Hays County announced it has joined the Texas Purchasing Group and will be publishing and distributing upcoming bid opportunities on the system along with their current platform in these unprecedented...

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Harvested produce crops feed Florida Department of Corrections’ (FDC) more than 87,000 inmates; action saves food costs while reducing COVID-19 related supply chain impacts.

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New organizations bring total number of U.S. forensic labs using STRmix to 55.

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Web and mobile applications enhance efficiency and data accuracy using satellite maps and offline capabilities.

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The drones and programs will be fully paid for by the DOJ as part of the $850 million funding that has been allocated to help public safety departments fight the spread of COVID-19. This includes...

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PMA, a premier full-service provider of comprehensive financial and investment advisory services to municipalities, school districts, local government pools, insurance companies and other...

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Gregory Cox.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 48, Number 1, 584--606.

Abstract:
This paper establishes the argmin of a random objective function to be unique almost surely. This paper first formulates a general result that proves almost sure uniqueness without convexity of the objective function. The general result is then applied to a variety of applications in statistics. Four applications are discussed, including uniqueness of M-estimators, both classical likelihood and penalized likelihood estimators, and two applications of the argmin theorem, threshold regression and weak identification.

Davy Paindaveine, Julien Remy, Thomas Verdebout.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 48, Number 1, 324--345.

Abstract:
We consider the problem of testing, on the basis of a $p$-variate Gaussian random sample, the null hypothesis $mathcal{H}_{0}:oldsymbol{ heta}_{1}=oldsymbol{ heta}_{1}^{0}$ against the alternative $mathcal{H}_{1}:oldsymbol{ heta}_{1} eq oldsymbol{ heta}_{1}^{0}$, where $oldsymbol{ heta}_{1}$ is the “first” eigenvector of the underlying covariance matrix and $oldsymbol{ heta}_{1}^{0}$ is a fixed unit $p$-vector. In the classical setup where eigenvalues $lambda_{1}>lambda_{2}geq cdots geq lambda_{p}$ are fixed, the Anderson ( Ann. Math. Stat. 34 (1963) 122–148) likelihood ratio test (LRT) and the Hallin, Paindaveine and Verdebout ( Ann. Statist. 38 (2010) 3245–3299) Le Cam optimal test for this problem are asymptotically equivalent under the null hypothesis, hence also under sequences of contiguous alternatives. We show that this equivalence does not survive asymptotic scenarios where $lambda_{n1}/lambda_{n2}=1+O(r_{n})$ with $r_{n}=O(1/sqrt{n})$. For such scenarios, the Le Cam optimal test still asymptotically meets the nominal level constraint, whereas the LRT severely overrejects the null hypothesis. Consequently, the former test should be favored over the latter one whenever the two largest sample eigenvalues are close to each other. By relying on the Le Cam’s asymptotic theory of statistical experiments, we study the non-null and optimality properties of the Le Cam optimal test in the aforementioned asymptotic scenarios and show that the null robustness of this test is not obtained at the expense of power. Our asymptotic investigation is extensive in the sense that it allows $r_{n}$ to converge to zero at an arbitrary rate. While we restrict to single-spiked spectra of the form $lambda_{n1}>lambda_{n2}=cdots =lambda_{np}$ to make our results as striking as possible, we extend our results to the more general elliptical case. Finally, we present an illustrative real data example.

Subhadeep Paul, Yuguo Chen.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 48, Number 1, 230--250.

Abstract:
We consider the problem of estimating a consensus community structure by combining information from multiple layers of a multi-layer network using methods based on the spectral clustering or a low-rank matrix factorization. As a general theme, these “intermediate fusion” methods involve obtaining a low column rank matrix by optimizing an objective function and then using the columns of the matrix for clustering. However, the theoretical properties of these methods remain largely unexplored. In the absence of statistical guarantees on the objective functions, it is difficult to determine if the algorithms optimizing the objectives will return good community structures. We investigate the consistency properties of the global optimizer of some of these objective functions under the multi-layer stochastic blockmodel. For this purpose, we derive several new asymptotic results showing consistency of the intermediate fusion techniques along with the spectral clustering of mean adjacency matrix under a high dimensional setup, where the number of nodes, the number of layers and the number of communities of the multi-layer graph grow. Our numerical study shows that the intermediate fusion techniques outperform late fusion methods, namely spectral clustering on aggregate spectral kernel and module allegiance matrix in sparse networks, while they outperform the spectral clustering of mean adjacency matrix in multi-layer networks that contain layers with both homophilic and heterophilic communities.

Min Xu, Varun Jog, Po-Ling Loh.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 48, Number 1, 183--204.

Abstract:
Community identification in a network is an important problem in fields such as social science, neuroscience and genetics. Over the past decade, stochastic block models (SBMs) have emerged as a popular statistical framework for this problem. However, SBMs have an important limitation in that they are suited only for networks with unweighted edges; in various scientific applications, disregarding the edge weights may result in a loss of valuable information. We study a weighted generalization of the SBM, in which observations are collected in the form of a weighted adjacency matrix and the weight of each edge is generated independently from an unknown probability density determined by the community membership of its endpoints. We characterize the optimal rate of misclustering error of the weighted SBM in terms of the Renyi divergence of order 1/2 between the weight distributions of within-community and between-community edges, substantially generalizing existing results for unweighted SBMs. Furthermore, we present a computationally tractable algorithm based on discretization that achieves the optimal error rate. Our method is adaptive in the sense that the algorithm, without assuming knowledge of the weight densities, performs as well as the best algorithm that knows the weight densities.

John Goes, Gilad Lerman, Boaz Nadler.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 48, Number 1, 86--110.

Abstract:
Estimating a high-dimensional sparse covariance matrix from a limited number of samples is a fundamental task in contemporary data analysis. Most proposals to date, however, are not robust to outliers or heavy tails. Toward bridging this gap, in this work we consider estimating a sparse shape matrix from $n$ samples following a possibly heavy-tailed elliptical distribution. We propose estimators based on thresholding either Tyler’s M-estimator or its regularized variant. We prove that in the joint limit as the dimension $p$ and the sample size $n$ tend to infinity with $p/n ogamma>0$, our estimators are minimax rate optimal. Results on simulated data support our theoretical analysis.

Ke Zhu.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 6, 3185--3215.

Abstract:
This paper provides an entire inference procedure for the autoregressive model under (conditional) heteroscedasticity of unknown form with a finite variance. We first establish the asymptotic normality of the weighted least absolute deviations estimator (LADE) for the model. Second, we develop the random weighting (RW) method to estimate its asymptotic covariance matrix, leading to the implementation of the Wald test. Third, we construct a portmanteau test for model checking, and use the RW method to obtain its critical values. As a special weighted LADE, the feasible adaptive LADE (ALADE) is proposed and proved to have the same efficiency as its infeasible counterpart. The importance of our entire methodology based on the feasible ALADE is illustrated by simulation results and the real data analysis on three U.S. economic data sets.

Charles R. Doss, Jon A. Wellner.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 5, 2950--2976.

Abstract:
We study a likelihood ratio test for the location of the mode of a log-concave density. Our test is based on comparison of the log-likelihoods corresponding to the unconstrained maximum likelihood estimator of a log-concave density and the constrained maximum likelihood estimator where the constraint is that the mode of the density is fixed, say at $m$. The constrained estimation problem is studied in detail in Doss and Wellner (2018). Here, the results of that paper are used to show that, under the null hypothesis (and strict curvature of $-log f$ at the mode), the likelihood ratio statistic is asymptotically pivotal: that is, it converges in distribution to a limiting distribution which is free of nuisance parameters, thus playing the role of the $chi_{1}^{2}$ distribution in classical parametric statistical problems. By inverting this family of tests, we obtain new (likelihood ratio based) confidence intervals for the mode of a log-concave density $f$. These new intervals do not depend on any smoothing parameters. We study the new confidence intervals via Monte Carlo methods and illustrate them with two real data sets. The new intervals seem to have several advantages over existing procedures. Software implementing the test and confidence intervals is available in the R package verb+logcondens.mode+.

Matey Neykov, Han Liu.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 5, 2472--2503.

Abstract:
This paper explores the information-theoretic limitations of graph property testing in zero-field Ising models. Instead of learning the entire graph structure, sometimes testing a basic graph property such as connectivity, cycle presence or maximum clique size is a more relevant and attainable objective. Since property testing is more fundamental than graph recovery, any necessary conditions for property testing imply corresponding conditions for graph recovery, while custom property tests can be statistically and/or computationally more efficient than graph recovery based algorithms. Understanding the statistical complexity of property testing requires the distinction of ferromagnetic (i.e., positive interactions only) and general Ising models. Using combinatorial constructs such as graph packing and strong monotonicity, we characterize how target properties affect the corresponding minimax upper and lower bounds within the realm of ferromagnets. On the other hand, by studying the detection of an antiferromagnetic (i.e., negative interactions only) Curie–Weiss model buried in Rademacher noise, we show that property testing is strictly more challenging over general Ising models. In terms of methodological development, we propose two types of correlation based tests: computationally efficient screening for ferromagnets, and score type tests for general models, including a fast cycle presence test. Our correlation screening tests match the information-theoretic bounds for property testing in ferromagnets in certain regimes.

Joshua Cape, Minh Tang, Carey E. Priebe.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 5, 2405--2439.

Abstract:
The singular value matrix decomposition plays a ubiquitous role throughout statistics and related fields. Myriad applications including clustering, classification, and dimensionality reduction involve studying and exploiting the geometric structure of singular values and singular vectors. This paper provides a novel collection of technical and theoretical tools for studying the geometry of singular subspaces using the two-to-infinity norm. Motivated by preliminary deterministic Procrustes analysis, we consider a general matrix perturbation setting in which we derive a new Procrustean matrix decomposition. Together with flexible machinery developed for the two-to-infinity norm, this allows us to conduct a refined analysis of the induced perturbation geometry with respect to the underlying singular vectors even in the presence of singular value multiplicity. Our analysis yields singular vector entrywise perturbation bounds for a range of popular matrix noise models, each of which has a meaningful associated statistical inference task. In addition, we demonstrate how the two-to-infinity norm is the preferred norm in certain statistical settings. Specific applications discussed in this paper include covariance estimation, singular subspace recovery, and multiple graph inference. Both our Procrustean matrix decomposition and the technical machinery developed for the two-to-infinity norm may be of independent interest.

Qian Qin, James P. Hobert.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 4, 2320--2347.

Abstract:
The use of MCMC algorithms in high dimensional Bayesian problems has become routine. This has spurred so-called convergence complexity analysis, the goal of which is to ascertain how the convergence rate of a Monte Carlo Markov chain scales with sample size, $n$, and/or number of covariates, $p$. This article provides a thorough convergence complexity analysis of Albert and Chib’s [ J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 88 (1993) 669–679] data augmentation algorithm for the Bayesian probit regression model. The main tools used in this analysis are drift and minorization conditions. The usual pitfalls associated with this type of analysis are avoided by utilizing centered drift functions, which are minimized in high posterior probability regions, and by using a new technique to suppress high-dimensionality in the construction of minorization conditions. The main result is that the geometric convergence rate of the underlying Markov chain is bounded below 1 both as $n ightarrowinfty$ (with $p$ fixed), and as $p ightarrowinfty$ (with $n$ fixed). Furthermore, the first computable bounds on the total variation distance to stationarity are byproducts of the asymptotic analysis.

Benedikt Bauer, Michael Kohler.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 4, 2261--2285.

Abstract:
Assuming that a smoothness condition and a suitable restriction on the structure of the regression function hold, it is shown that least squares estimates based on multilayer feedforward neural networks are able to circumvent the curse of dimensionality in nonparametric regression. The proof is based on new approximation results concerning multilayer feedforward neural networks with bounded weights and a bounded number of hidden neurons. The estimates are compared with various other approaches by using simulated data.

James G. Scott, James O. Berger

Source: Ann. Statist., Volume 38, Number 5, 2587--2619.

Abstract:
This paper studies the multiplicity-correction effect of standard Bayesian variable-selection priors in linear regression. Our first goal is to clarify when, and how, multiplicity correction happens automatically in Bayesian analysis, and to distinguish this correction from the Bayesian Ockham’s-razor effect. Our second goal is to contrast empirical-Bayes and fully Bayesian approaches to variable selection through examples, theoretical results and simulations. Considerable differences between the two approaches are found. In particular, we prove a theorem that characterizes a surprising aymptotic discrepancy between fully Bayes and empirical Bayes. This discrepancy arises from a different source than the failure to account for hyperparameter uncertainty in the empirical-Bayes estimate. Indeed, even at the extreme, when the empirical-Bayes estimate converges asymptotically to the true variable-inclusion probability, the potential for a serious difference remains.

Ability to work with each other. In the loosely coupled environment of a service-oriented architecture, separate resources don't need to know the details of how they each work, but they need to have enough common ground to reliably exchange messages without error or misunderstanding. Standardized specifications go a long way towards creating this common ground, but differences in implementation may still lead to breakdowns in communication. Interoperability is when services can interact with each other without encountering such problems.

Digital identity standards group. Set up at the instigation of Sun Microsystems in 2001, the Liberty Alliance Project is a consortium of technology vendors and consumer-facing enterprises formed "to establish an open standard for federated network identity." It aims to make it easier for consumers to access networked services from multiple suppliers while safeguarding security and privacy. Its specifications have been published in three phases: the Identity Federation Framework (ID-FF) came first; the Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF) followed in November 2003; and work is in progress on the Identity Services Interface Specifications (ID-SIS). Liberty Alliance specifications are closely linked to the SAML single sign-on standard, and overlap with elements of WS-Security.

How small the pieces are. When a system is split into components, it's important to get the right degree of componentization. Small, fine-grained components give much greater flexibility in assembling precisely the right combination of functionality, but they are more difficult to co-ordinate. Much larger, coarse-grained components are easier to manage but may become too unwieldy. Performance and management considerations tend to favor the use of more coarsely grained messages in a service oriented architecture, whereas earlier generations of distributed computing have preferred a much finer level of granularity.

Trang Quynh Nguyen, Elizabeth A. Stuart.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 518--520.

Zhonghua Liu, Ian Barnett, Xihong Lin.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 433--451.

Abstract:
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a popular method for dimension reduction in unsupervised multivariate analysis. However, existing ad hoc uses of PCA in both multivariate regression (multiple outcomes) and multiple regression (multiple predictors) lack theoretical justification. The differences in the statistical properties of PCAs in these two regression settings are not well understood. In this paper we provide theoretical results on the power of PCA in genetic association testings in both multiple phenotype and SNP-set settings. The multiple phenotype setting refers to the case when one is interested in studying the association between a single SNP and multiple phenotypes as outcomes. The SNP-set setting refers to the case when one is interested in studying the association between multiple SNPs in a SNP set and a single phenotype as the outcome. We demonstrate analytically that the properties of the PC-based analysis in these two regression settings are substantially different. We show that the lower order PCs, that is, PCs with large eigenvalues, are generally preferred and lead to a higher power in the SNP-set setting, while the higher-order PCs, that is, PCs with small eigenvalues, are generally preferred in the multiple phenotype setting. We also investigate the power of three other popular statistical methods, the Wald test, the variance component test and the minimum $p$-value test, in both multiple phenotype and SNP-set settings. We use theoretical power, simulation studies, and two real data analyses to validate our findings.

Yen-Chi Chen, Adrian Dobra.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 409--432.

Abstract:
Activity spaces are fundamental to the assessment of individuals’ dynamic exposure to social and environmental risk factors associated with multiple spatial contexts that are visited during activities of daily living. In this paper we survey existing approaches for measuring the geometry, size and structure of activity spaces, based on GPS data, and explain their limitations. We propose addressing these shortcomings through a nonparametric approach called density ranking and also through three summary curves: the mass-volume curve, the Betti number curve and the persistence curve. We introduce a novel mixture model for human activity spaces and study its asymptotic properties. We prove that the kernel density estimator, which at the present time, is one of the most widespread methods for measuring activity spaces, is not a stable estimator of their structure. We illustrate the practical value of our methods with a simulation study and with a recently collected GPS dataset that comprises the locations visited by 10 individuals over a six months period.

Yicheng Li, Adrian E. Raftery.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 381--408.

Abstract:
Smoking is one of the leading preventable threats to human health and a major risk factor for lung cancer, upper aerodigestive cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Estimating and forecasting the smoking attributable fraction (SAF) of mortality can yield insights into smoking epidemics and also provide a basis for more accurate mortality and life expectancy projection. Peto et al. ( Lancet 339 (1992) 1268–1278) proposed a method to estimate the SAF using the lung cancer mortality rate as an indicator of exposure to smoking in the population of interest. Here, we use the same method to estimate the all-age SAF (ASAF) for both genders for over 60 countries. We document a strong and cross-nationally consistent pattern of the evolution of the SAF over time. We use this as the basis for a new Bayesian hierarchical model to project future male and female ASAF from over 60 countries simultaneously. This gives forecasts as well as predictive distributions that can be used to find uncertainty intervals for any quantity of interest. We assess the model using out-of-sample predictive validation and find that it provides good forecasts and well-calibrated forecast intervals, comparing favorably with other methods.

Wanghuan Chu, Runze Li, Jingyuan Liu, Matthew Reimherr.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 276--298.

Abstract:
Motivated by an empirical analysis of data from a genome-wide association study on obesity, measured by the body mass index (BMI), we propose a two-step gene-detection procedure for generalized varying coefficient mixed-effects models with ultrahigh dimensional covariates. The proposed procedure selects significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) impacting the mean BMI trend, some of which have already been biologically proven to be “fat genes.” The method also discovers SNPs that significantly influence the age-dependent variability of BMI. The proposed procedure takes into account individual variations of genetic effects and can also be directly applied to longitudinal data with continuous, binary or count responses. We employ Monte Carlo simulation studies to assess the performance of the proposed method and further carry out causal inference for the selected SNPs.

Joseph Antonelli, Maitreyi Mazumdar, David Bellinger, David Christiani, Robert Wright, Brent Coull.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 257--275.

Abstract:
Humans are routinely exposed to mixtures of chemical and other environmental factors, making the quantification of health effects associated with environmental mixtures a critical goal for establishing environmental policy sufficiently protective of human health. The quantification of the effects of exposure to an environmental mixture poses several statistical challenges. It is often the case that exposure to multiple pollutants interact with each other to affect an outcome. Further, the exposure-response relationship between an outcome and some exposures, such as some metals, can exhibit complex, nonlinear forms, since some exposures can be beneficial and detrimental at different ranges of exposure. To estimate the health effects of complex mixtures, we propose a flexible Bayesian approach that allows exposures to interact with each other and have nonlinear relationships with the outcome. We induce sparsity using multivariate spike and slab priors to determine which exposures are associated with the outcome and which exposures interact with each other. The proposed approach is interpretable, as we can use the posterior probabilities of inclusion into the model to identify pollutants that interact with each other. We utilize our approach to study the impact of exposure to metals on child neurodevelopment in Bangladesh and find a nonlinear, interactive relationship between arsenic and manganese.

Armin Schwartzman, Andrew J. Schork, Rong Zablocki, Wesley K. Thompson.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 13, Number 4, 2509--2538.

Abstract:
Analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) is characterized by a large number of univariate regressions where a quantitative trait is regressed on hundreds of thousands to millions of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) allele counts, one at a time. This article proposes an estimator of the SNP heritability of the trait, defined here as the fraction of the variance of the trait explained by the SNPs in the study. The proposed GWAS heritability (GWASH) estimator is easy to compute, highly interpretable and is consistent as the number of SNPs and the sample size increase. More importantly, it can be computed from summary statistics typically reported in GWAS, not requiring access to the original data. The estimator takes full account of the linkage disequilibrium (LD) or correlation between the SNPs in the study through moments of the LD matrix, estimable from auxiliary datasets. Unlike other proposed estimators in the literature, we establish the theoretical properties of the GWASH estimator and obtain analytical estimates of the precision, allowing for power and sample size calculations for SNP heritability estimates and forming a firm foundation for future methodological development.

Fan Li, Fan Li.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 13, Number 4, 2389--2415.

Abstract:
Causal or unconfounded descriptive comparisons between multiple groups are common in observational studies. Motivated from a racial disparity study in health services research, we propose a unified propensity score weighting framework, the balancing weights, for estimating causal effects with multiple treatments. These weights incorporate the generalized propensity scores to balance the weighted covariate distribution of each treatment group, all weighted toward a common prespecified target population. The class of balancing weights include several existing approaches such as the inverse probability weights and trimming weights as special cases. Within this framework, we propose a set of target estimands based on linear contrasts. We further develop the generalized overlap weights, constructed as the product of the inverse probability weights and the harmonic mean of the generalized propensity scores. The generalized overlap weighting scheme corresponds to the target population with the most overlap in covariates across the multiple treatments. These weights are bounded and thus bypass the problem of extreme propensities. We show that the generalized overlap weights minimize the total asymptotic variance of the moment weighting estimators for the pairwise contrasts within the class of balancing weights. We consider two balance check criteria and propose a new sandwich variance estimator for estimating the causal effects with generalized overlap weights. We apply these methods to study the racial disparities in medical expenditure between several racial groups using the 2009 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data. Simulations were carried out to compare with existing methods.

Jose Ameijeiras-Alonso, Akli Benali, Rosa M. Crujeiras, Alberto Rodríguez-Casal, José M. C. Pereira.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 13, Number 4, 2120--2139.

Abstract:
Understanding the role of vegetation fires in the Earth system is an important environmental problem. Although fire occurrence is influenced by natural factors, human activity related to land use and management has altered the temporal patterns of fire in several regions of the world. Hence, for a better insight into fires regimes it is of special interest to analyze where human activity has altered fire seasonality. For doing so, multimodality tests are a useful tool for determining the number of annual fire peaks. The periodicity of fires and their complex distributional features motivate the use of nonparametric circular statistics. The unsatisfactory performance of previous circular nonparametric proposals for testing multimodality justifies the introduction of a new approach, considering an adapted version of the excess mass statistic, jointly with a bootstrap calibration algorithm. A systematic application of the test on the Russia–Kazakhstan area is presented in order to determine how many fire peaks can be identified in this region. A False Discovery Rate correction, accounting for the spatial dependence of the data, is also required.

Ying Chen, J. S. Marron, Jiejie Zhang.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 13, Number 3, 1590--1616.

Abstract:
Electricity prices are high dimensional, serially dependent and have seasonal variations. We propose a Warping Functional AutoRegressive (WFAR) model that simultaneously accounts for the cross time-dependence and seasonal variations of the large dimensional data. In particular, electricity price curves are obtained by smoothing over the $24$ discrete hourly prices on each day. In the functional domain, seasonal phase variations are separated from level amplitude changes in a warping process with the Fisher–Rao distance metric, and the aligned (season-adjusted) electricity price curves are modeled in the functional autoregression framework. In a real application, the WFAR model provides superior out-of-sample forecast accuracy in both a normal functioning market, Nord Pool, and an extreme situation, the California market. The forecast performance as well as the relative accuracy improvement are stable for different markets and different time periods.

Jorge A. León.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2436--2462.

Abstract:
Let $B^{H}$ be a fractional Brownian motion with Hurst parameter $Hin (0,1/2)$ and $p:mathbb{R} ightarrow mathbb{R}$ a polynomial function. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce a Stratonovich type stochastic integral with respect to $B^{H}$, whose domain includes the process $p(B^{H})$. That is, an integral that allows us to integrate $p(B^{H})$ with respect to $B^{H}$, which does not happen with the symmetric integral given by Russo and Vallois ( Probab. Theory Related Fields 97 (1993) 403–421) in general. Towards this end, we combine the approaches utilized by León and Nualart ( Stochastic Process. Appl. 115 (2005) 481–492), and Russo and Vallois ( Probab. Theory Related Fields 97 (1993) 403–421), whose aims are to extend the domain of the divergence operator for Gaussian processes and to define some stochastic integrals, respectively. Then, we study the relation between this Stratonovich integral and the extension of the divergence operator (see León and Nualart ( Stochastic Process. Appl. 115 (2005) 481–492)), an Itô formula and the existence of a unique solution of some Stratonovich stochastic differential equations. These last results have been analyzed by Alòs, León and Nualart ( Taiwanese J. Math. 5 (2001) 609–632), where the Hurst paramert $H$ belongs to the interval $(1/4,1/2)$.

Bo Ning, Seonghyun Jeong, Subhashis Ghosal.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2353--2382.

Abstract:
We study frequentist properties of a Bayesian high-dimensional multivariate linear regression model with correlated responses. The predictors are separated into many groups and the group structure is pre-determined. Two features of the model are unique: (i) group sparsity is imposed on the predictors; (ii) the covariance matrix is unknown and its dimensions can also be high. We choose a product of independent spike-and-slab priors on the regression coefficients and a new prior on the covariance matrix based on its eigendecomposition. Each spike-and-slab prior is a mixture of a point mass at zero and a multivariate density involving the $ell_{2,1}$-norm. We first obtain the posterior contraction rate, the bounds on the effective dimension of the model with high posterior probabilities. We then show that the multivariate regression coefficients can be recovered under certain compatibility conditions. Finally, we quantify the uncertainty for the regression coefficients with frequentist validity through a Bernstein–von Mises type theorem. The result leads to selection consistency for the Bayesian method. We derive the posterior contraction rate using the general theory by constructing a suitable test from the first principle using moment bounds for certain likelihood ratios. This leads to posterior concentration around the truth with respect to the average Rényi divergence of order $1/2$. This technique of obtaining the required tests for posterior contraction rate could be useful in many other problems.

Xiao Fang, Li Luo, Qi-Man Shao.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2319--2352.

Abstract:
We prove a refined Cramér-type moderate deviation result by taking into account of the skewness in normal approximation for sums of local statistics of independent random variables. We apply the main result to $k$-runs, U-statistics and subgraph counts in the Erdős–Rényi random graph. To prove our main result, we develop exponential concentration inequalities and higher-order tail probability expansions via Stein’s method.

Pavel Zorin-Kranich.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2311--2318.

Abstract:
We prove an estimate for weighted $p$th moments of the pathwise $r$-variation of a martingale in terms of the $A_{p}$ characteristic of the weight. The novelty of the proof is that we avoid real interpolation techniques.

Sreenivasa Rao Jammalamadaka, Simos Meintanis, Thomas Verdebout.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2226--2252.

Abstract:
Circular and spherical data arise in many applications, especially in biology, Earth sciences and astronomy. In dealing with such data, one of the preliminary steps before any further inference, is to test if such data is isotropic, that is, uniformly distributed around the circle or the sphere. In view of its importance, there is a considerable literature on the topic. In the present work, we provide new tests of uniformity on the circle based on original asymptotic results. Our tests are motivated by the shape of locally and asymptotically maximin tests of uniformity against generalized von Mises distributions. We show that they are uniformly consistent. Empirical power comparisons with several competing procedures are presented via simulations. The new tests detect particularly well multimodal alternatives such as mixtures of von Mises distributions. A practically-oriented combination of the new tests with already existing Sobolev tests is proposed. An extension to testing uniformity on the sphere, along with some simulations, is included. The procedures are illustrated on a real dataset.

Anton Thalmaier, James Thompson.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2202--2225.

Abstract:
In this article, we derive moment estimates, exponential integrability, concentration inequalities and exit times estimates for canonical diffusions firstly on sub-Riemannian limits of Riemannian foliations and secondly in the nonsmooth setting of $operatorname{RCD}^{*}(K,N)$ spaces. In each case, the necessary ingredients are Itô’s formula and a comparison theorem for the Laplacian, for which we refer to the recent literature. As an application, we derive pointwise Carmona-type estimates on eigenfunctions of Schrödinger operators.

Javier Cárcamo, Antonio Cuevas, Luis-Alberto Rodríguez.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2143--2175.

Abstract:
We show that various functionals related to the supremum of a real function defined on an arbitrary set or a measure space are Hadamard directionally differentiable. We specifically consider the supremum norm, the supremum, the infimum, and the amplitude of a function. The (usually non-linear) derivatives of these maps adopt simple expressions under suitable assumptions on the underlying space. As an application, we improve and extend to the multidimensional case the results in Raghavachari ( Ann. Statist. 1 (1973) 67–73) regarding the limiting distributions of Kolmogorov–Smirnov type statistics under the alternative hypothesis. Similar results are obtained for analogous statistics associated with copulas. We additionally solve an open problem about the Berk–Jones statistic proposed by Jager and Wellner (In A Festschrift for Herman Rubin (2004) 319–331 IMS). Finally, the asymptotic distribution of maximum mean discrepancies over Donsker classes of functions is derived.

Akio Fujiwara, Koichi Yamagata.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 2105--2142.

Abstract:
We herein develop a theory of contiguity in the quantum domain based upon a novel quantum analogue of the Lebesgue decomposition. The theory thus formulated is pertinent to the weak quantum local asymptotic normality introduced in the previous paper [Yamagata, Fujiwara, and Gill, Ann. Statist. 41 (2013) 2197–2217], yielding substantial enlargement of the scope of quantum statistics.

Arnak S. Dalalyan, Lionel Riou-Durand.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 1956--1988.

Abstract:
Langevin diffusion processes and their discretizations are often used for sampling from a target density. The most convenient framework for assessing the quality of such a sampling scheme corresponds to smooth and strongly log-concave densities defined on $mathbb{R}^{p}$. The present work focuses on this framework and studies the behavior of the Monte Carlo algorithm based on discretizations of the kinetic Langevin diffusion. We first prove the geometric mixing property of the kinetic Langevin diffusion with a mixing rate that is optimal in terms of its dependence on the condition number. We then use this result for obtaining improved guarantees of sampling using the kinetic Langevin Monte Carlo method, when the quality of sampling is measured by the Wasserstein distance. We also consider the situation where the Hessian of the log-density of the target distribution is Lipschitz-continuous. In this case, we introduce a new discretization of the kinetic Langevin diffusion and prove that this leads to a substantial improvement of the upper bound on the sampling error measured in Wasserstein distance.

Adam Osękowski.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 1912--1926.

Abstract:
Let $X=(X_{t})_{tgeq 0}in H^{1}$ and $Y=(Y_{t})_{tgeq 0}in{mathrm{BMO}} $ be arbitrary continuous-path martingales. The paper contains the proof of the inequality egin{equation*}mathbb{E}int _{0}^{infty }iglvert dlangle X,Y angle_{t}igrvert leq sqrt{2}Vert XVert _{H^{1}}Vert YVert _{mathrm{BMO}_{2}},end{equation*} and the constant $sqrt{2}$ is shown to be the best possible. The proof rests on the construction of a certain special function, enjoying appropriate size and concavity conditions.

Galatia Cleanthous, Athanasios G. Georgiadis, Gerard Kerkyacharian, Pencho Petrushev, Dominique Picard.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 1832--1862.

Abstract:
We consider the problem of estimating the density of observations taking values in classical or nonclassical spaces such as manifolds and more general metric spaces. Our setting is quite general but also sufficiently rich in allowing the development of smooth functional calculus with well localized spectral kernels, Besov regularity spaces, and wavelet type systems. Kernel and both linear and nonlinear wavelet density estimators are introduced and studied. Convergence rates for these estimators are established and discussed.

Cristina Butucea, Amandine Dubois, Martin Kroll, Adrien Saumard.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 3, 1727--1764.

Abstract:
We address the problem of non-parametric density estimation under the additional constraint that only privatised data are allowed to be published and available for inference. For this purpose, we adopt a recent generalisation of classical minimax theory to the framework of local $alpha$-differential privacy and provide a lower bound on the rate of convergence over Besov spaces $mathcal{B}^{s}_{pq}$ under mean integrated $mathbb{L}^{r}$-risk. This lower bound is deteriorated compared to the standard setup without privacy, and reveals a twofold elbow effect. In order to fulfill the privacy requirement, we suggest adding suitably scaled Laplace noise to empirical wavelet coefficients. Upper bounds within (at most) a logarithmic factor are derived under the assumption that $alpha$ stays bounded as $n$ increases: A linear but non-adaptive wavelet estimator is shown to attain the lower bound whenever $pgeq r$ but provides a slower rate of convergence otherwise. An adaptive non-linear wavelet estimator with appropriately chosen smoothing parameters and thresholding is shown to attain the lower bound within a logarithmic factor for all cases.

Kamran Kalbasi, Thomas Mountford.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 2, 1504--1534.

Abstract:
In this paper, we study the local times of vector-valued Gaussian fields that are ‘diagonally operator-self-similar’ and whose increments are stationary. Denoting the local time of such a Gaussian field around the spatial origin and over the temporal unit hypercube by $Z$, we show that there exists $lambdain(0,1)$ such that under some quite weak conditions, $lim_{n ightarrow+infty}frac{sqrt[n]{mathbb{E}(Z^{n})}}{n^{lambda}}$ and $lim_{x ightarrow+infty}frac{-logmathbb{P}(Z>x)}{x^{frac{1}{lambda}}}$ both exist and are strictly positive (possibly $+infty$). Moreover, we show that if the underlying Gaussian field is ‘strongly locally nondeterministic’, the above limits will be finite as well. These results are then applied to establish similar statements for the intersection local times of diagonally operator-self-similar Gaussian fields with stationary increments.

Giovanni Conforti, Luigia Ripani.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 2, 1431--1452.

Abstract:
In this article, we study generalization of the classical Talagrand transport-entropy inequality in which the Wasserstein distance is replaced by the entropic transportation cost. This class of inequalities has been introduced in the recent work ( Probab. Theory Related Fields 174 (2019) 1–47), in connection with the study of Schrödinger bridges. We provide several equivalent characterizations in terms of reverse hypercontractivity for the heat semigroup, contractivity of the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman semigroup and dimension-free concentration of measure. Properties such as tensorization and relations to other functional inequalities are also investigated. In particular, we show that the inequalities studied in this article are implied by a Logarithmic Sobolev inequality and imply Talagrand inequality.

Wensheng Wang, Zhonggen Su, Yimin Xiao.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 2, 1410--1430.

Abstract:
We establish the exact moduli of non-differentiability of Gaussian random fields with stationary increments. As an application of the result, we prove that the uniform Hölder condition for the maximum local times of Gaussian random fields with stationary increments obtained in Xiao (1997) is optimal. These results are applicable to fractional Riesz–Bessel processes and stationary Gaussian random fields in the Matérn and Cauchy classes.

Pasha Tkachov.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 2, 1354--1380.

Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to prove stability of traveling waves for integro-differential equations connected with branching Markov processes. In other words, the limiting law of the left-most particle of a (time-continuous) branching Markov process with a Lévy non-branching part is demonstrated. The key idea is to approximate the branching Markov process by a branching random walk and apply the result of Aïdékon [ Ann. Probab. 41 (2013) 1362–1426] on the limiting law of the latter one.

Yating Liu, Gilles Pagès.

Source: Bernoulli, Volume 26, Number 2, 1171--1204.

Abstract:
We establish conditions to characterize probability measures by their $L^{p}$-quantization error functions in both $mathbb{R}^{d}$ and Hilbert settings. This characterization is two-fold: static (identity of two distributions) and dynamic (convergence for the $L^{p}$-Wasserstein distance). We first propose a criterion on the quantization level $N$, valid for any norm on $mathbb{R}^{d}$ and any order $p$ based on a geometrical approach involving the Voronoï diagram. Then, we prove that in the $L^{2}$-case on a (separable) Hilbert space, the condition on the level $N$ can be reduced to $N=2$, which is optimal. More quantization based characterization cases in dimension 1 and a discussion of the completeness of a distance defined by the quantization error function can be found at the end of this paper.