beta y}\right), $$ then the random variables $U$ and $V$ defined by $(U,V)=\psi_{\alpha,\beta}(X,Y)$ are independent if and only if $X$ and $Y$ follow Kummer distributions with suitably related parameters. In other words, any invariant measure for a lattice recursion model governed by $\psi_{\alpha,\beta}$ in the scheme introduced by Croydon and Sasada in \cite{CS2020}, is necessarily a product measure with Kummer marginals. The result extends earlier characterizations of Kummer and gamma laws by independence of $$ U=\tfrac{Y}{1+X}\quad\mbox{and}\quad V= X\left(1+\tfrac{Y}{1+X}\right), $$ which corresponds to the case of $\psi_{1,0}$. We also show that this independence property of Kummer laws covers, as limiting cases, several independence models known in the literature: the Lukacs, the Kummer-Gamma, the Matsumoto-Yor and the discrete Korteweg de Vries ones.
Binary responses arise in a multitude of statistical problems, including binary classification, bioassay, current status data problems and sensitivity estimation. There has been an interest in such problems in the Bayesian nonparametrics community since the early 1970s, but inference given binary data is intractable for a wide range of modern simulation-based models, even when employing MCMC methods. Recently, Christensen (2023) introduced a novel simulation technique based on counting permutations, which can estimate both posterior distributions and marginal likelihoods for any model from which a random sample can be generated. However, the accompanying implementation of this technique struggles when the sample size is too large (n > 250). Here we present perms, a new implementation of said technique which is substantially faster and able to handle larger data problems than the original implementation. It is available both as an R package and a Python library. The basic usage of perms is illustrated via two simple examples: a tractable toy problem and a bioassay problem. A more complex example involving changepoint analysis is also considered. We also cover the details of the implementation and illustrate the computational speed gain of perms via a simple simulation study.
We study $L_2$-approximation problems $\text{APP}_d$ in the worst case setting in the weighted Korobov spaces $H_{d,\a,{\bm \ga}}$ with parameter sequences ${\bm \ga}=\{\ga_j\}$ and $\a=\{\az_j\}$ of positive real numbers $1\ge \ga_1\ge \ga_2\ge \cdots\ge 0$ and $\frac1 2<\az_1\le \az_2\le \cdots$. We consider the minimal worst case error $e(n,\text{APP}_d)$ of algorithms that use $n$ arbitrary continuous linear functionals with $d$ variables. We study polynomial convergence of the minimal worst case error, which means that $e(n,\text{APP}_d)$ converges to zero polynomially fast with increasing $n$. We recall the notions of polynomial, strongly polynomial, weak and $(t_1,t_2)$-weak tractability. In particular, polynomial tractability means that we need a polynomial number of arbitrary continuous linear functionals in $d$ and $\va^{-1}$ with the accuracy $\va$ of the approximation. We obtain that the matching necessary and sufficient condition on the sequences ${\bm \ga}$ and $\a$ for strongly polynomial tractability or polynomial tractability is $$\dz:=\liminf_{j\to\infty}\frac{\ln \ga_j^{-1}}{\ln j}>0,$$ and the exponent of strongly polynomial tractability is $$p^{\text{str}}=2\max\big\{\frac 1 \dz, \frac 1 {2\az_1}\big\}.$$