We focus on the problem of manifold estimation: given a set of observations sampled close to some unknown submanifold $M$, one wants to recover information about the geometry of $M$. Minimax estimators which have been proposed so far all depend crucially on the a priori knowledge of some parameters quantifying the underlying distribution generating the sample (such as bounds on its density), whereas those quantities will be unknown in practice. Our contribution to the matter is twofold: first, we introduce a one-parameter family of manifold estimators $(\hat{M}_t)_{t\geq 0}$ based on a localized version of convex hulls, and show that for some choice of $t$, the corresponding estimator is minimax on the class of models of $C^2$ manifolds introduced in [Genovese et al., Manifold estimation and singular deconvolution under Hausdorff loss]. Second, we propose a completely data-driven selection procedure for the parameter $t$, leading to a minimax adaptive manifold estimator on this class of models. This selection procedure actually allows us to recover the Hausdorff distance between the set of observations and $M$, and can therefore be used as a scale parameter in other settings, such as tangent space estimation.
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We consider the conditional treatment effect for competing risks data in observational studies. While it is described as a constant difference between the hazard functions given the covariates, we do not assume specific functional forms for the covariates. We derive the efficient score for the treatment effect using modern semiparametric theory, as well as two doubly robust scores with respect to 1) the assumed propensity score for treatment and the censoring model, and 2) the outcome models for the competing risks. An important asymptotic result regarding the estimators is rate double robustness, in addition to the classical model double robustness. Rate double robustness enables the use of machine learning and nonparametric methods in order to estimate the nuisance parameters, while preserving the root-$n$ asymptotic normality of the estimators for inferential purposes. We study the performance of the estimators using simulation. The estimators are applied to the data from a cohort of Japanese men in Hawaii followed since 1960s in order to study the effect of mid-life drinking behavior on late life cognitive outcomes.
When are inferences (whether Direct-Likelihood, Bayesian, or Frequentist) obtained from partial data valid? This paper answers this question by offering a new theory about inference with missing data. It proves that as the sample size increases and the extent of missingness decreases, the mean-loglikelihood function generated by partial data and that ignores the missingness mechanism will almost surely converge uniformly to that which would have been generated by complete data; and if the data are Missing at Random (or "partially missing at random"), this convergence depends only on sample size. Thus, inferences from partial data, such as posterior modes, uncertainty estimates, confidence intervals, likelihood ratios, and indeed, all quantities or features derived from the partial-data loglikelihood function, will be consistently estimated. They will approximate their complete-data analogues. This adds to previous research which has only proved the consistency of the posterior mode. Practical implications of this result are discussed, and the theory is verified using a previous study of International Human Rights Law.
We propose nonparametric estimators for the second-order central moments of spherical random fields within a functional data context. We consider a measurement framework where each field among an identically distributed collection of spherical random fields is sampled at a few random directions, possibly subject to measurement error. The collection of fields could be i.i.d. or serially dependent. Though similar setups have already been explored for random functions defined on the unit interval, the nonparametric estimators proposed in the literature often rely on local polynomials, which do not readily extend to the (product) spherical setting. We therefore formulate our estimation procedure as a variational problem involving a generalized Tikhonov regularization term. The latter favours smooth covariance/autocovariance functions, where the smoothness is specified by means of suitable Sobolev-like pseudo-differential operators. Using the machinery of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, we establish representer theorems that fully characterizing the form of our estimators. We determine their uniform rates of convergence as the number of fields diverges, both for the dense (increasing number of spatial samples) and sparse (bounded number of spatial samples) regimes. We moreover validate and demonstrate the practical feasibility of our estimation procedure in a simulation setting, assuming a fixed number of samples per field. Our numerical estimation procedure leverages the sparsity and second-order Kronecker structure of our setup to reduce the computational and memory requirements by approximately three orders of magnitude compared to a naive implementation would require.
The presence of unobserved node specific heterogeneity in Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) is a general concern, both with respect to model validity as well as estimation instability. We therefore extend the ERGM by including node specific random effects that account for unobserved heterogeneity in the network. This leads to a mixed model with parametric as well as random coefficients, labelled as mixed ERGM. Estimation is carried out by combining approximate penalized pseudolikelihood estimation for the random effects with maximum likelihood estimation for the remaining parameters in the model. This approach provides a stable algorithm, which allows to fit nodal heterogeneity effects even for large scale networks. We also propose model selection based on the AIC to check for node specific heterogeneity.
We propose a new adaptive hypothesis test for polyhedral cone (e.g., monotonicity, convexity) and equality (e.g., parametric, semiparametric) restrictions on a structural function in a nonparametric instrumental variables (NPIV) model. Our test statistic is based on a modified leave-one-out sample analog of a quadratic distance between the restricted and unrestricted sieve NPIV estimators. We provide computationally simple, data-driven choices of sieve tuning parameters and adjusted chi-squared critical values. Our test adapts to the unknown smoothness of alternative functions in the presence of unknown degree of endogeneity and unknown strength of the instruments. It attains the adaptive minimax rate of testing in $L^2$. That is, the sum of its type I error uniformly over the composite null and its type II error uniformly over nonparametric alternative models cannot be improved by any other hypothesis test for NPIV models of unknown regularities. Data-driven confidence sets in $L^2$ are obtained by inverting the adaptive test. Simulations confirm that our adaptive test controls size and its finite-sample power greatly exceeds existing non-adaptive tests for monotonicity and parametric restrictions in NPIV models. Empirical applications to test for shape restrictions of differentiated products demand and of Engel curves are presented.
A framework is presented for fitting inverse problem models via variational Bayes approximations. This methodology guarantees flexibility to statistical model specification for a broad range of applications, good accuracy performances and reduced model fitting times, when compared with standard Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The message passing and factor graph fragment approach to variational Bayes we describe facilitates streamlined implementation of approximate inference algorithms and forms the basis to software development. Such approach allows for supple inclusion of numerous response distributions and penalizations into the inverse problem model. Even though our work is circumscribed to one- and two-dimensional response variables, we lay down an infrastructure where efficient algorithm updates based on nullifying weak interactions between variables can also be derived for inverse problems in higher dimensions. Image processing applications motivated by biomedical and archaeological problems are included as illustrations.
We introduce a nonparametric nonlinear VAR prewhitened long-run variance (LRV) estimator for the construction of standard errors robust to autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity that can be used for hypothesis testing in a variety of contexts including the linear regression model. Existing methods either are theoretically valid only under stationarity and have poor finite-sample properties under nonstationarity (i.e., fixed-b methods), or are theoretically valid under the null hypothesis but lead to tests that are not consistent under nonstationary alternative hypothesis (i.e., both fixed-b and traditional HAC estimators). The proposed estimator accounts explicitly for nonstationarity, unlike previous prewhitened procedures which are known to be unreliable, and leads to tests with accurate null rejection rates and good monotonic power. We also establish MSE bounds for LRV estimation that are sharper than previously established and use them to determine the data-dependent bandwidths.
This paper addresses the problem of viewpoint estimation of an object in a given image. It presents five key insights that should be taken into consideration when designing a CNN that solves the problem. Based on these insights, the paper proposes a network in which (i) The architecture jointly solves detection, classification, and viewpoint estimation. (ii) New types of data are added and trained on. (iii) A novel loss function, which takes into account both the geometry of the problem and the new types of data, is propose. Our network improves the state-of-the-art results for this problem by 9.8%.
We propose a new method of estimation in topic models, that is not a variation on the existing simplex finding algorithms, and that estimates the number of topics K from the observed data. We derive new finite sample minimax lower bounds for the estimation of A, as well as new upper bounds for our proposed estimator. We describe the scenarios where our estimator is minimax adaptive. Our finite sample analysis is valid for any number of documents (n), individual document length (N_i), dictionary size (p) and number of topics (K), and both p and K are allowed to increase with n, a situation not handled well by previous analyses. We complement our theoretical results with a detailed simulation study. We illustrate that the new algorithm is faster and more accurate than the current ones, although we start out with a computational and theoretical disadvantage of not knowing the correct number of topics K, while we provide the competing methods with the correct value in our simulations.
Many problems on signal processing reduce to nonparametric function estimation. We propose a new methodology, piecewise convex fitting (PCF), and give a two-stage adaptive estimate. In the first stage, the number and location of the change points is estimated using strong smoothing. In the second stage, a constrained smoothing spline fit is performed with the smoothing level chosen to minimize the MSE. The imposed constraint is that a single change point occurs in a region about each empirical change point of the first-stage estimate. This constraint is equivalent to requiring that the third derivative of the second-stage estimate has a single sign in a small neighborhood about each first-stage change point. We sketch how PCF may be applied to signal recovery, instantaneous frequency estimation, surface reconstruction, image segmentation, spectral estimation and multivariate adaptive regression.
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