Limit theorems for von Mises statistics of a measure preserving transformation

For a measure preserving transformation $T$ of a probability space $(X,\mathcal F,\mu)$ we investigate almost sure and distributional convergence of random variables of the form $$x \to \frac{1}{C_n} \sum_{i_1<n,...,i_d<n} f(T^{i_1}x,...,T^{i_d}x),\, n=1,2,...,$$ where $f$ (called the \emph{kernel}) is a function from $X^d$ to $\R$ and $C_1, C_2,...$ are appropriate normalizing constants. We observe that the above random variables are well defined and belong to $L_r(\mu)$ provided that the kernel is chosen from the projective tensor product $$L_p(X_1,\mathcal F_1, \mu_1) \otimes_{\pi}...\otimes_{\pi} L_p(X_d,\mathcal F_d, \mu_d)\subset L_p(\mu^d)$$ with $p=d\,r,\, r\ \in [1, \infty).$ We establish a form of the individual ergodic theorem for such sequences. Next, we give a martingale approximation argument to derive a central limit theorem in the non-degenerate case (in the sense of the classical Hoeffding's decomposition). Furthermore, for $d=2$ and a wide class of canonical kernels $f$ we also show that the convergence holds in distribution towards a quadratic form $\sum_{m=1}^{\infty} \lambda_m\eta^2_m$ in independent standard Gaussian variables $\eta_1, \eta_2,...$. Our results on the distributional convergence use a $T$--\,invariant filtration as a prerequisite and are derived from uni- and multivariate martingale approximations

Stochastic expansions using continuous dictionaries: L\'{e}vy adaptive regression kernels

This article describes a new class of prior distributions for nonparametric function estimation. The unknown function is modeled as a limit of weighted sums of kernels or generator functions indexed by continuous parameters that control local and global features such as their translation, dilation, modulation and shape. L\'{e}vy random fields and their stochastic integrals are employed to induce prior distributions for the unknown functions or, equivalently, for the number of kernels and for the parameters governing their features. Scaling, shape, and other features of the generating functions are location-specific to allow quite different function properties in different parts of the space, as with wavelet bases and other methods employing overcomplete dictionaries. We provide conditions under which the stochastic expansions converge in specified Besov or Sobolev norms. Under a Gaussian error model, this may be viewed as a sparse regression problem, with regularization induced via the L\'{e}vy random field prior distribution. Posterior inference for the unknown functions is based on a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. We compare the L\'{e}vy Adaptive Regression Kernel (LARK) method to wavelet-based methods using some of the standard test functions, and illustrate its flexibility and adaptability in nonstationary applications.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOS889 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

On the uniform convergence of random series in Skorohod space and representations of c\`{a}dl\`{a}g infinitely divisible processes

Let $X_n$ be independent random elements in the Skorohod space $D([0,1];E)$ of c\`{a}dl\`{a}g functions taking values in a separable Banach space $E$. Let $S_n=\sum_{j=1}^nX_j$. We show that if $S_n$ converges in finite dimensional distributions to a c\`{a}dl\`{a}g process, then $S_n+y_n$ converges a.s. pathwise uniformly over $[0,1]$, for some $y_n\in D([0,1];E)$. This result extends the It\^{o}-Nisio theorem to the space $D([0,1];E)$, which is surprisingly lacking in the literature even for $E=R$. The main difficulties of dealing with $D([0,1];E)$ in this context are its nonseparability under the uniform norm and the discontinuity of addition under Skorohod's $J_1$-topology. We use this result to prove the uniform convergence of various series representations of c\`{a}dl\`{a}g infinitely divisible processes. As a consequence, we obtain explicit representations of the jump process, and of related path functionals, in a general non-Markovian setting. Finally, we illustrate our results on an example of stable processes. To this aim we obtain new criteria for such processes to have c\`{a}dl\`{a}g modifications, which may also be of independent interest.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AOP783 the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org