Optimal convergence rates and asymptotic efficiency of point estimators under truncated distribution families

For regular and irregular truncated distribution families, the optimal convergence rates of consistent point estimators have been found and the corresponding asymptotic efficiencies established. Also, it has been justified that commonly used estimators are all efficient. The efficiencies here are compared to the efficiencies of asymptotically median unbiased estimators, providing a lot of counter estimator examples such that those estimators are efficient in the former sense, but not in the latter.     

Mean-square random dynamical systems

The classical theory of random dynamical systems is a pathwise theory based on a skew-product system consisting of a measure theoretic autonomous system that represents the driving noise and a topological cocycle mapping for the state evolution. This theory does not, however, apply to nonlocal dynamics such as when the dynamics of a sample path depends on other sample paths through an expectation or when the evolution of random sets depends on nonlocal properties such as the diameter of the sets. The authors showed recently in terms of stochastic morphological evolution equations that such nonlocal random dynamics can be characterized by a deterministic two-parameter process from the theory of nonautonomous dynamical systems acting on a state space of random variables or random sets with the mean-square topology. This observation is exploited here to provide a definition of mean-square random dynamical systems and their attractors. The main difficulty in applying the theory is the lack of useful characterizations of compact sets of mean-square random variables. It is illustrated through simple but instructive examples how this can be avoided in strictly contractive cases or circumvented by using weak compactness. The existence of a pullback attractor then follows from the much more easily determined mean-square ultimate boundedness of solutions.     

Sample path optimality for a Markov optimization problem

We study a unichain Markov decision process i.e. a controlled Markov process whose state process under a stationary policy is an ergodic Markov chain. Here the state and action spaces are assumed to be either finite or countable. When the state process is uniformly ergodic and the immediate cost is bounded then a policy that minimizes the long-term expected average cost also has an nth stage sample path cost that with probability one is asymptotically less than the nth stage sample path cost under any other non-optimal stationary policy with a larger expected average cost. This is a strengthening in the Markov model case of the a.s. asymptotically optimal property frequently discussed in the literature.     

Semiparametric analysis in double-sampling designs via empirical likelihood

Double-sampling designs are commonly used in real applications when it is infeasible to collect exact measurements on all variables of interest. Two samples, a primary sample on proxy measures and a validation subsample on exact measures, are available in these designs. We assume that the validation sample is drawn from the primary sample by the Bernoulli sampling with equal selection probability. An empirical likelihood based approach is proposed to estimate the parameters of interest. By allowing the number of constraints to grow as the sample size goes to infinity, the resulting maximum empirical likelihood estimator is asymptotically normal and its limiting variance-covariance matrix reaches the semiparametric efficiency bound. Moreover, the Wilks-type result of convergence to chi-squared distribution for the empirical likelihood ratio based test is established. Some simulation studies are carried out to assess the finite sample performances of the new approach.     

Malliavin calculus for difference approximations of multidimensional diffusions: Truncated local limit theorem

The truncated local limit theorem is proved for difference approximations of multidimensional diffusions. Under very mild conditions on the distributions of difference terms, this theorem states that the transition probabilities of these approximations, after truncation of some asymptotically negligible terms, possess densities uniformly convergent to the transition probability density for the limiting diffusion and satisfy certain uniform diffusion-type estimates. The proof is based on a new version of the Malliavin calculus for the product of a finite family of measures that may contain nontrivial singular components. Applications to the uniform estimation of mixing and convergence rates for difference approximations of stochastic differential equations and to the convergence of difference approximations of local times for multidimensional diffusions are presented. Published in Ukrains’kyi Matematychnyi Zhurnal, Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 340–381, March, 2008.     

Asymptotically compatible schemes for the approximation of fractional Laplacian and related nonlocal diffusion problems on bounded domains

Approximations of solutions of fractional Laplacian equations on bounded domains are considered. Such equations allow global interactions between points separated by arbitrarily large distances. Two approximations are introduced. First, interactions are localized so that only points less than some specified distance, referred to as the interaction radius, are allowed to interact. The resulting truncated problem is a special case of a more general nonlocal diffusion problem. The second approximation is the spatial discretization of the related nonlocal diffusion problem. A recently developed abstract framework for asymptotically compatible schemes is applied to prove convergence results for solutions of the truncated and discretized problem to the solutions of the fractional Laplacian problems. Intermediate results also provide new convergence results for the nonlocal diffusion problem. Special attention is paid to limiting behaviors as the interaction radius increases and the spatial grid size decreases, regardless of how these parameters may or may not be dependent. In particular, we show that conforming Galerkin finite element approximations of the nonlocal diffusion equation are always asymptotically compatible schemes for the corresponding fractional Laplacian model as the interaction radius increases and the grid size decreases. The results are developed with minimal regularity assumptions on the solution and are applicable to general domains and general geometric meshes with no restriction on the space dimension and with data that are only required to be square integrable. Furthermore, our results also solve an open conjecture given in the literature about the convergence of numerical solutions on a fixed mesh as the interaction radius increases.     

Circular trichotomy of the spectrum of regular matrix pencils

We introduce a method for approximating the right and left deflating subspaces of a regular matrix pencil corresponding to the eigenvalues inside, on and outside the unit circle. The method extends the iteration used in the context of spectral dichotomy, where the assumption on the absence of eigenvalues on the unit circle is removed. It constructs two matrix sequences whose null spaces and the null space of their sum lead to approximations of the deflating subspaces corresponding to the eigenvalues of modulus less than or equal to 1, equal to 1 and larger than or equal to 1. An orthogonalization process is then used to extract the desired delating subspaces. The resulting algorithm is an inverse free, easy to implement, and sufficiently fast. The derived convergence estimates reveal the key parameters, which determine the rate of convergence. The method is tested on several numerical examples.     

Efficient geometric multigrid implementation for triangular grids

This paper deals with a stencil-based implementation of a geometric multigrid method on semi-structured triangular grids (triangulations obtained by regular refinement of an irregular coarse triangulation) for linear finite element methods. An efficient and elegant procedure to construct these stencils using a reference stencil associated to a canonical hexagon is proposed. Local Fourier Analysis (LFA) is applied to obtain asymptotic convergence estimates. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the efficiency of this geometric multigrid algorithm, which is based on a three-color smoother.     

A Runge-Kutta method for index 1 stochastic differential-algebraic equations with scalar noise

The paper deals with the numerical treatment of stochastic differential-algebraic equations of index one with a scalar driving Wiener process. Therefore, a particularly customized stochastic Runge-Kutta method is introduced. Order conditions for convergence with order 1.0 in the mean-square sense are calculated and coefficients for some schemes are presented. The proposed schemes are stiffly accurate and applicable to nonlinear stochastic differential-algebraic equations. As an advantage they do not require the calculation of any pseudo-inverses or projectors. Further, the mean-square stability of the proposed schemes is analyzed and simulation results are presented bringing out their good performance.     

Locally adaptive hazard smoothing

Summary We consider nonparametric estimation of hazard functions and their derivatives under random censorship, based on kernel smoothing of the Nelson (1972) estimator. One critically important ingredient for smoothing methods is the choice of an appropriate bandwidth. Since local variance of these estimates depends on the point where the hazard function is estimated and the bandwidth determines the trade-off between local variance and local bias, data-based local bandwidth choice is proposed. A general principle for obtaining asymptotically efficient data-based local bandwiths, is obtained by means of weak convergence of a local bandwidth process to a Gaussian limit process. Several specific asymptotically efficient bandwidth estimators are discussed. We propose in particular an, asymptotically efficient method derived from direct pilot estimators of the hazard function and of the local mean squared error. This bandwidth choice method has practical advantages and is also of interest in the uncensored case as well as for density estimation.Research supported by UC Davis Faculty Research Grant and by Air Force grant AFOSR-89-0386Research supported by Air Force grant AFOSR-89-0386     

Optimal global approximation of stochastic differential equations with additive Poisson noise

We consider strong global approximation of SDEs driven by a homogeneous Poisson process with intensity λ > 0. We establish the exact convergence rate of minimal errors that can be achieved by arbitrary algorithms based on a finite number of observations of the Poisson process. We consider two classes of methods using equidistant or nonequidistant sampling of the Poisson process, respectively. We provide a construction of optimal schemes, based on the classical Euler scheme, which asymptotically attain the established minimal errors. It turns out that methods based on nonequidistant mesh are more efficient than those based on the equidistant mesh.     

Sobolev estimates for constructive uniform-grid FFT interpolatory approximations of spherical functions

The fast Fourier transform (FFT) based matrix-free ansatz interpolatory approximations of periodic functions are fundamental for efficient realization in several applications. In this work we design, analyze, and implement similar constructive interpolatory approximations of spherical functions, using samples of the unknown functions at the poles and at the uniform spherical-polar grid locations \(\left (\frac {j\pi }{N}, \frac {k \pi }{N}\right )\), for j=1,…,N?1, k=0,…,2N?1. The spherical matrix-free interpolation operator range space consists of a selective subspace of two dimensional trigonometric polynomials which are rich enough to contain all spherical polynomials of degree less than N. Using the \({\mathcal {O}}(N^{2})\) data, the spherical interpolatory approximation is efficiently constructed by applying the FFT techniques (in both azimuthal and latitudinal variables) with only \({\mathcal {O}}(N^{2} \log N)\) complexity. We describe the construction details using the FFT operators and provide complete convergence analysis of the interpolatory approximation in the Sobolev space framework that are well suited for quantification of various computer models. We prove that the rate of spectrally accurate convergence of the interpolatory approximations in Sobolev norms (of order zero and one) are similar (up to a log term) to that of the best approximation in the finite dimensional ansatz space. Efficient interpolatory quadratures on the sphere are important for several applications including radiation transport and wave propagation computer models. We use our matrix-free interpolatory approximations to construct robust FFT-based quadrature rules for a wide class of non-, mildly-, and strongly-oscillatory integrands on the sphere. We provide numerical experiments to demonstrate fast evaluation of the algorithm and various theoretical results presented in the article.     

Order statistics for nonstationary time series

Order statistics has an important role in statistical inference. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate order statistics, and also explore its applications in the analysis of nonstationary time series. Our results show that linear functions of order statistics for a large class of time series are asymptotically normal. The methods of proof involve approximations of serially dependent random variables by independent ones. The problems of testing for the existence of a linear trend and the problem of testing randomness versus serial dependence are considered as applications.     

A random differential transform method: Theory and applications

In this article, a Differential Transform Method (DTM) based on the mean fourth calculus is developed to solve random differential equations. An analytical mean fourth convergent series solution is found for a nonlinear random Riccati differential equation by using the random DTM. Besides obtaining the series solution of the Riccati equation, we provide approximations of the main statistical functions of the stochastic solution process such as the mean and variance. These approximations are compared to those obtained by the Euler and Monte Carlo methods. It is shown that this method applied to the random Riccati differential equation is more efficient than the two above mentioned methods.     

关于扩散方程漂移系数估计方法的改进

本文提出了一种新的基于扩散过程轨道构造漂移系数样本的方法—对数增量法,通过理论及模拟分析说明了在适当条件下,特别是对于大多数金融数据,基于对数增量法获得的漂移系数估计量的收敛速度及有限样本性质均比基于传统的"直接增量法"所得到的结果要好。     

Positive Sampling in Wavelet Subspaces

This paper is devoted to the discussion of a “hybrid” sampling series, a series of translates of a nonnegative summability function used in place of an orthogonal scaling function. The coefficients in the series are taken to be sampled values of the function to be approximated. This enables one to avoid the integration which arises in the other series. The approximations based on this hybrid series have certain desirable convergence properties: they are locally uniformly convergent for locally continuous functions, they have quadratic uniform convergence rate for functions in certain Sobolev spaces, they are locally bounded when the function is locally bounded and therefore, in particular, Gibbs' phenomenon is avoided. Numerical experiments are given to illustrate the theoretical results and to compare these approximations with the scaling function approximations.     

Rough Burgers-like equations with multiplicative noise

We construct solutions to vector valued Burgers type equations perturbed by a multiplicative space–time white noise in one space dimension. Due to the roughness of the driving noise, solutions are not regular enough to be amenable to classical methods. We use the theory of controlled rough paths to give a meaning to the spatial integrals involved in the definition of a weak solution. Subject to the choice of the correct reference rough path, we prove unique solvability for the equation and we show that our solutions are stable under smooth approximations of the driving noise.     

An iteration formula for the simultaneous determination of the zeros of a polynomial

The need for efficient algorithms for determining zeros of given polynomials has been stressed in many applications. In this paper we give a new cubic iteration method for determining simultaneously all the zeros of a polynomial (assumed distinct) starting with ‘reasonably close’ initial approximations (also assumed distinct).The polynomial is expressed as an expansion in terms of the starting and their correction terms.A formula which gives cubic convergence without involving second derivatives is derived by retaining terms up to second order of the expansion in the correction terms.Numerical evidence is given to illustrate the cubic convergence of the process.     

Sequential Estimation for a Functional of the Spectral Density of a Gaussian Stationary Process

Integral functional of the spectral density of stationary process is an important index in time series analysis. In this paper we consider the problem of sequential point and fixed-width confidence interval estimation of an integral functional of the spectral density for Gaussian stationary process. The proposed sequential point estimator is based on the integral functional replaced by the periodogram in place of the spectral density. Then it is shown to be asymptotically risk efficient as the cost per observation tends to zero. Next we provide a sequential interval estimator, which is asymptotically efficient as the width of the interval tends to zero. Finally some numerical studies will be given.     

On Consistency of the Nearest Neighbor Estimator of the Density Function and Its Applications

In this paper, we mainly study the consistency of the nearest neighbor estimator of the density function based on asymptotically almost negatively associated samples. The weak consistency,strong consistency, uniformly strong consistency and the convergence rates are established under some mild conditions. As applications, we further investigate the strong consistency and the rate of strong consistency for hazard rate function estimator.