31,095 research outputs found
Consistent estimation of the filtering and marginal smoothing distributions in nonparametric hidden Markov models
In this paper, we consider the filtering and smoothing recursions in
nonparametric finite state space hidden Markov models (HMMs) when the
parameters of the model are unknown and replaced by estimators. We provide an
explicit and time uniform control of the filtering and smoothing errors in
total variation norm as a function of the parameter estimation errors. We prove
that the risk for the filtering and smoothing errors may be uniformly upper
bounded by the risk of the estimators. It has been proved very recently that
statistical inference for finite state space nonparametric HMMs is possible. We
study how the recent spectral methods developed in the parametric setting may
be extended to the nonparametric framework and we give explicit upper bounds
for the L2-risk of the nonparametric spectral estimators. When the observation
space is compact, this provides explicit rates for the filtering and smoothing
errors in total variation norm. The performance of the spectral method is
assessed with simulated data for both the estimation of the (nonparametric)
conditional distribution of the observations and the estimation of the marginal
smoothing distributions.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1501.0478
Estimating Granger causality from Fourier and wavelet transforms of time series data
Experiments in many fields of science and engineering yield data in the form
of time series. The Fourier and wavelet transform-based nonparametric methods
are used widely to study the spectral characteristics of these time series
data. Here, we extend the framework of nonparametric spectral methods to
include the estimation of Granger causality spectra for assessing directional
influences. We illustrate the utility of the proposed methods using synthetic
data from network models consisting of interacting dynamical systems.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
On estimating extremal dependence structures by parametric spectral measures
Estimation of extreme value copulas is often required in situations where
available data are sparse. Parametric methods may then be the preferred
approach. A possible way of defining parametric families that are simple and,
at the same time, cover a large variety of multivariate extremal dependence
structures is to build models based on spectral measures. This approach is
considered here. Parametric families of spectral measures are defined as convex
hulls of suitable basis elements, and parameters are estimated by projecting an
initial nonparametric estimator on these finite-dimensional spaces. Asymptotic
distributions are derived for the estimated parameters and the resulting
estimates of the spectral measure and the extreme value copula. Finite sample
properties are illustrated by a simulation study
Nonparametric Estimation of Multi-View Latent Variable Models
Spectral methods have greatly advanced the estimation of latent variable
models, generating a sequence of novel and efficient algorithms with strong
theoretical guarantees. However, current spectral algorithms are largely
restricted to mixtures of discrete or Gaussian distributions. In this paper, we
propose a kernel method for learning multi-view latent variable models,
allowing each mixture component to be nonparametric. The key idea of the method
is to embed the joint distribution of a multi-view latent variable into a
reproducing kernel Hilbert space, and then the latent parameters are recovered
using a robust tensor power method. We establish that the sample complexity for
the proposed method is quadratic in the number of latent components and is a
low order polynomial in the other relevant parameters. Thus, our non-parametric
tensor approach to learning latent variable models enjoys good sample and
computational efficiencies. Moreover, the non-parametric tensor power method
compares favorably to EM algorithm and other existing spectral algorithms in
our experiments
Methods for Estimating Fluxes and Absorptions of Faint X-ray Sources
X-ray sources with very few counts can be identified with low-noise X-ray
detectors such as ACIS onboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These sources are
often too faint for parametric spectral modeling using well-established methods
such as fitting with XSPEC. We discuss the estimation of apparent and intrinsic
broad-band X-ray fluxes and soft X-ray absorption from gas along the line of
sight to these sources, using nonparametric methods. Apparent flux is estimated
from the ratio of the source count rate to the instrumental effective area
averaged over the chosen band. Absorption, intrinsic flux, and errors on these
quantities are estimated from comparison of source photometric quantities with
those of high S/N spectra that were simulated using spectral models
characteristic of the class of astrophysical sources under study. The concept
of this method is similar to the long-standing use of color-magnitude diagrams
in optical and infrared astronomy, with X-ray median energy replacing color
index and X-ray source counts replacing magnitude. Our nonparametric method is
tested against the apparent spectra of 2000 faint sources in the Chandra
observation of the rich young stellar cluster in the M17 HII region. We show
that the intrinsic X-ray properties can be determined with little bias and
reasonable accuracy using these observable photometric quantities without
employing often uncertain and time-consuming methods of non-linear parametric
spectral modeling. Our method is calibrated for thermal spectra characteristic
of stars in young stellar clusters, but recalibration should be possible for
some other classes of faint X-ray sources such as extragalactic AGN.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 39 pages, 15
figure
- …