We consider the problem of joint simultaneous confidence band (JSCB) construction for regression coefficient functions of time series scalar-on-function linear regression when the regression model is estimated by roughness penalization approach with flexible choices of orthonormal basis functions. A simple and unified multiplier bootstrap methodology is proposed for the JSCB construction which is shown to achieve the correct coverage probability asymptotically. Furthermore, the JSCB is asymptotically robust to inconsistently estimated standard deviations of the model. The proposed methodology is applied to a time series data set of electricity market to visually investigate and formally test the overall regression relationship as well as perform model validation. A uniform Gaussian approximation and comparison result over all Euclidean convex sets for normalized sums of a class of moderately high-dimensional stationary time series is established. Finally, the proposed methodology can be applied to simultaneous inference for scalar-on-function linear regression of independent cross-sectional data.
The Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) asserts that for every $\varepsilon>0$ there exists $k$ such that $k$-SAT requires time $(2-\varepsilon)^n$. The field of fine-grained complexity has leveraged SETH to prove quite tight conditional lower bounds for dozens of problems in various domains and complexity classes, including Edit Distance, Graph Diameter, Hitting Set, Independent Set, and Orthogonal Vectors. Yet, it has been repeatedly asked in the literature whether SETH-hardness results can be proven for other fundamental problems such as Hamiltonian Path, Independent Set, Chromatic Number, MAX-$k$-SAT, and Set Cover. In this paper, we show that fine-grained reductions implying even $\lambda^n$-hardness of these problems from SETH for any $\lambda>1$, would imply new circuit lower bounds: super-linear lower bounds for Boolean series-parallel circuits or polynomial lower bounds for arithmetic circuits (each of which is a four-decade open question). We also extend this barrier result to the class of parameterized problems. Namely, for every $\lambda>1$ we conditionally rule out fine-grained reductions implying SETH-based lower bounds of $\lambda^k$ for a number of problems parameterized by the solution size $k$. Our main technical tool is a new concept called polynomial formulations. In particular, we show that many problems can be represented by relatively succinct low-degree polynomials, and that any problem with such a representation cannot be proven SETH-hard (without proving new circuit lower bounds).
In data science, vector autoregression (VAR) models are popular in modeling multivariate time series in the environmental sciences and other applications. However, these models are computationally complex with the number of parameters scaling quadratically with the number of time series. In this work, we propose a so-called neighborhood vector autoregression (NVAR) model to efficiently analyze large-dimensional multivariate time series. We assume that the time series have underlying neighborhood relationships, e.g., spatial or network, among them based on the inherent setting of the problem. When this neighborhood information is available or can be summarized using a distance matrix, we demonstrate that our proposed NVAR method provides a computationally efficient and theoretically sound estimation of model parameters. The performance of the proposed method is compared with other existing approaches in both simulation studies and a real application of stream nitrogen study.
As a special infinite-order vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) model can capture much richer temporal patterns than the widely used finite-order VAR model. However, its practicality has long been hindered by its non-identifiability, computational intractability, and relative difficulty of interpretation. This paper introduces a novel infinite-order VAR model which, with only a little sacrifice of generality, inherits the essential temporal patterns of the VARMA model but avoids all of the above drawbacks. As another attractive feature, the temporal and cross-sectional dependence structures of this model can be interpreted separately, since they are characterized by different sets of parameters. For high-dimensional time series, this separation motivates us to impose sparsity on the parameters determining the cross-sectional dependence. As a result, greater statistical efficiency and interpretability can be achieved, while no loss of temporal information is incurred by the imposed sparsity. We introduce an $\ell_1$-regularized estimator for the proposed model and derive the corresponding nonasymptotic error bounds. An efficient block coordinate descent algorithm and a consistent model order selection method are developed. The merit of the proposed approach is supported by simulation studies and a real-world macroeconomic data analysis.
Bayesian variable selection methods are powerful techniques for fitting and inferring on sparse high-dimensional linear regression models. However, many are computationally intensive or require restrictive prior distributions on model parameters. Likelihood based penalization methods are more computationally friendly, but resource intensive refitting techniques are needed for inference. In this paper, we proposed an efficient and powerful Bayesian approach for sparse high-dimensional linear regression. Minimal prior assumptions on the parameters are required through the use of plug-in empirical Bayes estimates of hyperparameters. Efficient maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) estimation is completed through the use of a partitioned and extended expectation conditional maximization (ECM) algorithm. The result is a PaRtitiOned empirical Bayes Ecm (PROBE) algorithm applied to sparse high-dimensional linear regression. We propose methods to estimate credible and prediction intervals for predictions of future values. We compare the empirical properties of predictions and our predictive inference to comparable approaches with numerous simulation studies and an analysis of cancer cell lines drug response study. The proposed approach is implemented in the R package probe.
This work considers Gaussian process interpolation with a periodized version of the Mat{\'e}rn covariance function (Stein, 1999, Section 6.7) with Fourier coefficients $\phi$($\alpha$^2 + j^2)^(--$\nu$--1/2). Convergence rates are studied for the joint maximum likelihood estimation of $\nu$ and $\phi$ when the data is sampled according to the model. The mean integrated squared error is also analyzed with fixed and estimated parameters, showing that maximum likelihood estimation yields asymptotically the same error as if the ground truth was known. Finally, the case where the observed function is a ''deterministic'' element of a continuous Sobolev space is also considered, suggesting that bounding assumptions on some parameters can lead to different estimates.
Interval-censored multi-state data arise in many studies of chronic diseases, where the health status of a subject can be characterized by a finite number of disease states and the transition between any two states is only known to occur over a broad time interval. We formulate the effects of potentially time-dependent covariates on multi-state processes through semiparametric proportional intensity models with random effects. We adopt nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation (NPMLE) under general interval censoring and develop a stable expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. We show that the resulting parameter estimators are consistent and that the finite-dimensional components are asymptotically normal with a covariance matrix that attains the semiparametric efficiency bound and can be consistently estimated through profile likelihood. In addition, we demonstrate through extensive simulation studies that the proposed numerical and inferential procedures perform well in realistic settings. Finally, we provide an application to a major epidemiologic cohort study.
We study the problem of high-dimensional sparse linear regression in a distributed setting under both computational and communication constraints. Specifically, we consider a star topology network whereby several machines are connected to a fusion center, with whom they can exchange relatively short messages. Each machine holds noisy samples from a linear regression model with the same unknown sparse $d$-dimensional vector of regression coefficients $\theta$. The goal of the fusion center is to estimate the vector $\theta$ and its support using few computations and limited communication at each machine. In this work, we consider distributed algorithms based on Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and theoretically study their ability to exactly recover the support of $\theta$. We prove that under certain conditions, even at low signal-to-noise-ratios where individual machines are unable to detect the support of $\theta$, distributed-OMP methods correctly recover it with total communication sublinear in $d$. In addition, we present simulations that illustrate the performance of distributed OMP-based algorithms and show that they perform similarly to more sophisticated and computationally intensive methods, and in some cases even outperform them.
We investigate $L_2$ boosting in the context of kernel regression. Kernel smoothers, in general, lack appealing traits like symmetry and positive definiteness, which are critical not only for understanding theoretical aspects but also for achieving good practical performance. We consider a projection-based smoother (Huang and Chen, 2008) that is symmetric, positive definite, and shrinking. Theoretical results based on the orthonormal decomposition of the smoother reveal additional insights into the boosting algorithm. In our asymptotic framework, we may replace the full-rank smoother with a low-rank approximation. We demonstrate that the smoother's low-rank ($d(n)$) is bounded above by $O(h^{-1})$, where $h$ is the bandwidth. Our numerical findings show that, in terms of prediction accuracy, low-rank smoothers may outperform full-rank smoothers. Furthermore, we show that the boosting estimator with low-rank smoother achieves the optimal convergence rate. Finally, to improve the performance of the boosting algorithm in the presence of outliers, we propose a novel robustified boosting algorithm which can be used with any smoother discussed in the study. We investigate the numerical performance of the proposed approaches using simulations and a real-world case.
Background: Instrumental variables (IVs) can be used to provide evidence as to whether a treatment X has a causal effect on an outcome Y. Even if the instrument Z satisfies the three core IV assumptions of relevance, independence and the exclusion restriction, further assumptions are required to identify the average causal effect (ACE) of X on Y. Sufficient assumptions for this include: homogeneity in the causal effect of X on Y; homogeneity in the association of Z with X; and no effect modification (NEM). Methods: We describe the NO Simultaneous Heterogeneity (NOSH) assumption, which requires the heterogeneity in the X-Y causal effect to be mean independent of (i.e., uncorrelated with) both Z and heterogeneity in the Z-X association. This happens, for example, if there are no common modifiers of the X-Y effect and the Z-X association, and the X-Y effect is additive linear. We illustrate NOSH using simulations and by re-examining selected published studies. Results: When NOSH holds, the Wald estimand equals the ACE even if both homogeneity assumptions and NEM (which we demonstrate to be special cases of - and therefore stronger than - NOSH) are violated. Conclusions: NOSH is sufficient for identifying the ACE using IVs. Since NOSH is weaker than existing assumptions for ACE identification, doing so may be more plausible than previously anticipated.
Diffusion models are a new class of generative models that mark a milestone in high-quality image generation while relying on solid probabilistic principles. This makes them promising candidate models for neural image compression. This paper outlines an end-to-end optimized framework based on a conditional diffusion model for image compression. Besides latent variables inherent to the diffusion process, the model introduces an additional per-instance "content" latent variable to condition the denoising process. Upon decoding, the diffusion process conditionally generates/reconstructs an image using ancestral sampling. Our experiments show that this approach outperforms one of the best-performing conventional image codecs (BPG) and one neural codec on two compression benchmarks, where we focus on rate-perception tradeoffs. Qualitatively, our approach shows fewer decompression artifacts than the classical approach.