Estimating the mixing density of a mixture distribution remains an interesting problem in statistics literature. Using a stochastic approximation method, Newton and Zhang (1999) introduced a fast recursive algorithm for estimating the mixing density of a mixture. Under suitably chosen weights the stochastic approximation estimator converges to the true solution. In Tokdar et. al. (2009) the consistency of this recursive estimation method was established. However, the proof of consistency of the resulting estimator used independence among observations as an assumption. Here, we extend the investigation of performance of Newton's algorithm to several dependent scenarios. We prove that the original algorithm under certain conditions remains consistent even when the observations are arising from a weakly dependent stationary process with the target mixture as the marginal density. We show consistency under a decay condition on the dependence among observations when the dependence is characterized by a quantity similar to mutual information between the observations.
Non linear regression models are a standard tool for modeling real phenomena, with several applications in machine learning, ecology, econometry... Estimating the parameters of the model has garnered a lot of attention during many years. We focus here on a recursive method for estimating parameters of non linear regressions. Indeed, these kinds of methods, whose most famous are probably the stochastic gradient algorithm and its averaged version, enable to deal efficiently with massive data arriving sequentially. Nevertheless, they can be, in practice, very sensitive to the case where the eigen…
We prove minimax bounds for estimating Gaussian location mixtures on $\mathbb{R}^d$ under the squared $L^2$ and the squared Hellinger loss functions. Under the squared $L^2$ loss, we prove that the minimax rate is upper and lower bounded by a constant multiple of $n^{-1}(\log n)^{d/2}$. Under the squared Hellinger loss, we consider two subclasses based on the behavior of the tails of the mixing measure. When the mixing measure has a sub-Gaussian tail, the minimax rate under the squared Hellinger loss is bounded from below by $(\log n)^{d}/n$. On the other hand, when the mixing measure is only …
We consider nonparametric invariant density and drift estimation for a class of multidimensional degenerate resp. hypoelliptic diffusion processes, so-called stochastic damping Hamiltonian systems or kinetic diffusions, under anisotropic smoothness assumptions on the unknown functions. The analysis is based on continuous observations of the process, and the estimators' performance is measured in terms of the sup-norm loss. Regarding invariant density estimation, we obtain highly nonclassical results for the rate of convergence, which reflect the inhomogeneous variance structure of the process.…
We address the problem of estimating the mixing time $t_{\mathsf{mix}}$ of an arbitrary ergodic finite-state Markov chain from a single trajectory of length $m$. The reversible case was addressed by Hsu et al. [2019], who left the general case as an open problem. In the reversible case, the analysis is greatly facilitated by the fact that the Markov operator is self-adjoint, and Weyl's inequality allows for a dimension-free perturbation analysis of the empirical eigenvalues. As Hsu et al. point out, in the absence of reversibility (which induces asymmetric pair probabilities matrices), the exi…
We address the questions of identifying pairs of interacting neurons from the observation of their spiking activity. The neuronal network is modeled by a system of interacting point processes with memory of variable length. The influence of a neuron on another can be either excitatory or inhibitory. To identify the existence and the nature of an interaction we propose an algorithm based only on the observation of joint activity of the two neurons in successive time slots. This reduces the amount of computation and storage required to run the algorithm, thereby making the algorithm suitable for…
A number of researchers have independently introduced topologies on the set of laws of stochastic processes that extend the usual weak topology. Depending on the respective scientific background this was motivated by applications and connections to various areas (e.g. Plug-Pichler - stochastic programming, Hellwig - game theory, Aldous - stability of optimal stopping, Hoover-Keisler - model theory). Remarkably, all these seemingly independent approaches define the same adapted weak topology in finite discrete time. Our first main result is to construct an adapted variant of the empirical measu…
Estimating stationary mass, frequency by frequency
H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering（H. Milton Stewart工业与系统工程学院）；School of Electrical and Computer Engineering（电气与计算机工程学院）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）
