Motivated by questions about dense (non-sparse) signals in high-dimensional data analysis, we study the unconditional out-of-sample prediction error (predictive risk) associated with three popular linear estimators for high-dimensional linear models: ridge regression estimators, scalar multiples of the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator (referred to as James-Stein shrinkage estimators), and marginal regression estimators. The results in this paper require no assumptions about sparsity and imply: (i) if prior information about the population predictor covariance is available, then the ridge estimator outperforms the OLS, James-Stein, and marginal estimators; (ii) if little is known about the population predictor covariance, then the James-Stein estimator may be an effective alternative to the ridge estimator; and (iii) the marginal estimator has serious deficiencies for out-of-sample prediction. Both finite sample and asymptotic properties of the estimators are studied in this paper. Though various asymptotic regimes are considered, we focus on the setting where the number of predictors is roughly proportional to the number of observations. Ultimately, the results presented here provide new and detailed practical guidance regarding several well-known non-sparse methods for high-dimensional linear models.
We study a high-dimensional regression setting under the assumption of known covariate distribution. We aim at estimating the amount of explained variation in the response by the best linear function of the covariates (the signal level). In our setting, neither sparsity of the coefficient vector, nor normality of the covariates or linearity of the conditional expectation are assumed. We present an unbiased and consistent estimator and then improve it by using a zero-estimator approach, where a zero-estimator is a statistic whose expected value is zero. More generally, we present an algorithm b…
For the problem of nonparametric estimation of signal in Gaussian noise we point out the strong asymptotically minimax estimators on maxisets for linear estimators (see \cite{ker93,rio}). It turns out that the order of rates of convergence of Pinsker estimator on this maxisets is worse than the order of rates of convergence for the class of linear estimators considered on this maxisets. We show that balls in Sobolev spaces are maxisets for Pinsker estimators.
We consider the problem of recovering a signal observed in Gaussian noise. If the set of signals is convex and compact, and can be specified beforehand, one can use classical linear estimators that achieve a risk within a constant factor of the minimax risk. However, when the set is unspecified, designing an estimator that is blind to the hidden structure of the signal remains a challenging problem. We propose a new family of estimators to recover signals observed in Gaussian noise. Instead of specifying the set where the signal lives, we assume the existence of a well-performing linear estima…
We study the problem of estimating piecewise monotone vectors. This problem can be seen as a generalization of the isotonic regression that allows a small number of order-violating changepoints. We focus mainly on the performance of the nearly-isotonic regression proposed by Tibshirani et al. (2011). We derive risk bounds for the nearly-isotonic regression estimators that are adaptive to piecewise monotone signals. The estimator achieves a near minimax convergence rate over certain classes of piecewise monotone signals under a weak assumption. Furthermore, we present an algorithm that can be a…
This paper considers the deconvolution problem in the case where the target signal is multidimensional and no information is known about the noise distribution. More precisely, no assumption is made on the noise distribution and no samples are available to estimate it: the deconvolution problem is solved based only on the corrupted signal observations. We establish the identifiability of the model up to translation when the signal has a Laplace transform with an exponential growth smaller than $2$ and when it can be decomposed into two dependent components. Then, we propose an estimator of the…
Robustness to outliers is often a desirable property of statistical estimators. Indeed many well known estimators offer very good optimal performance in theory but are unusable in applied contexts because of their sensitivity to outliers. Of particular interest to the authors is the case of covariance estimators in adaptive matched filtering schemes in signal processing applications such as RADAR and SONAR detection, for which a contamination by outliers of the estimated noise covariance can lead to a great impact on performances, in particular when these outliers are similar to the target sig…
We study high-dimensional signal recovery from non-linear measurements with design vectors having elliptically symmetric distribution. Special attention is devoted to the situation when the unknown signal belongs to a set of low statistical complexity, while both the measurements and the design vectors are heavy-tailed. We propose and analyze a new estimator that adapts to the structure of the problem, while being robust both to the possible model misspecification characterized by arbitrary non-linearity of the measurements as well as to data corruption modeled by the heavy-tailed distribution…
We consider problem of signal detection in Gaussian white noise. Test statistics are linear combinations of squares of estimators of Fourier coefficients or $\mathbb{L}_2$-norms of kernel estimators. We point out necessary and sufficient conditions when nonparametric sets of alternatives have a given rate of exponential decay for type II error probabilities.
We consider spatially dependent functional data collected under a geostatistics setting, where locations are sampled from a spatial point process. The functional response is the sum of a spatially dependent functional effect and a spatially independent functional nugget effect. Observations on each function are made on discrete time points and contaminated with measurement errors. Under the assumption of spatial stationarity and isotropy, we propose a tensor product spline estimator for the spatio-temporal covariance function. When a coregionalization covariance structure is further assumed, w…
Sparse exchangeable graphs on $\mathbb{R}_+$, and the associated graphex framework for sparse graphs, generalize exchangeable graphs on $\mathbb{N}$, and the associated graphon framework for dense graphs. We develop the graphex framework as a tool for statistical network analysis by identifying the sampling scheme that is naturally associated with the models of the framework, and by introducing a general consistent estimator for the parameter (the graphex) underlying these models. The sampling scheme is a modification of independent vertex sampling that throws away vertices that are isolated i…
In this paper we introduce and study fused lasso nearly-isotonic signal approximation, which is a combination of fused lasso and generalized nearly-isotonic regression. We show how these three estimators relate to each other, derive solution to the general problem, show that it is computationally feasible and provides a trade-off between piecewise monotonicity, sparsity and goodness-of-fit. Also, we derive an unbiased estimator of the degrees of freedom of the approximator.
We introduce new smoothing estimators for complex signals on graphs, based on a recently studied Determinantal Point Process (DPP). These estimators are built from subsets of edges and nodes drawn according to this DPP, making up trees and unicycles, i.e., connected components containing exactly one cycle. We provide a Julia implementation of these estimators and study their performance when applied to a ranking problem.
New local linear estimators are proposed for a wide class of nonparametric regression models. The estimators are uniformly consistent regardless of satisfying traditional conditions of depen\-dence of design elements. The estimators are the solutions of a specially weighted least-squares method. The design can be fixed or random and does not need to meet classical regularity or independence conditions. As an application, several estimators are constructed for the mean of dense functional data. The theoretical results of the study are illustrated by simulations. An example of processing real me…
Estimating the proportion of signals hidden in a large amount of noise variables is of interest in many scientific inquires. In this paper, we consider realistic but theoretically challenging settings with arbitrary covariance dependence between variables. We define mean absolute correlation (MAC) to measure the overall dependence level and investigate a family of estimators for their performances in the full range of MAC. We explicit the joint effect of MAC dependence and signal sparsity on the performances of the family of estimators and discover that no single estimator in the family is mos…
~It is considered a transmittion process of a useful signal in Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model in $\mathbb{C}[-l,l[$ defined by the stochastic differential equation $$ dΨ(t,x,ω)=\sum_{n=0}^{2m} A_n\frac{\partial^{n}}{\partial x^{n}}Ψ(t,x,ω)dt +σd W(t,ω) $$ with initial condition $$Ψ(0,x,ω)=Ψ_0(x) \in FD^{(0)}[-l,l[, $$ where $m \ge 1$, $(A_n)_{0 \le n \le 2m} \in \mathbb{R}^+\times \mathbb{R}^{2m-1}$,$~((t,x,ω) \in [0,+\infty[\times [-l,l[ \times Ω)$, $σ\in \mathbb{R}^+$, $\mathbb{C}[-l,l[$ is Banach space of all real-valued bounded continuous functions on $[-l,l[$, $FD^{(0)}[-l,l[ \subset \mathbb{C}…
This paper deals with the parametric inference for integrated signals embedded in an additive Gaussian noise and observed at deterministic discrete instants which are not necessarily equidistant. The unknown parameter is multidimensional and compounded of a signal-of-interest parameter and a variance parameter of the noise. We state the consistency and the minimax efficiency of the maximum likelihood estimator and of the Bayesian estimator when the time of observation tends to $\infty$ and the delays between two consecutive observations tend to 0 or are only bounded. The class of signals in co…
We consider the problem of discrete-time signal denoising, focusing on a specific family of non-linear convolution-type estimators. Each such estimator is associated with a time-invariant filter which is obtained adaptively, by solving a certain convex optimization problem. Adaptive convolution-type estimators were demonstrated to have favorable statistical properties. However, the question of their computational complexity remains largely unexplored, and in fact we are not aware of any publicly available implementation of these estimators. Our first contribution is an efficient implementation…
Elliptically symmetric distributions are widely used in portfolio modeling, as well as in signal processing applications for modeling impulsive background noises. Of particular interest are algorithms for covariance estimation and subspace detection in such backgrounds. This article tackles the issue of correctly estimating the covariance matrix associated to such models and detecting additional signal superimposed on such distributions. A particular attention is given to the proper accounting of the circular symmetry for the subclass of complex elliptical distributions in the case of complex …
We study recovery of piecewise-constant signals on graphs by the estimator minimizing an $l_0$-edge-penalized objective. Although exact minimization of this objective may be computationally intractable, we show that the same statistical risk guarantees are achieved by the $α$-expansion algorithm which computes an approximate minimizer in polynomial time. We establish that for graphs with small average vertex degree, these guarantees are minimax rate-optimal over classes of edge-sparse signals. For spatially inhomogeneous graphs, we propose minimization of an edge-weighted objective where each …
We propose a generalization of the linear panel quantile regression model to accommodate both \textit{sparse} and \textit{dense} parts: sparse means while the number of covariates available is large, potentially only a much smaller number of them have a nonzero impact on each conditional quantile of the response variable; while the dense part is represent by a low-rank matrix that can be approximated by latent factors and their loadings. Such a structure poses problems for traditional sparse estimators, such as the $\ell_1$-penalised Quantile Regression, and for traditional latent factor estim…
