In this paper, we consider a functional linear regression model, where both the covariate and the response variable are functional random variables. We address the problem of optimal nonparametric estimation of the conditional expectation operator in this model. A collection of projection estimators over finite dimensional subspaces is first introduce. We provide a non-asymptotic bias-variance decomposition for the Mean Square Prediction error in the case where these subspaces are generated by the (empirical) PCA functional basis. The automatic trade-off is realized thanks to a model selection device which selects the best projection dimensions: the penalized contrast estimator satisfies an oracle-type inequality and is thus optimal in an adaptive point of view. These upper-bounds allow us to derive convergence rates over ellipsoidal smoothness spaces. The rates are shown to be optimal in the minimax sense: they match with a lower bound of the minimax risk, which is also proved. Finally, we conduct a numerical study, over simulated data and over two real-data sets.
An adaptive nonparametric estimation procedure is constructed for the estimation problem of heteroscedastic regression when the noise variance depends on the unknown regression. A non-asymptotic upper bound for a quadratic risk (an oracle inequality) is constructed.
The paper deals with asymptotic properties of the adaptive procedure proposed in the author paper (2007) for estimation of unknown nonparametric regression. We prove that this procedure is asymptotically efficient for a quadratic risk. It means that the asymptotic quadratic risk for this procedure coincides with a sharp lower bound.
This article deals with adaptive nonparametric estimation for Lévy processes observed at low frequency. For general linear functionals of the Lévy measure, we construct kernel estimators, provide upper risk bounds and derive rates of convergence under regularity assumptions. Our focus lies on the adaptive choice of the bandwidth, using model selection techniques. We face here a non-standard problem of model selection with unknown variance. A new approach towards this problem is proposed, which also allows a straightforward generalization to a classical density deconvolution framework.
A two-class mixture model, where the density of one of the components is known, is considered. We address the issue of the nonparametric adaptive estimation of the unknown probability density of the second component. We propose a randomly weighted kernel estimator with a fully data-driven bandwidth selection method, in the spirit of the Goldenshluger and Lepski method. An oracle-type inequality for the pointwise quadratic risk is derived as well as convergence rates over Holder smoothness classes. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical simulations.
We consider the nonparametric estimation problem of time-dependent multivariate functions observed in a presence of additive cylindrical Gaussian white noise of a small intensity. We derive minimax lower bounds for the $L^2$-risk in the proposed spatio-temporal model as the intensity goes to zero, when the underlying unknown response function is assumed to belong to a ball of appropriately constructed inhomogeneous time-dependent multivariate functions, motivated by practical applications. Furthermore, we propose both non-adaptive linear and adaptive non-linear wavelet estimators that are asym…
This paper is concerned with nonparametric estimation of the Lévy density of a pure jump Lévy process. The sample path is observed at $n$ discrete instants with fixed sampling interval. We construct a collection of estimators obtained by deconvolution methods and deduced from appropriate estimators of the characteristic function and its first derivative. We obtain a bound for the ${\mathbb L}^2$-risk, under general assumptions on the model. Then we propose a penalty function that allows to build an adaptive estimator. The risk bound for the adaptive estimator is obtained under additional assum…
In this paper, we introduce a new estimator for the emission densities of a nonparametric hidden Markov model. It is adaptive and minimax with respect to each state's regularity--as opposed to globally minimax estimators, which adapt to the worst regularity among the emission densities. Our method is based on Goldenshluger and Lepski's methodology. It is computationally efficient and only requires a family of preliminary estimators, without any restriction on the type of estimators considered. We present two such estimators that allow to reach minimax rates up to a logarithmic term: a spectral…
Motivated by finance and technical applications, the objective of this paper is to consider adaptive estimation of regression and density distribution based on Fourier-Legendre expansion, and construction of confidence intervals - also adaptive. The estimators are asymptotically optimal and adaptive in the sense that they can adapt to unknown smoothness.
A broad class of smooth, possibly data-adaptive nonparametric copula estimators that contains empirical Bernstein copulas introduced by Sancetta and Satchell (and thus the empirical beta copula proposed by Segers, Sibuya and Tsukahara) is studied. Within this class, a subclass of estimators that depend on a scalar parameter determining the amount of marginal smoothing and a functional parameter controlling the shape of the smoothing region is specifically considered. Empirical investigations of the influence of these parameters suggest to focus on two particular data-adaptive smooth copula est…
We consider the problem of nonparametric estimation of the drift of a continuously observed one-dimensional diffusion with periodic drift. Motivated by computational considerations, van der Meulen e.a. (2014) defined a prior on the drift as a randomly truncated and randomly scaled Faber-Schauder series expansion with Gaussian coefficients. We study the behaviour of the posterior obtained from the prior from a frequentist asymptotic point of view. If the true data generating drift is smooth, it is proved that the posterior is adaptive with posterior contraction rates for the $L_2$-norm that are…
We construct honest confidence regions for a Hilbert space-valued parameter in various statistical models. The confidence sets can be centered at arbitrary adaptive estimators, and have diameter which adapts optimally to a given selection of models. The latter adaptation is necessarily limited in scope. We review the notion of adaptive confidence regions, and relate the optimal rates of the diameter of adaptive confidence regions to the minimax rates for testing and estimation. Applications include the finite normal mean model, the white noise model, density estimation and regression with rand…
The aim of this paper is to estimate the density f of a random variable X when one has access to independent observations of the sum of K $\ge$ 2 independent copies of X. We provide a constructive estimator based on a suitable definition of the logarithm of the empirical characteristic function.We propose a new strategy for the data driven choice of the cut-off parameter. The adaptive estimator is proven to be minimax-optimal up to some logarithmic loss. A numerical study illustrates the performances of the method. Moreover, we discuss the fact that the definition of the estimator applies in a…
In the nonparametric regression setting, we construct an estimator which is a continuous function interpolating the data points with high probability, while attaining minimax optimal rates under mean squared risk on the scale of Hölder classes adaptively to the unknown smoothness.
We introduce a hierarchical nonparametric model for probability measures based on a multi-resolution transformation of probability distributions. The model allows a varying amount of shrinkage to be applied to data features of different scales and/or at different locations in the sample space, and the varying shrinkage level is locally adaptive to the empirical behavior of the data. Moreover, the model's hierarchical design---through a latent Markov tree structure---allows borrowing of information across locations and scales in setting the adaptive shrinkage level. Inference under the model pr…
In this paper, we consider the robust adaptive non parametric estimation problem for the drift coefficient in diffusion processes. An adaptive model selection procedure, based on the improved weighted least square estimates, is proposed. Sharp oracle inequalities for the robust risk have been obtained.
In this paper, we investigate the asymptotic properties of nonparametric Bayesian mixtures of Betas for estimating a smooth density on $[0,1]$. We consider a parametrization of Beta distributions in terms of mean and scale parameters and construct a mixture of these Betas in the mean parameter, while putting a prior on this scaling parameter. We prove that such Bayesian nonparametric models have good frequentist asymptotic properties. We determine the posterior rate of concentration around the true density and prove that it is the minimax rate of concentration when the true density belongs to …
This paper deals with the nonparametric estimation in heteroscedastic regression $ Y_i=f(X_i)+ξ_i, \: i=1,...,n $, with incomplete information, i.e. each real random variable $ ξ_i $ has a density $ g_{i} $ which is unknown to the statistician. The aim is to estimate the regression function $ f $ at a given point. Using a local polynomial fitting from M-estimator denoted $ \hat f^h $ and applying Lepski's procedure for the bandwidth selection, we construct an estimator $ \hat f^{\hat h} $ which is adaptive over the collection of isotropic Hölder classes. In particular, we establish new exponen…
Asymptotic equivalence theory developed in the literature so far are only for bounded loss functions. This limits the potential applications of the theory because many commonly used loss functions in statistical inference are unbounded. In this paper we develop asymptotic equivalence results for robust nonparametric regression with unbounded loss functions. The results imply that all the Gaussian nonparametric regression procedures can be robustified in a unified way. A key step in our equivalence argument is to bin the data and then take the median of each bin. The asymptotic equivalence resu…
We consider the problem of estimating the value l(ϕ) of a linear functional, where the structural function ϕ models a nonparametric relationship in presence of instrumental variables. We propose a plug-in estimator which is based on a dimension reduction technique and additional thresholding. It is shown that this estimator is consistent and can attain the minimax optimal rate of convergence under additional regularity conditions. This, however, requires an optimal choice of the dimension parameter m depending on certain characteristics of the structural function ϕ and the joint distribution o…
Motivated by improving mortality tables from human demography databases, we investigate statistical inference of a stochastic age-evolving density of a population alimented by time inhomogeneous mortality and fertility. Asymptotics are taken as the size of the population grows within a limited time horizon: the observation gets closer to the solution of the Von Foerster Mc Kendrick equation, and the difficulty lies in controlling simultaneously the stochastic approximation to the limiting PDE in a suitable sense together with an appropriate parametrisation of the anisotropic solution. In this …
We consider the detection problem of a two-dimensional function from noisy observations of its integrals over lines. We study both rate and sharp asymptotics for the error probabilities in the minimax setup. By construction, the derived tests are non-adaptive. We also construct a minimax rate-optimal adaptive test of rather simple structure.
An adaptive nonparametric estimation procedure is constructed for heteroscedastic regression when the noise variance depends on the unknown regression. A non-asymptotic upper bound for a quadratic risk (oracle inequality) is obtained
A nonparametric adaptation theory is developed for the construction of confidence intervals for linear functionals. A between class modulus of continuity captures the expected length of adaptive confidence intervals. Sharp lower bounds are given for the expected length and an ordered modulus of continuity is used to construct adaptive confidence procedures which are within a constant factor of the lower bounds. In addition, minimax theory over nonconvex parameter spaces is developed.
We consider the problem of adaptive inference on a regression function at a point under a multivariate nonparametric regression setting. The regression function belongs to a Hölder class and is assumed to be monotone with respect to some or all of the arguments. We derive the minimax rate of convergence for confidence intervals (CIs) that adapt to the underlying smoothness, and provide an adaptive inference procedure that obtains this minimax rate. The procedure differs from that of Cai and Low (2004), intended to yield shorter CIs under practically relevant specifications. The proposed method…
We consider testing for presence of a signal in Gaussian white noise with intensity 1/sqrt(n), when the alternatives are given by smoothness ellipsoids with an L2-ball of (squared) radius rho removed. It is known that, for a fixed Sobolev type ellipsoid of smoothness beta and size M, a rho which is of order n to the power -4 beta/(4 beta+1)} is the critical separation rate, in the sense that the minimax error of second kind over alpha-tests stays asymptotically between 0 and 1 strictly (Ingster, 1982). In addition, Ermakov (1990) found the sharp asymptotics of the minimax error of second kind …
We consider the problem of estimating the structural function in nonparametric instrumental regression, where in the presence of an instrument W a response Y is modeled in dependence of an endogenous explanatory variable Z. The proposed estimator is based on dimension reduction and additional thresholding. The minimax optimal rate of convergence of the estimator is derived assuming that the structural function belongs to some ellipsoids which are in a certain sense linked to the conditional expectation operator of Z given W. We illustrate these results by considering classical smoothness assum…
Based on the novel concept of multivariate center-outward quantiles introduced recently in Chernozhukov et al. (2017) and Hallin et al. (2021), we are considering the problem of nonparametric multiple-output quantile regression. Our approach defines nested conditional center-outward quantile regression contours and regions with given conditional probability content irrespective of the underlying distribution; their graphs constitute nested center-outward quantile regression tubes. Empirical counterparts of these concepts are constructed, yielding interpretable empirical regions and contours wh…
In this paper, we study first the problem of nonparametric estimation of the stationary density $f$ of a discrete-time Markov chain $(X_i)$. We consider a collection of projection estimators on finite dimensional linear spaces. We select an estimator among the collection by minimizing a penalized contrast. The same technique enables to estimate the density $g$ of $(X_i, X_{i+1})$ and so to provide an adaptive estimator of the transition density $π=g/f$. We give bounds in $L^2$ norm for these estimators and we show that they are adaptive in the minimax sense over a large class of Besov spaces. …
A compound Poisson process whose jump measure and intensity are unknown is observed at finitely many equispaced times. We construct a purely data-driven estimator of the Lévy density $ν$ through the spectral approach using general Calderon--Zygmund integral operators, which include convolution and projection kernels. Assuming minimal tail assumptions, it is shown to estimate $ν$ at the minimax rate of estimation over Besov balls under the losses $L^p(\mathbb{R})$, $p\in[1,\infty]$, and robustly to the observation regime (high- and low-frequency). To achieve adaptation in a minimax sense, we us…
The Highly-Adaptive-LASSO Targeted Minimum Loss Estimator (HAL-TMLE) is an efficient plug-in estimator of a pathwise differentiable parameter in a statistical model that at minimal (and possibly only) assumes that the sectional variation norm of the true nuisance functional parameters (i.e., the relevant part of data distribution) are finite. It relies on an initial estimator (HAL-MLE) of the nuisance functional parameters by minimizing the empirical risk over the parameter space under the constraint that the sectional variation norm of the candidate functions are bounded by a constant, where …
This paper considers adaptive, minimax estimation of a quadratic functional in a nonparametric instrumental variables (NPIV) model, which is an important problem in optimal estimation of a nonlinear functional of an ill-posed inverse regression with an unknown operator. We first show that a leave-one-out, sieve NPIV estimator of the quadratic functional can attain a convergence rate that coincides with the lower bound previously derived in Chen and Christensen [2018]. The minimax rate is achieved by the optimal choice of the sieve dimension (a key tuning parameter) that depends on the smoothne…
In this paper for the first time the nonparametric autoregression estimation problem for the quadratic risks is considered. To this end we develop a new adaptive sequential model selection method based on the efficient sequential kernel estimators proposed by Arkoun and Pergamenshchikov (2016). Moreover, we develop a new analytical tool for general regression models to obtain the non asymptotic sharp or- acle inequalities for both usual quadratic and robust quadratic risks. Then, we show that the constructed sequential model selection proce- dure is optimal in the sense of oracle inequalities.
Human learners have the natural ability to use knowledge gained in one setting for learning in a different but related setting. This ability to transfer knowledge from one task to another is essential for effective learning. In this paper, we study transfer learning in the context of nonparametric classification based on observations from different distributions under the posterior drift model, which is a general framework and arises in many practical problems. We first establish the minimax rate of convergence and construct a rate-optimal two-sample weighted $K$-NN classifier. The results cha…
Since Stein's 1956 seminal paper, shrinkage has played a fundamental role in both parametric and nonparametric inference. This article discusses minimaxity and adaptive minimaxity in nonparametric function estimation. Three interrelated problems, function estimation under global integrated squared error, estimation under pointwise squared error, and nonparametric confidence intervals, are considered. Shrinkage is pivotal in the development of both the minimax theory and the adaptation theory. While the three problems are closely connected and the minimax theories bear some similarities, the ad…
Consider nonparametric function estimation under $L^p$-loss. The minimax rate for estimation of the regression function over a Hölder ball with smoothness index $β$ is $n^{-β/(2β+1)}$ if $1\leq p<\infty$ and $(n/\log n)^{-β/(2β+1)}$ if $p=\infty.$ There are many known procedures that either attain this rate for $p=\infty$ but are suboptimal by a $\log n$ factor in the case $p<\infty$ or the other way around. In this article, we construct an estimator that simultaneously achieves the optimal rates under $L^p$-risk for all $1\leq p\leq \infty$ without prior knowledge of $β.$ In contrast to class…
In this paper, we study the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of a convex hazard function. We show that the MLE is consistent and converges at a local rate of $n^{2/5}$ at points $x_0$ where the true hazard function is positive and strictly convex. Moreover, we establish the pointwise asymptotic distribution theory of our estimator under these same assumptions. One notable feature of the nonparametric MLE studied here is that no arbitrary choice of tuning parameter (or complicated data-adaptive selection of the tuning parameter) is required.
In this paper we develop a nonparametric regression method that is simultaneously adaptive over a wide range of function classes for the regression function and robust over a large collection of error distributions, including those that are heavy-tailed, and may not even possess variances or means. Our approach is to first use local medians to turn the problem of nonparametric regression with unknown noise distribution into a standard Gaussian regression problem and then apply a wavelet block thresholding procedure to construct an estimator of the regression function. It is shown that the esti…
We consider the problem of non-parametric regression with a potentially large number of covariates. We propose a convex, penalized estimation framework that is particularly well-suited for high-dimensional sparse additive models. The proposed approach combines appealing features of finite basis representation and smoothing penalties for non-parametric estimation. In particular, in the case of additive models, a finite basis representation provides a parsimonious representation for fitted functions but is not adaptive when component functions posses different levels of complexity. On the other …
A theory of superefficiency and adaptation is developed under flexible performance measures which give a multiresolution view of risk and bridge the gap between pointwise and global estimation. This theory provides a useful benchmark for the evaluation of spatially adaptive estimators and shows that the possible degree of superefficiency for minimax rate optimal estimators critically depends on the size of the neighborhood over which the risk is measured. Wavelet procedures are given which adapt rate optimally for given shrinking neighborhoods including the extreme cases of mean squared error …
We focus on the nonparametric density estimation problem with directional data. We propose a new rule for bandwidth selection for kernel density estimation. Our procedure is automatic, fully data-driven and adaptive to the smoothness degree of the density. We obtain an oracle inequality and optimal rates of convergence for the L2 error. Our theoretical results are illustrated with simulations.
The paper considers the problem of robust estimating a periodic function in a continuous time regression model with dependent disturbances given by a general square integrable semimartingale with unknown distribution. An example of such a noise is non-gaussian Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with the Lévy process subordinator, which is used to model the financial Black-Scholes type markets with jumps. An adaptive model selection procedure, based on the weighted least square estimates, is proposed. Under general moment conditions on the noise distribution, sharp non-asymptotic oracle inequalities fo…
We consider the problem of adaptive estimation of the regression function in a framework where we replace ergodicity assumptions (such as independence or mixing) by another structural assumption on the model. Namely, we propose adaptive upper bounds for kernel estimators with data-driven bandwidth (Lepski's selection rule) in a regression model where the noise is an increment of martingale. It includes, as very particular cases, the usual i.i.d. regression and auto-regressive models. The cornerstone tool for this study is a new result for self-normalized martingales, called ``stability'', whic…
Random coefficient regression models are a popular tool for analyzing unobserved heterogeneity, and have seen renewed interest in the recent econometric literature. In this paper we obtain the optimal pointwise convergence rate for estimating the density in the linear random coefficient model over Hölder smoothness classes, and in particular show how the tail behavior of the design density impacts this rate. In contrast to previous suggestions, the estimator that we propose and that achieves the optimal convergence rate does not require dividing by a nonparametric density estimate. The optimal…
Université de Mons（蒙斯大学）；Faculté polytechnique（理工学院）；Département de Mathématique et recherche opérationnelle（数学与运筹学系）；e-mail（电子邮件）
Active learning is typically used to label data, when the labeling process is expensive. Several active learning algorithms have been theoretically proved to perform better than their passive counterpart. However, these algorithms rely on some assumptions, which themselves contain some specific parameters. This paper adresses the problem of adaptive active learning in a nonparametric setting with minimal assumptions. We present a novel algorithm that is valid under more general assumptions than the previously known algorithms, and that can moreover adapt to the parameters used in these assumpt…
In this paper, we consider a piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMP), with known flow and deterministic transition measure, and unknown jump rate $λ$. To estimate nonparametrically the jump rate, we first construct an adaptive estimator of the stationary density, then we derive a quotient estimator $\hatλ_n$ of $λ$. We provide uniform bounds for the risk of these estimators, and prove that the estimator of the jump rate is nearly minimax (up to a $\ln^2(n)$ factor). Simulations illustrate the behavior of our estimator.
