4,075 research outputs found
Hypothesis Testing in Feedforward Networks with Broadcast Failures
Consider a countably infinite set of nodes, which sequentially make decisions
between two given hypotheses. Each node takes a measurement of the underlying
truth, observes the decisions from some immediate predecessors, and makes a
decision between the given hypotheses. We consider two classes of broadcast
failures: 1) each node broadcasts a decision to the other nodes, subject to
random erasure in the form of a binary erasure channel; 2) each node broadcasts
a randomly flipped decision to the other nodes in the form of a binary
symmetric channel. We are interested in whether there exists a decision
strategy consisting of a sequence of likelihood ratio tests such that the node
decisions converge in probability to the underlying truth. In both cases, we
show that if each node only learns from a bounded number of immediate
predecessors, then there does not exist a decision strategy such that the
decisions converge in probability to the underlying truth. However, in case 1,
we show that if each node learns from an unboundedly growing number of
predecessors, then the decisions converge in probability to the underlying
truth, even when the erasure probabilities converge to 1. We also derive the
convergence rate of the error probability. In case 2, we show that if each node
learns from all of its previous predecessors, then the decisions converge in
probability to the underlying truth when the flipping probabilities of the
binary symmetric channels are bounded away from 1/2. In the case where the
flipping probabilities converge to 1/2, we derive a necessary condition on the
convergence rate of the flipping probabilities such that the decisions still
converge to the underlying truth. We also explicitly characterize the
relationship between the convergence rate of the error probability and the
convergence rate of the flipping probabilities
Compressive Classification
This paper derives fundamental limits associated with compressive
classification of Gaussian mixture source models. In particular, we offer an
asymptotic characterization of the behavior of the (upper bound to the)
misclassification probability associated with the optimal Maximum-A-Posteriori
(MAP) classifier that depends on quantities that are dual to the concepts of
diversity gain and coding gain in multi-antenna communications. The diversity,
which is shown to determine the rate at which the probability of
misclassification decays in the low noise regime, is shown to depend on the
geometry of the source, the geometry of the measurement system and their
interplay. The measurement gain, which represents the counterpart of the coding
gain, is also shown to depend on geometrical quantities. It is argued that the
diversity order and the measurement gain also offer an optimization criterion
to perform dictionary learning for compressive classification applications.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to the 2013 IEEE International
Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2013
Minimax testing of a composite null hypothesis defined via a quadratic functional in the model of regression
We consider the problem of testing a particular type of composite null
hypothesis under a nonparametric multivariate regression model. For a given
quadratic functional , the null hypothesis states that the regression
function satisfies the constraint , while the alternative
corresponds to the functions for which is bounded away from zero. On the
one hand, we provide minimax rates of testing and the exact separation
constants, along with a sharp-optimal testing procedure, for diagonal and
nonnegative quadratic functionals. We consider smoothness classes of
ellipsoidal form and check that our conditions are fulfilled in the particular
case of ellipsoids corresponding to anisotropic Sobolev classes. In this case,
we present a closed form of the minimax rate and the separation constant. On
the other hand, minimax rates for quadratic functionals which are neither
positive nor negative makes appear two different regimes: "regular" and
"irregular". In the "regular" case, the minimax rate is equal to
while in the "irregular" case, the rate depends on the smoothness class and is
slower than in the "regular" case. We apply this to the issue of testing the
equality of norms of two functions observed in noisy environments
A Linear Programming Approach to Sequential Hypothesis Testing
Under some mild Markov assumptions it is shown that the problem of designing
optimal sequential tests for two simple hypotheses can be formulated as a
linear program. The result is derived by investigating the Lagrangian dual of
the sequential testing problem, which is an unconstrained optimal stopping
problem, depending on two unknown Lagrangian multipliers. It is shown that the
derivative of the optimal cost function with respect to these multipliers
coincides with the error probabilities of the corresponding sequential test.
This property is used to formulate an optimization problem that is jointly
linear in the cost function and the Lagrangian multipliers and an be solved for
both with off-the-shelf algorithms. To illustrate the procedure, optimal
sequential tests for Gaussian random sequences with different dependency
structures are derived, including the Gaussian AR(1) process.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Sequential Analysi
Global testing under sparse alternatives: ANOVA, multiple comparisons and the higher criticism
Testing for the significance of a subset of regression coefficients in a
linear model, a staple of statistical analysis, goes back at least to the work
of Fisher who introduced the analysis of variance (ANOVA). We study this
problem under the assumption that the coefficient vector is sparse, a common
situation in modern high-dimensional settings. Suppose we have covariates
and that under the alternative, the response only depends upon the order of
of those, . Under moderate sparsity levels, that
is, , we show that ANOVA is essentially optimal under some
conditions on the design. This is no longer the case under strong sparsity
constraints, that is, . In such settings, a multiple comparison
procedure is often preferred and we establish its optimality when
. However, these two very popular methods are suboptimal, and
sometimes powerless, under moderately strong sparsity where .
We suggest a method based on the higher criticism that is powerful in the whole
range . This optimality property is true for a variety of designs,
including the classical (balanced) multi-way designs and more modern ""
designs arising in genetics and signal processing. In addition to the standard
fixed effects model, we establish similar results for a random effects model
where the nonzero coefficients of the regression vector are normally
distributed.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOS910 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
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