The adaptive interpolation method for proving replica formulas. Applications to the Curie-Weiss and Wigner spike models

In this contribution we give a pedagogic introduction to the newly introduced adaptive interpolation method to prove in a simple and unified way replica formulas for Bayesian optimal inference problems. Many aspects of this method can already be explained at the level of the simple Curie-Weiss spin system. This provides a new method of solution for this model which does not appear to be known. We then generalize this analysis to a paradigmatic inference problem, namely rank-one matrix estimation, also refered to as the Wigner spike model in statistics. We give many pointers to the recent literature where the method has been succesfully applied

Tail index estimation, concentration and adaptivity

This paper presents an adaptive version of the Hill estimator based on Lespki's model selection method. This simple data-driven index selection method is shown to satisfy an oracle inequality and is checked to achieve the lower bound recently derived by Carpentier and Kim. In order to establish the oracle inequality, we derive non-asymptotic variance bounds and concentration inequalities for Hill estimators. These concentration inequalities are derived from Talagrand's concentration inequality for smooth functions of independent exponentially distributed random variables combined with three tools of Extreme Value Theory: the quantile transform, Karamata's representation of slowly varying functions, and R\'enyi's characterisation of the order statistics of exponential samples. The performance of this computationally and conceptually simple method is illustrated using Monte-Carlo simulations