Huiming Zhang

Huiming Zhang, Haoyu Wei, Guang Cheng

In non-asymptotic learning, variance-type parameters of sub-Gaussian distributions are of paramount importance. However, directly estimating these parameters using the empirical moment generating function (MGF) is infeasible. To address this, we suggest using the sub-Gaussian intrinsic moment norm [Buldygin and Kozachenko (2000), Theorem 1.3] achieved by maximizing a sequence of normalized moments. Significantly, the suggested norm can not only reconstruct the exponential moment bounds of MGFs but also provide tighter sub-Gaussian concentration inequalities. In practice, we provide an intuitive method for assessing whether data with a finite sample size is sub-Gaussian, utilizing the sub-Gaussian plot. The intrinsic moment norm can be robustly estimated via a simple plug-in approach. Our theoretical findings are also applicable to reinforcement learning, including the multi-armed bandit scenario.

Fang Xie, Lihu Xu, Qiuran Yao et al.

This paper studies the distribution estimation of contaminated data by the MoM-GAN method, which combines generative adversarial net (GAN) and median-of-mean (MoM) estimation. We use a deep neural network (DNN) with a ReLU activation function to model the generator and discriminator of the GAN. Theoretically, we derive a non-asymptotic error bound for the DNN-based MoM-GAN estimator measured by integral probability metrics with the $b$-smoothness Hölder class. The error bound decreases essentially as $n^{-b/p}\vee n^{-1/2}$, where $n$ and $p$ are the sample size and the dimension of input data. We give an algorithm for the MoM-GAN method and implement it through two real applications. The numerical results show that the MoM-GAN outperforms other competitive methods when dealing with contaminated data.

Lihu Xu, Fang Yao, Qiuran Yao et al.

There has been a surge of interest in developing robust estimators for models with heavy-tailed and bounded variance data in statistics and machine learning, while few works impose unbounded variance. This paper proposes two type of robust estimators, the ridge log-truncated M-estimator and the elastic net log-truncated M-estimator. The first estimator is applied to convex regressions such as quantile regression and generalized linear models, while the other one is applied to high dimensional non-convex learning problems such as regressions via deep neural networks. Simulations and real data analysis demonstrate the {robustness} of log-truncated estimations over standard estimations.

Chang Cui, Jinzhu Jia, Yijun Xiao et al.

High-dimensional sparse generalized linear models (GLMs) have emerged in the setting that the number of samples and the dimension of variables are large, and even the dimension of variables grows faster than the number of samples. False discovery rate (FDR) control aims to identify some small number of statistically significantly nonzero results after getting the sparse penalized estimation of GLMs. Using the CLIME method for precision matrix estimations, we construct the debiased-Lasso estimator and prove the asymptotical normality by minimax-rate oracle inequalities for sparse GLMs. In practice, it is often needed to accurately judge each regression coefficient's positivity and negativity, which determines whether the predictor variable is positively or negatively related to the response variable conditionally on the rest variables. Using the debiased estimator, we establish multiple testing procedures. Under mild conditions, we show that the proposed debiased statistics can asymptotically control the directional (sign) FDR and directional false discovery variables at a pre-specified significance level. Moreover, it can be shown that our multiple testing procedure can approximately achieve a statistical power of 1. We also extend our methods to the two-sample problems and propose the two-sample test statistics. Under suitable conditions, we can asymptotically achieve directional FDR control and directional FDV control at the specified significance level for two-sample problems. Some numerical simulations have successfully verified the FDR control effects of our proposed testing procedures, which sometimes outperforms the classical knockoff method.

Huiming Zhang, Haoyu Wei

Constant-specified and exponential concentration inequalities play an essential role in the finite-sample theory of machine learning and high-dimensional statistics area. We obtain sharper and constants-specified concentration inequalities for the sum of independent sub-Weibull random variables, which leads to a mixture of two tails: sub-Gaussian for small deviations and sub-Weibull for large deviations from the mean. These bounds are new and improve existing bounds with sharper constants. In addition, a new sub-Weibull parameter if the italic should be retained. Please check the whole text. is also proposed, which enables recovering the tight concentration inequality for a random variable (vector). For statistical applications, we give an $\ell_2$-error of estimated coefficients in negative binomial regressions when the heavy-tailed covariates are sub-Weibull distributed with sparse structures, which is a new result for negative binomial regressions. In applying random matrices, we derive non-asymptotic versions of Bai-Yin's theorem for sub-Weibull entries with exponential tail bounds. Finally, by demonstrating a sub-Weibull confidence region for a log-truncated Z-estimator without the second-moment condition, we discuss and define the sub-Weibull type robust estimator for independent observations $\{X_i\}_{i=1}^{n}$ without exponential-moment conditions.

Huiming Zhang, Xiaoyu Lei

Under the reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS), we consider the penalized least-squares of the partially functional linear models (PFLM), whose predictor contains both functional and traditional multivariate parts, and the multivariate part allows a divergent number of parameters. From the non-asymptotic point of view, we focus on the rate-optimal upper and lower bounds of the prediction error. An exact upper bound for the excess prediction risk is shown in a non-asymptotic form under a more general assumption known as the effective dimension to the model, by which we also show the prediction consistency when the number of multivariate covariates $p$ slightly increases with the sample size $n$. Our new finding implies a trade-off between the number of non-functional predictors and the effective dimension of the kernel principal components to ensure prediction consistency in the increasing-dimensional setting. The analysis in our proof hinges on the spectral condition of the sandwich operator of the covariance operator and the reproducing kernel, and on sub-Gaussian and Berstein concentration inequalities for the random elements in Hilbert space. Finally, we derive the non-asymptotic minimax lower bound under the regularity assumption of the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the models.

Huamei Huang, Yujing Gao, Huiming Zhang et al.

When we are interested in high-dimensional system and focus on classification performance, the $\ell_{1}$-penalized logistic regression is becoming important and popular. However, the Lasso estimates could be problematic when penalties of different coefficients are all the same and not related to the data. We proposed two types of weighted Lasso estimates depending on covariates by the McDiarmid inequality. Given sample size $n$ and dimension of covariates $p$, the finite sample behavior of our proposed methods with a diverging number of predictors is illustrated by non-asymptotic oracle inequalities such as $\ell_{1}$-estimation error and squared prediction error of the unknown parameters. We compare the performance of our methods with former weighted estimates on simulated data, then apply these methods to do real data analysis.

Jun Yu, HaiYing Wang, Mingyao Ai et al.

Nonuniform subsampling methods are effective to reduce computational burden and maintain estimation efficiency for massive data. Existing methods mostly focus on subsampling with replacement due to its high computational efficiency. If the data volume is so large that nonuniform subsampling probabilities cannot be calculated all at once, then subsampling with replacement is infeasible to implement. This paper solves this problem using Poisson subsampling. We first derive optimal Poisson subsampling probabilities in the context of quasi-likelihood estimation under the A- and L-optimality criteria. For a practically implementable algorithm with approximated optimal subsampling probabilities, we establish the consistency and asymptotic normality of the resultant estimators. To deal with the situation that the full data are stored in different blocks or at multiple locations, we develop a distributed subsampling framework, in which statistics are computed simultaneously on smaller partitions of the full data. Asymptotic properties of the resultant aggregated estimator are investigated. We illustrate and evaluate the proposed strategies through numerical experiments on simulated and real data sets.

Xiaowei Yang, Huiming Zhang, Haoyu Wei et al.

This paper aims to build an estimate of an unknown density of the data with measurement error as a linear combination of functions from a dictionary. Inspired by the penalization approach, we propose the weighted Elastic-net penalized minimal $\ell_2$-distance method for sparse coefficients estimation, where the adaptive weights come from sharp concentration inequalities. The optimal weighted tuning parameters are obtained by the first-order conditions holding with a high probability. Under local coherence or minimal eigenvalue assumptions, non-asymptotical oracle inequalities are derived. These theoretical results are transposed to obtain the support recovery with a high probability. Then, some numerical experiments for discrete and continuous distributions confirm the significant improvement obtained by our procedure when compared with other conventional approaches. Finally, the application is performed in a meteorology data set. It shows that our method has potency and superiority of detecting the shape of multi-mode density compared with other conventional approaches.