Estimation and hypothesis tests for the covariance matrix in high dimensions is a challenging problem as the traditional multivariate asymptotic theory is no longer valid. When the dimension is larger than or increasing with the sample size, standard likelihood based tests for the covariance matrix have poor performance. Existing high dimensional tests are either computationally expensive or have very weak control of type I error. In this paper, we propose a test procedure, CRAMP, for testing hypotheses involving one or more covariance matrices using random projections. Projecting the high dimensional data randomly into lower dimensional subspaces alleviates of the curse of dimensionality, allowing for the use of traditional multivariate tests. An extensive simulation study is performed to compare CRAMP against asymptotics-based high dimensional test procedures. An application of the proposed method to two gene expression data sets is presented.
The classic likelihood ratio test for testing the equality of two covariance matrices breakdowns due to the singularity of the sample covariance matrices when the data dimension $p$ is larger than the sample size $n$. In this paper, we present a conceptually simple method using random projection to project the data onto the one-dimensional random subspace so that the conventional methods can be applied. Both one-sample and two-sample tests for high-dimensional covariance matrices are studied. Asymptotic results are established and numerical results are given to compare our method with state-of…
Sample covariance matrices are widely used in multivariate statistical analysis. The central limit theorems (CLT's) for linear spectral statistics of high-dimensional non-centered sample covariance matrices have received considerable attention in random matrix theory and have been applied to many high-dimensional statistical problems. However, known population mean vectors are assumed for non-centered sample covariance matrices, some of which even assume Gaussian-like moment conditions. In fact, there are still another two most frequently used sample covariance matrices: the MLE (by subtractin…
We propose a robust test for the equality of the covariance structures in two functional samples. The test statistic has a chi-square asymptotic distribution with a known number of degrees of freedom, which depends on the level of dimension reduction needed to represent the data. Detailed analysis of the asymptotic properties is developed. Finite sample performance is examined by a simulation study and an application to egg-laying curves of fruit flies.
The matrix-variate normal distribution is a popular model for high-dimensional transposable data because it decomposes the dependence structure of the random matrix into the Kronecker product of two covariance matrices: one for each of the row and column variables. We develop tests for assessing the form of the row (column) covariance matrix in high-dimensional settings while treating the column (row) dependence structure as a nuisance. Our tests are robust to normality departures provided that the Kronecker product dependence structure holds. In simulations, we observe that the proposed tests…
In this paper, we introduce a ${\mathcal L}_2$ type test for testing mutual independence and banded dependence structure for high dimensional data. The test is constructed based on the pairwise distance covariance and it accounts for the non-linear and non-monotone dependences among the data, which cannot be fully captured by the existing tests based on either Pearson correlation or rank correlation. Our test can be conveniently implemented in practice as the limiting null distribution of the test statistic is shown to be standard normal. It exhibits excellent finite sample performance in our …
Recent technical advances in collecting spatial data have been increasing the demand for methods to analyze large spatial datasets. The statistical analysis for these types of datasets can provide useful knowledge in various fields. However, conventional spatial statistical methods, such as maximum likelihood estimation and kriging, are impractically time-consuming for large spatial datasets due to the necessary matrix inversions. To cope with this problem, we propose a multi-resolution approximation via linear projection ($M$-RA-lp). The $M$-RA-lp conducts a linear projection approach on each…
We develop tests for high-dimensional covariance matrices under a generalized elliptical model. Our tests are based on a central limit theorem (CLT) for linear spectral statistics of the sample covariance matrix based on self-normalized observations. For testing sphericity, our tests neither assume specific parametric distributions nor involve the kurtosis of data. More generally, we can test against any non-negative definite matrix that can even be not invertible. As an interesting application, we illustrate in empirical studies that our tests can be used to test uncorrelatedness among idiosy…
This paper focuses on the prominent sphericity test when the dimension $p$ is much lager than sample size $n$. The classical likelihood ratio test(LRT) is no longer applicable when $p\gg n$. Therefore a Quasi-LRT is proposed and asymptotic distribution of the test statistic under the null when $p/n\rightarrow\infty, n\rightarrow\infty$ is well established in this paper. Meanwhile, John's test has been found to possess the powerful {\it dimension-proof} property, which keeps exactly the same limiting distribution under the null with any $(n,p)$-asymptotic, i.e. $p/n\rightarrow[0,\infty]$, $n\ri…
Kronecker product covariance structure provides an efficient way to modeling the inter-correlations of matrix-variate data. In this paper, we propose testing statistics for Kronecker product covariance matrix based on linear spectral statistics of renormalized sample covariance matrices. Central limit theorem is proved for the linear spectral statistics with explicit formulas for mean and covariance functions, which fills the gap in the literature. We then theoretically justify that the proposed testing statistics have well-controlled sizes and strong powers. To facilitate practical usefulness…
In this paper, we study the problem of testing the mean vectors of high dimensional data in both one-sample and two-sample cases. The proposed testing procedures employ maximum-type statistics and the parametric bootstrap techniques to compute the critical values. Different from the existing tests that heavily rely on the structural conditions on the unknown covariance matrices, the proposed tests allow general covariance structures of the data and therefore enjoy wide scope of applicability in practice. To enhance powers of the tests against sparse alternatives, we further propose two-step pr…
The main theme of this paper is a modification of the likelihood ratio test (LRT) for testing high dimensional covariance matrix. Recently, the correct asymptotic distribution of the LRT for a large-dimensional case (the case $p/n$ approaches to a constant $γ\in (0,1]$) is specified by researchers. The correct procedure is named as corrected LRT. Despite of its correction, the corrected LRT is a function of sample eigenvalues that are suffered from redundant variability from high dimensionality and, subsequently, still does not have full power in differentiating hypotheses on the covariance ma…
Modern high-throughput biomedical devices routinely produce data on a large scale, and the analysis of high-dimensional datasets has become commonplace in biomedical studies. However, given thousands or tens of thousands of measured variables in these datasets, extracting meaningful features poses a challenge. In this article, we propose a procedure to evaluate the strength of the associations between a nominal (categorical) response variable and multiple features simultaneously. Specifically, we propose a framework of large-scale multiple testing under arbitrary correlation dependency among t…
In many situations, when dealing with several populations, equality of the covariance operators is assumed. An important issue is to study if this assumption holds before making other inferences. In this paper, we develop a test for comparing covariance operators of several functional data samples. The proposed test is based on the Hilbert--Schmidt norm of the difference between estimated covariance operators. In particular, when dealing with two populations, the tests statistic is just the squared norm of the difference between the two covariance operators estimators. The asymptotic behaviour…
A common challenge in nonparametric inference is its high computational complexity when data volume is large. In this paper, we develop computationally efficient nonparametric testing by employing a random projection strategy. In the specific kernel ridge regression setup, a simple distance-based test statistic is proposed. Notably, we derive the minimum number of random projections that is sufficient for achieving testing optimality in terms of the minimax rate. An adaptive testing procedure is further established without prior knowledge of regularity. One technical contribution is to establi…
Large-scale hypothesis testing has become a ubiquitous problem in high-dimensional statistical inference, with broad applications in various scienfitic disciplines. One relevant application is constituted by imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) association studies, where a large number of tests are performed simultaneously in order to identify molecular masses that are associated with a particular phenotype, e. g., a cancer subtype. Mass spectra obtained from Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) experiments are dependent, when considered as statistical quantities. False discovery pro…
Eigenspaces of covariance matrices play an important role in statistical machine learning, arising in variety of modern algorithms. Quantitatively, it is convenient to describe the eigenspaces in terms of spectral projectors. This work focuses on hypothesis testing for the spectral projectors, both in one- and two-sample scenario. We present new tests, based on a specific matrix norm developed in order to utilize the structure of the spectral projectors. A new resampling technique of independent interest is introduced and analyzed: it serves as an alternative to the well-known multiplier boots…
In this paper we propose a new test of heteroscedasticity for parametric regression models and partial linear regression models in high dimensional settings. When the dimension of covariates is large, existing tests of heteroscedasticity perform badly due to the \curse of dimensionality". To attack this problem, we construct a test of heteroscedasticity by using a projection-based empirical process. We study the asymptotic properties of the test statistic under the null hypothesis and alternative hypotheses. It is shown that the test can detect local alternatives departure from the null hypoth…
This paper considers testing a covariance matrix $Σ$ in the high dimensional setting where the dimension $p$ can be comparable or much larger than the sample size $n$. The problem of testing the hypothesis $H_0:Σ=Σ_0$ for a given covariance matrix $Σ_0$ is studied from a minimax point of view. We first characterize the boundary that separates the testable region from the non-testable region by the Frobenius norm when the ratio between the dimension $p$ over the sample size $n$ is bounded. A test based on a $U$-statistic is introduced and is shown to be rate optimal over this asymptotic regime.…
Testing covariance structure is of importance in many areas of statistical analysis, such as microarray analysis and signal processing. Conventional tests for finite-dimensional covariance cannot be applied to high-dimensional data in general, and tests for high-dimensional covariance in the literature usually depend on some special structure of the matrix. In this paper, we propose some empirical likelihood ratio tests for testing whether a covariance matrix equals a given one or has a banded structure. The asymptotic distributions of the new tests are independent of the dimension.
The Behrens-Fisher problem is a well-known hypothesis testing problem in statistics concerning two-sample mean comparison. In this article, we confirm one conjecture in Eaton and Olshen (1972), which provides stochastic bounds for the multivariate Behrens-Fisher test statistic under the null hypothesis. We also extend their results on the stochastic ordering of random quotients to the arbitrary finite dimensional case. This work can also be seen as a generalization of Hsu (1938) that provided the bounds for the univariate Behrens-Fisher problem. The results obtained in this article can be used…
Many experiments record sequential trajectories where each trajectory consists of oscillations and fluctuations around zero. Such trajectories can be viewed as zero-mean functional data. When there are structural breaks (on the sequence of trajectories) in higher order moments, it is not always easy to spot these by mere visual inspection. Motivated by this challenging problem in brain signal analysis, we propose a detection and testing procedure to find the change point in functional covariance. The detection procedure is based on the cumulative sum statistics (CUSUM). The classical testing p…
Multiple hypothesis testing is a fundamental problem in high dimensional inference, with wide applications in many scientific fields. In genome-wide association studies, tens of thousands of tests are performed simultaneously to find if any genes are associated with some traits and those tests are correlated. When test statistics are correlated, false discovery control becomes very challenging under arbitrary dependence. In the current paper, we propose a new methodology based on principal factor approximation, which successfully substracts the common dependence and weakens significantly the c…
Motivated by the prevalence of high dimensional low sample size datasets in modern statistical applications, we propose a general nonparametric framework, Direction-Projection-Permutation (DiProPerm), for testing high dimensional hypotheses. The method is aimed at rigorous testing of whether lower dimensional visual differences are statistically significant. Theoretical analysis under the non-classical asymptotic regime of dimension going to infinity for fixed sample size reveals that certain natural variations of DiProPerm can have very different behaviors. An empirical power study both confi…
Random Fisher matrices arise naturally in multivariate statistical analysis and understanding the properties of its eigenvalues is of primary importance for many hypothesis testing problems like testing the equality between two multivariate population covariance matrices, or testing the independence between sub-groups of a multivariate random vector. This paper is concerned with the properties of a large-dimensional Fisher matrix when the dimension of the population is proportionally large compared to the sample size. Most of existing works on Fisher matrices deal with a particular Fisher matr…
This article presents a homogeneity test for testing the equality of several high-dimensional covariance matrices for stationary processes with ignoring the assumption of normality. We give the asymptotic distribution of the proposed test. The simulation illustrates that the proposed test has perfect performance. Moreover, the power of the test can approach any high probability uniformly on a set of covariance matrices.
In this paper, we give an explanation to the failure of two likelihood ratio procedures for testing about covariance matrices from Gaussian populations when the dimension is large compared to the sample size. Next, using recent central limit theorems for linear spectral statistics of sample covariance matrices and of random F-matrices, we propose necessary corrections for these LR tests to cope with high-dimensional effects. The asymptotic distributions of these corrected tests under the null are given. Simulations demonstrate that the corrected LR tests yield a realized size close to nominal …
We propose three measures of mutual dependence between multiple random vectors. All the measures are zero if and only if the random vectors are mutually independent. The first measure generalizes distance covariance from pairwise dependence to mutual dependence, while the other two measures are sums of squared distance covariance. All the measures share similar properties and asymptotic distributions to distance covariance, and capture non-linear and non-monotone mutual dependence between the random vectors. Inspired by complete and incomplete V-statistics, we define the empirical measures and…
Le Cam's third/contiguity lemma is a fundamental probabilistic tool to compute the limiting distribution of a given statistic $T_n$ under a non-null sequence of probability measures $\{Q_n\}$, provided its limiting distribution under a null sequence $\{P_n\}$ is available, and the log likelihood ratio $\{\log (dQ_n/dP_n)\}$ has a distributional limit. Despite its wide-spread applications to low-dimensional statistical problems, the stringent requirement of Le Cam's third/contiguity lemma on the distributional limit of the log likelihood ratio makes it challenging, or even impossible to use in …
Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；Singapore University of Technology and Design（新加坡科技设计大学）；VinAI Research（VinAI研究院）
We present a statistical testing framework to detect if a given machine learning classifier fails to satisfy a wide range of group fairness notions. The proposed test is a flexible, interpretable, and statistically rigorous tool for auditing whether exhibited biases are intrinsic to the algorithm or due to the randomness in the data. The statistical challenges, which may arise from multiple impact criteria that define group fairness and which are discontinuous on model parameters, are conveniently tackled by projecting the empirical measure onto the set of group-fair probability models using o…
We consider testing the equality of two high-dimensional covariance matrices by carrying out a multi-level thresholding procedure, which is designed to detect sparse and faint differences between the covariances. A novel U-statistic composition is developed to establish the asymptotic distribution of the thresholding statistics in conjunction with the matrix blocking and the coupling techniques. We propose a multi-thresholding test that is shown to be powerful in detecting sparse and weak differences between two covariance matrices. The test is shown to have attractive detection boundary and t…
These expository notes serve as a reference for an accompanying post Morales-Jimenez et al. [2018]. In the spiked covariance model, we develop results on asymptotic normality of sample leading eigenvalues and certain projections of the corresponding sample eigenvectors. The results parallel those of Paul [2007], but are given using the non-Gaussian model of Bai and Yao [2008]. The results are not new, and citations are given, but proofs are collected and organized as a point of departure for Morales-Jimenez et al. [2018].
In this paper we consider some hypothesis tests within a family of Wishart distributions, where both the sample space and the parameter space are symmetric cones. For such testing problems, we first derive the joint density of the ordered eigenvalues of the generalized Wishart distribution and propose a test statistic analog to that of classical multivariate statistics for testing homoscedasticity of covariance matrix. In this generalization of Bartlett's test for equality of variances to hypotheses of real, complex, quaternion, Lorentz and octonion types of covariance structures.
The question of testing for equality in distribution between two linear models, each consisting of sums of distinct discrete independent random variables with unequal numbers of observations, has emerged from the biological research. In this case, the computation of classical $χ^2$ statistics, which would not include all observations, results in loss of power, especially when sample sizes are small. Here, as an alternative that uses all data, the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator for the distribution of sum of discrete and independent random variables, which we call the convolution st…
Hypothesis testing of structure in covariance matrices is of significant importance, but faces great challenges in high-dimensional settings. Although consistent frequentist one-sample covariance tests have been proposed, there is a lack of simple, computationally scalable, and theoretically sound Bayesian testing methods for large covariance matrices. Motivated by this gap and by the need for tests that are powerful against sparse alternatives, we propose a novel testing framework based on the maximum pairwise Bayes factor. Our initial focus is on one-sample covariance testing; the proposed t…
A Covariance-on-Covariance regression model is introduced in this manuscript. It is assumed that there exists (at least) a pair of linear projections on outcome covariance matrices and predictor covariance matrices such that a log-linear model links the variances in the projection spaces, as well as additional covariates of interest. An ordinary least square type of estimator is proposed to simultaneously identify the projections and estimate model coefficients. Under regularity conditions, the proposed estimator is asymptotically consistent. The superior performance of the proposed approach o…
The problem of testing changes in covariance has received increasing attention in recent years, especially in the context of high-dimensional testing. A number of approaches have been proposed, all limited to the two-sample problem and involving varying statistics and assumptions on the number of features $p$ vs. the sample size $n$. There are no general approaches to test association of covariances with a continuous outcome. We propose a uniform framework for testing association of covariances with an experimental variable, whether discrete or continuous. The approach is not limited by the da…
In this paper we explore a covariance spectral modelling strategy for spatial-temporal processes which involves a spectral approach for time but a covariance approach for space.It facilitates the analysis of coherence between the temporal frequency components at different spatial sites. Stein(2005) developed a semi-parametric model within this framework.The purpose of this paper is to give a deeper insight into the properties of his model and to develop simple and more intuitive methods of estimation and testing. An example is given using the Irish wind speed data.
By studying the family of $p$-dimensional scale mixtures, this paper shows for the first time a non trivial example where the eigenvalue distribution of the corresponding sample covariance matrix {\em does not converge} to the celebrated Marčenko-Pastur law. A different and new limit is found and characterized. The reasons of failure of the Marčenko-Pastur limit in this situation are found to be a strong dependence between the $p$-coordinates of the mixture. Next, we address the problem of testing whether the mixture has a spherical covariance matrix. To analize the traditional John's type tes…
The problem of detecting changes in covariance for a single pair of features has been studied in some detail, but may be limited in importance or general applicability. In contrast, testing equality of covariance matrices of a {\it set} of features may offer increased power and interpretability. Such approaches have received increasing attention in recent years, especially in the context of high-dimensional testing. These approaches have been limited to the two-sample problem and involve varying assumptions on the number of features $p$ vs. the sample size $n$. In addition, there has been litt…
