| Abstract: | Data sharpening involves perturbing the data to improve the performance of a statistical method. The versions of it that have been proposed in the past have been for bias reduction in curve estimation, and the amount of perturbation of each datum has been determined by an explicit formula. This article suggests a distance-based form of data sharpening, in which the sum of the distances that data are moved is minimized subject to a constraint imposed on an estimator. The constraint could be one that leads to bias reduction, or to variance or variability reduction, or to a curve estimator being monotone or unimodal. In contrast to earlier versions of the method, in the form presented in this article the amount and extent of sharpening is determined implicitly by a formula that is typically given as the solution of a Lagrange-multiplier equation. Sometimes the solution can be found by Newton–Raphson iteration, although when qualitative constraints are imposed it usually requires quadratic programming or a related method. |
