Minimax estimation via wavelets for indirect long-memory data

In this paper, we model linear inverse problems with long-range dependence by a fractional Gaussian noise model and study function estimation based on observations from the model. By using two wavelet-vaguelette decompositions, one for the inverse problem which simultaneously quasi-diagonalizes both the operator and the prior information, and one for long-range dependence which decorrelates fractional Gaussian noise, we establish asymptotics for minimax risks, and show that the wavelet shrinkage estimate can be tuned to achieve the minimax convergence rate and significantly outperform linear estimates.     

Non-minimaxity of linear combinations of restricted location estimators and related problems

The estimation of a linear combination of several restricted location parameters is addressed from a decision-theoretic point of view. Although the corresponding linear combination of the unbiased estimators is minimax under the restricted problem, it has a drawback of taking values outside the restricted parameter space. Thus, it is reasonable to use the linear combination of the restricted estimators such as maximum likelihood or truncated estimators. In this paper, a necessary and sufficient condition for such restricted estimators to be minimax is derived, and it is shown that the restricted estimators are not minimax when the number of the location parameters is large. The condition for minimaxity is examined for some specific distributions. Finally, similar problems of estimating the product and sum of the restricted scale parameters are studied, and it is shown that analogous non-dominance properties appear when the number of the scale parameters is large.     

Simultaneous estimation of restricted location parameters based on permutation and sign-change

The problem of simultaneously estimating location parameters is addressed, where the vector of location parameters belongs to a polyhedral cone including simple order, tree order and positive orthant restrictions and so forth. This paper proposes modified estimators based on orthogonal transformations such as sign-change and permutation and proves that, in a multivariate location family, the modified estimators are minimax under quadratic loss. Shrinkage minimax estimators improving on the modified estimators are obtained for a restricted mean vector of spherically symmetric distribution. An application of sign-change transformation is also given in estimation of a bounded normal mean.     

Estimation of parameters of inverse Weibull distribution and application to multi-component stress-strength model

The problem of estimation of the parameters of two-parameter inverse Weibull distributions has been considered. We establish existence and uniqueness of the maximum likelihood estimators of the scale and shape parameters. We derive Bayes estimators of the parameters under the entropy loss function. Hierarchical Bayes estimator, equivariant estimator and a class of minimax estimators are derived when shape parameter is known. Ordered Bayes estimators using information about second population are also derived. We investigate the reliability of multi-component stress-strength model using classical and Bayesian approaches. Risk comparison of the classical and Bayes estimators is done using Monte Carlo simulations. Applications of the proposed estimators are shown using real data sets.     

A new class of minimax generalized Bayes estimators of a normal variance

A new class of minimax generalized Bayes estimators of the variance of a normal distribution is given under both quadratic and entropy losses. One contribution of the paper is a new class of minimax generalized Bayes estimators of a particularly simple form. Another contribution is a class of minimax generalized Bayes procedures satisfying a Strawderman [1974. Minimax estimation of powers of the variance of a normal population under squared error loss. Ann. Statist. 2, 190–198]-type condition which do not satisfy a Brewster and Zidek [1974. Improving on equivariant estimators. Ann. Statist. 2, 21–38]-type condition. We indicate that the new class may have a noticeably larger region of substantial improvement over the usual estimator than Brewster and Zidek-type procedures.     

Minimax linear empirical bayes estimation of the binomial parameter

The minimax linear Empirical Bayes estimators for a binomial parameter are obtained, assuming some information about the moments of the prior. The form of these estimates is used to propose a criterion which may be helpful in determining whether Empirical Bayes estimation is Indicated for a given problem.     

Minimax Linear Smoothers

We consider the problem of estimating the mean of a multivariate distribution. As a general alternative to penalized least squares estimators, we consider minimax estimators for squared error over a restricted parameter space where the restriction is determined by the penalization term. For a quadratic penalty term, the minimax estimator among linear estimators can be found explicitly. It is shown that all symmetric linear smoothers with eigenvalues in the unit interval can be characterized as minimax linear estimators over a certain parameter space where the bias is bounded. The minimax linear estimator depends on smoothing parameters that must be estimated in practice. Using results in Kneip (1994), this can be done using Mallows' C _L -statistic and the resulting adaptive estimator is now asymptotically minimax linear. The minimax estimator is compared to the penalized least squares estimator both in finite samples and asymptotically.     

Efficiency of a Class of Unbiased Estimators for the Invariant Distribution Function of a Diffusion Process

We consider the problem of the estimation of the invariant distribution function of an ergodic diffusion process when the drift coefficient is unknown. The empirical distribution function is a natural estimator which is unbiased, uniformly consistent and efficient in different metrics. Here we study the properties of optimality for another kind of estimator recently proposed. We consider a class of unbiased estimators and we show that they are also efficient in the sense that their asymptotic risk, defined as the integrated mean square error, attains the same asymptotic minimax lower bound of the empirical distribution function.     

Estimation for Location-Scale Models with Censored Data

This article considers a class of estimators for the location and scale parameters in the location-scale model based on ‘synthetic data’ when the observations are randomly censored on the right. The asymptotic normality of the estimators is established using counting process and martingale techniques when the censoring distribution is known and unknown, respectively. In the case when the censoring distribution is known, we show that the asymptotic variances of this class of estimators depend on the data transformation and have a lower bound which is not achievable by this class of estimators. However, in the case that the censoring distribution is unknown and estimated by the Kaplan–Meier estimator, this class of estimators has the same asymptotic variance and attains the lower bound for variance for the case of known censoring distribution. This is different from censored regression analysis, where asymptotic variances depend on the data transformation. Our method has three valuable advantages over the method of maximum likelihood estimation. First, our estimators are available in a closed form and do not require an iterative algorithm. Second, simulation studies show that our estimators being moment-based are comparable to maximum likelihood estimators and outperform them when sample size is small and censoring rate is high. Third, our estimators are more robust to model misspecification than maximum likelihood estimators. Therefore, our method can serve as a competitive alternative to the method of maximum likelihood in estimation for location-scale models with censored data. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the proposed method.     

Approximate minimax estimation in linear regression: theoretical results

We consider to ordinary linear regression model where the parameter vector ß is constrained to a given ellipsoid. It will be shown that within the class of linear statistics for ß where exists a (sub-)sequence of approximate minimax estimators converging to an exact minimax estimator. This result is valid for an arbitrary quadratic loss function.     

A family of admissible minimax estimators of the mean of a multivariate,normal distribution

Let X has a p-dimensional normal distribution with mean vector θ and identity covariance matrix I. In a compound decision problem consisting of squared-error estimation of θ, Strawderman (1971) placed a Beta (α, 1) prior distribution on a normal class of priors to produce a family of Bayes minimax estimators. We propose an incomplete Gamma(α, β) prior distribution on the same normal class of priors to produce a larger family of Bayes minimax estimators. We present the results of a Monte Carlo study to demonstrate the reduced risk of our estimators in comparison with the Strawderman estimators when θ is away from the zero vector.     

Minimax estimation of a lower-bounded scale parameter of a gamma distribution for scale-invariant squared-error loss

Let X have a gamma distribution with known shape parameter θr;aL and unknown scale parameter θ. Suppose it is known that θ ≥ a for some known a > 0. An admissible minimax estimator for scale-invariant squared-error loss is presented. This estimator is the pointwise limit of a sequence of Bayes estimators. Further, the class of truncated linear estimators C = {θ_ρ|θ_ρ(x) = max(a, ρ), ρ > 0} is studied. It is shown that each θ_ρ is inadmissible and that exactly one of them is minimax. Finally, it is shown that Katz's [Ann. Math. Statist., 32, 136–142 (1961)] estimator of θ is not minimax for our loss function. Some further properties of and comparisons among these estimators are also presented.     

Minimax estimators of regression functions under normalized quadratic loss functions and inequality restrictions

This paper deals with the estimation of a regression function f of unknown form by shrinked least squares estimates calculated on the basis of possibly replicated observa-tions, The estimation loss is chosen in a somewhat more realistic manner then the usual quadratic losses and is given by an adequately weighted sum of squared errors in estimat-ing the values of f at the design points, normalized by the squared norm of the regression function, Shrinked least squares (as special ridge estimators) have been proved by the suthors in special cases to be minimax under all estimatiors.

We investigate the shrinking of least squares estimators with the objective of minimiz-ing the least favourable risk. Here we assume a known lower bound for the magnitude of f and a known upper bound for the difference between f and some simple function approxi-mating f, e.g. we know that f is the sum of a quadratic polynomial and of some     

Quasi-Minimax Estimation in the Linear Model with Measurement Errors

In this article, we consider quasi-minimax estimation in the linear regression model where some covariates are measured with additive errors. When measurement errors are directly ignored the minimax risk of the resulting estimator can be large. By correcting the attenuation we propose a penalized quadratic risk function. A simulation study is conducted to illustrate the performance of the proposed estimators.     

Asymptotically optimum estimation of a probability in inverse binomial sampling under general loss functions

The optimum quality that can be asymptotically achieved in the estimation of a probability p using inverse binomial sampling is addressed. A general definition of quality is used in terms of the risk associated with a loss function that satisfies certain assumptions. It is shown that the limit superior of the risk for p asymptotically small has a minimum over all (possibly randomized) estimators. This minimum is achieved by certain non-randomized estimators. The model includes commonly used quality criteria as particular cases. Applications to the non-asymptotic regime are discussed considering specific loss functions, for which minimax estimators are derived.     

A note on Bayesian nonparametric regression function estimation

In this note the problem of nonparametric regression function estimation in a random design regression model with Gaussian errors is considered from the Bayesian perspective. It is assumed that the regression function belongs to a class of functions with a known degree of smoothness. A prior distribution on the given class can be induced by a prior on the coefficients in a series expansion of the regression function through an orthonormal system. The rate of convergence of the resulting posterior distribution is employed to provide a measure of the accuracy of the Bayesian estimation procedure defined by the posterior expected regression function. We show that the Bayes’ estimator achieves the optimal minimax rate of convergence under mean integrated squared error over the involved class of regression functions, thus being comparable to other popular frequentist regression estimators.     

Sequential shrinkage estimation of independent normal means with unkown variances

The Paper considers estimation of the p(> 3)-variate normal mean when the variance-covariance matrix is diagonal with unknown diagonal elements. A class of James-Stein estimators is developed, and is compared with the sample mean under an empirical minimax stopping rule. Asymptotic risk expansions are provided for both the sequential sample mean and the sequential James-Stein estimators. It is shown that the James-Stein estimators dominate the sample mean in a certain asymptotic sense.     

Minimax estimation of a probability of success under LINEX loss

Minimax estimation of a binomial probability under LINEX loss function is considered. It is shown that no equalizer estimator is available in the statistical decision problem under consideration. It is pointed out that the problem can be solved by determining the Bayes estimator with respect to a least favorable distribution having finite support. In this situation, the optimal estimator and the least favorable distribution can be determined only by using numerical methods. Some properties of the minimax estimators and the corresponding least favorable prior distributions are provided depending on the parameters of the loss function. The properties presented are exploited in computing the minimax estimators and the least favorable distributions. The results obtained can be applied to determine minimax estimators of a cumulative distribution function and minimax estimators of a survival function.     

On estimation of variance components with constraints

The so-called linear approach to estimating linear functions of variance and/or covariance components clearly shows the well-known connection between quadratic, invariant and unbiased, estimation and the classical linear theory methods, LSE and BLUE. This approach allows us to consider and to use further results of the linear theory for variance-covariance components estimation.In the present paper the minimax invariant quadratic estimators of linear functions of variance-covariance components under full or partial restrictions on the parameter set are investigated.     

Asymptotically minimax non–parametric function estimation with positivity constraints I

The spatially inhomogeneous smoothness of the non-parametric density or regression-function to be estimated by non-parametric methods is often modelled by Besov- and Triebel-type smoothness constraints. For such problems, Donoho and Johnstone [D.L. Donoho and I.M. Johnstone, Minimax estimation via wavelet shrinkage. Ann. Stat. 26 (1998), pp. 879–921.], Delyon and Juditsky [B. Delyon and A. Juditsky, On minimax wavelet estimators, Appl. Comput. Harmon. Anal. 3 (1996), pp. 215–228.] studied minimax rates of convergence for wavelet estimators with thresholding, while Lepski et al. [O.V. Lepski, E. Mammen, and V.G. Spokoiny, Optimal spatial adaptation to inhomogeneous smoothness: an approach based on kernel estimators with variable bandwidth selectors, Ann. Stat. 25 (1997), pp. 929–947.] proposed a variable bandwidth selection for kernel estimators that achieved optimal rates over Besov classes. However, a second challenge in many real applications of non-parametric curve estimation is that the function must be positive. Here, we show how to construct estimators under positivity constraints that satisfy these constraints and also achieve minimax rates over the appropriate smoothness class.