Ratio tests for change point detection

We propose new tests to detect a change in the mean of a time series. Like many existing tests, the new ones are based on the CUSUM process. Existing CUSUM tests require an estimator of a scale parameter to make them asymptotically distribution free under the no change null hypothesis. Even if the observations are independent, the estimation of the scale parameter is not simple since the estimator for the scale parameter should be at least consistent under the null as well as under the alternative. The situation is much more complicated in case of dependent data, where the empirical spectral density at 0 is used to scale the CUSUM process. To circumvent these difficulties, new tests are proposed which are ratios of CUSUM functionals. We demonstrate the applicability of our method to detect a change in the mean when the errors are AR(1) and GARCH(1,1) sequences.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/193940307000000220 the IMS Collections (http://www.imstat.org/publications/imscollections.htm) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A test of significance in functional quadratic regression

We consider a quadratic functional regression model in which a scalar response depends on a functional predictor; the common functional linear model is a special case. We wish to test the significance of the nonlinear term in the model. We develop a testing method which is based on projecting the observations onto a suitably chosen finite dimensional space using functional principal component analysis. The asymptotic behavior of our testing procedure is established. A simulation study shows that the testing procedure has good size and power with finite sample sizes. We then apply our test to a data set provided by Tecator, which consists of near-infrared absorbance spectra and fat content of meat.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/12-BEJ446 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Asymptotics of trimmed CUSUM statistics

There is a wide literature on change point tests, but the case of variables with infinite variances is essentially unexplored. In this paper we address this problem by studying the asymptotic behavior of trimmed CUSUM statistics. We show that in a location model with i.i.d. errors in the domain of attraction of a stable law of parameter $0<\alpha <2$, the appropriately trimmed CUSUM process converges weakly to a Brownian bridge. Thus, after moderate trimming, the classical method for detecting change points remains valid also for populations with infinite variance. We note that according to the classical theory, the partial sums of trimmed variables are generally not asymptotically normal and using random centering in the test statistics is crucial in the infinite variance case. We also show that the partial sums of truncated and trimmed random variables have different asymptotic behavior. Finally, we discuss resampling procedures which enable one to determine critical values in the case of small and moderate sample sizes.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/10-BEJ318 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Selection from a stable box

Let $\{X_j\}$ be independent, identically distributed random variables. It is well known that the functional CUSUM statistic and its randomly permuted version both converge weakly to a Brownian bridge if second moments exist. Surprisingly, an infinite-variance counterpart does not hold true. In the present paper, we let $\{X_j\}$ be in the domain of attraction of a strictly $\alpha$-stable law, $\alpha\in(0,2)$. While the functional CUSUM statistics itself converges to an $\alpha$-stable bridge and so does the permuted version, provided both the $\{X_j\}$ and the permutation are random, the situation turns out to be more delicate if a realization of the $\{X_j\}$ is fixed and randomness is restricted to the permutation. Here, the conditional distribution function of the permuted CUSUM statistics converges in probability to a random and nondegenerate limit.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/07-BEJ6014 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm