No Arabic abstract
Exchangeability -- in which the distribution of an infinite sequence is invariant to reorderings of its elements -- implies the existence of a simple conditional independence structure that may be leveraged in the design of probabilistic models, efficient inference algorithms, and randomization-based testing procedures. In practice, however, this assumption is too strong an idealization; the distribution typically fails to be exactly invariant to permutations and de Finettis representation theory does not apply. Thus there is the need for a distributional assumption that is both weak enough to hold in practice, and strong enough to guarantee a useful underlying representation. We introduce a relaxed notion of local exchangeability -- where swapping data associated with nearby covariates causes a bounded change in the distribution. We prove that locally exchangeable processes correspond to independent observations from an underlying measure-valued stochastic process. We thereby show that de Finettis theorem is robust to perturbation and provide further justification for the Bayesian modelling approach. Using this probabilistic result, we develop three novel statistical procedures for (1) estimating the underlying process via local empirical measures, (2) testing via local randomization, and (3) estimating the canonical premetric of local exchangeability. These three procedures extend the applicability of previous exchangeability-based methods without sacrificing rigorous statistical guarantees. The paper concludes with examples of popular statistical models that exhibit local exchangeability.
The coefficient function of the leading differential operator is estimated from observations of a linear stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE). The estimation is based on continuous time observations which are localised in space. For the asymptotic regime with fixed time horizon and with the spatial resolution of the observations tending to zero, we provide rate-optimal estimators and establish scaling limits of the deterministic PDE and of the SPDE on growing domains. The estimators are robust to lower order perturbations of the underlying differential operator and achieve the parametric rate even in the nonparametric setup with a spatially varying coefficient. A numerical example illustrates the main results.
This work contributes to the limited literature on estimating the diffusivity or drift coefficient of nonlinear SPDEs driven by additive noise. Assuming that the solution is measured locally in space and over a finite time interval, we show that the augmented maximum likelihood estimator introduced in Altmeyer, Reiss (2020) retains its asymptotic properties when used for semilinear SPDEs that satisfy some abstract, and verifiable, conditions. The proofs of asymptotic results are based on splitting the solution in linear and nonlinear parts and fine regularity properties in $L^p$-spaces. The obtained general results are applied to particular classes of equations, including stochastic reaction-diffusion equations. The stochastic Burgers equation, as an example with first order nonlinearity, is an interesting borderline case of the general results, and is treated by a Wiener chaos expansion. We conclude with numerical examples that validate the theoretical results.
Suppose we observe an infinite series of coin flips $X_1,X_2,ldots$, and wish to sequentially test the null that these binary random variables are exchangeable. Nonnegative supermartingales (NSMs) are a workhorse of sequential inference, but we prove that they are powerless for this problem. First, utilizing a geometric concept called fork-convexity (a sequential analog of convexity), we show that any process that is an NSM under a set of distributions, is also necessarily an NSM under their fork-convex hull. Second, we demonstrate that the fork-convex hull of the exchangeable null consists of all possible laws over binary sequences; this implies that any NSM under exchangeability is necessarily nonincreasing, hence always yields a powerless test for any alternative. Since testing arbitrary deviations from exchangeability is information theoretically impossible, we focus on Markovian alternatives. We combine ideas from universal inference and the method of mixtures to derive a safe e-process, which is a nonnegative process with expectation at most one under the null at any stopping time, and is upper bounded by a martingale, but is not itself an NSM. This in turn yields a level $alpha$ sequential test that is consistent; regret bounds from universal coding also demonstrate rate-optimal power. We present ways to extend these results to any finite alphabet and to Markovian alternatives of any order using a double mixture approach. We provide an array of simulations, and give general approaches based on betting for unstructured or ill-specified alternatives. Finally, inspired by Shafer, Vovk, and Ville, we provide game-theoretic interpretations of our e-processes and pathwise results.
In this paper we consider the nonparametric functional estimation of the drift of Gaussian processes using Paley-Wiener and Karhunen-Lo`eve expansions. We construct efficient estimators for the drift of such processes, and prove their minimaxity using Bayes estimators. We also construct superefficient estimators of Stein type for such drifts using the Malliavin integration by parts formula and stochastic analysis on Gaussian space, in which superharmonic functionals of the process paths play a particular role. Our results are illustrated by numerical simulations and extend the construction of James-Stein type estimators for Gaussian processes by Berger and Wolper.
We consider the limit distribution of maxima of periodograms for stationary processes. Our method is based on $m$-dependent approximation for stationary processes and a moderate deviation result.