/tags/2016-fall/index.xml 2016 Fall - McGill Statistics Seminars

2016 Fall

  • Cellular tree classifiers

    Luc Devroye · Oct 7, 2016

    Date: 2016-10-07

    Time: 15:30-16:30

    Location: BURN 1205

    Abstract:

    Suppose that binary classification is done by a tree method in which the leaves of a tree correspond to a partition of d-space. Within a partition, a majority vote is used. Suppose furthermore that this tree must be constructed recursively by implementing just two functions, so that the construction can be carried out in parallel by using “cells”: first of all, given input data, a cell must decide whether it will become a leaf or internal node in the tree. Secondly, if it decides on an internal node, it must decide how to partition the space linearly. Data are then split into two parts and sent downstream to two new independent cells. We discuss the design and properties of such classifiers.

  • CoCoLasso for high-dimensional error-in-variables regression

    Hui Zou · Sep 30, 2016

    Date: 2016-09-30

    Time: 15:30-16:30

    Location: BURN 1205

    Abstract:

    Much theoretical and applied work has been devoted to high-dimensional regression with clean data. However, we often face corrupted data in many applications where missing data and measurement errors cannot be ignored. Loh and Wainwright (2012) proposed a non-convex modification of the Lasso for doing high-dimensional regression with noisy and missing data. It is generally agreed that the virtues of convexity contribute fundamentally the success and popularity of the Lasso. In light of this, we propose a new method named CoCoLasso that is convex and can handle a general class of corrupted datasets including the cases of additive measurement error and random missing data. We establish the estimation error bounds of CoCoLasso and its asymptotic sign-consistent selection property. We further elucidate how the standard cross validation techniques can be misleading in presence of measurement error and develop a novel corrected cross-validation technique by using the basic idea in CoCoLasso. The corrected cross-validation has its own importance. We demonstrate the superior performance of our method over the non-convex approach by simulation studies.

  • Stein estimation of the intensity parameter of a stationary spatial Poisson point process

    Jean-François Coeurjolly · Sep 23, 2016

    Date: 2016-09-23

    Time: 15:30-16:30

    Location: BURN 1205

    Abstract:

    We revisit the problem of estimating the intensity parameter of a homogeneous Poisson point process observed in a bounded window of $R^d$ making use of a (now) old idea going back to James and Stein. For this, we prove an integration by parts formula for functionals defined on the Poisson space. This formula extends the one obtained by Privault and Réveillac (Statistical inference for Stochastic Processes, 2009) in the one-dimensional case and is well-suited to a notion of derivative of Poisson functionals which satisfy the chain rule. The new estimators can be viewed as biased versions of the MLE with a tailored-made bias designed to reduce the variance of the MLE. We study a large class of examples and show that with a controlled probability the corresponding estimator outperforms the MLE. We illustrate in a simulation study that for very reasonable practical cases (like an intensity of 10 or 20 of a Poisson point process observed in the d-dimensional euclidean ball of with d = 1, …, 5), we can obtain a relative (mean squared error) gain above 20% for the Stein estimator with respect to the maximum likelihood. This is a joint work with M. Clausel and J. Lelong (Univ. Grenoble Alpes, France).

  • Statistical inference for fractional diffusion processes

    Prakasa Rao · Sep 16, 2016

    Date: 2016-09-16

    Time: 16:00-17:00

    Location: LB-921.04, Library Building, Concordia Univ.

    Abstract:

    There are some time series which exhibit long-range dependence as noticed by Hurst in his investigations of river water levels along Nile river. Long-range dependence is connected with the concept of self-similarity in that increments of a self-similar process with stationary increments exhibit long-range dependence under some conditions. Fractional Brownian motion is an example of such a process. We discuss statistical inference for stochastic processes modeled by stochastic differential equations driven by a fractional Brownian motion. These processes are termed as fractional diffusion processes. Since fractional Brownian motion is not a semimartingale, it is not possible to extend the notion of a stochastic integral with respect to a fractional Brownian motion following the ideas of Ito integration. There are other methods of extending integration with respect to a fractional Brownian motion. Suppose a complete path of a fractional diffusion process is observed over a finite time interval. We will present some results on inference problems for such processes.

  • Two-set canonical variate model in multiple populations with invariant loadings

    Fei Gu · Sep 9, 2016

    Date: 2016-09-09

    Time: 15:30-16:30

    Location: BURN 1205

    Abstract:

    Goria and Flury (Definition 2.1, 1996) proposed the two-set canonical variate model (referred to as the CV-2 model hereafter) and its extension in multiple populations with invariant weight coefficients (Definition 2.2). The equality constraints imposed on the weight coefficients are in line with the approach to interpreting the canonical variates (i.e., the linear combinations of original variables) advocated by Harris (1975, 1989), Rencher (1988, 1992), and Rencher and Christensen (2003). However, the literature in psychology and education shows that the standard approach adopted by most researchers, including Anderson (2003), is to use the canonical loadings (i.e., the correlations between the canonical variates and the original variables in the same set) to interpret the canonical variates. In case of multicollinearity (giving rise to the so-called suppression effects) among the original variables, it is not uncommon to obtain different interpretations from the two approaches. Therefore, following the standard approach in practice, an alternative (probably more realistic) extension of Goria and Flury’s CV-2 model in multiple populations is to impose the equality constraints on the canonical loadings. The utility of this multiple-population extension are illustrated with two numeric examples.