Choosing a penalty for model selection in heteroscedastic regression

We consider the problem of choosing between several models in least-squares regression with heteroscedastic data. We prove that any penalization procedure is suboptimal when the penalty is a function of the dimension of the model, at least for some typical heteroscedastic model selection problems. In particular, Mallows' Cp is suboptimal in this framework. On the contrary, optimal model selection is possible with data-driven penalties such as resampling or $V$-fold penalties. Therefore, it is worth estimating the shape of the penalty from data, even at the price of a higher computational cost. Simulation experiments illustrate the existence of a trade-off between statistical accuracy and computational complexity. As a conclusion, we sketch some rules for choosing a penalty in least-squares regression, depending on what is known about possible variations of the noise-level

Analysis of purely random forests bias

Random forests are a very effective and commonly used statistical method, but their full theoretical analysis is still an open problem. As a first step, simplified models such as purely random forests have been introduced, in order to shed light on the good performance of random forests. In this paper, we study the approximation error (the bias) of some purely random forest models in a regression framework, focusing in particular on the influence of the number of trees in the forest. Under some regularity assumptions on the regression function, we show that the bias of an infinite forest decreases at a faster rate (with respect to the size of each tree) than a single tree. As a consequence, infinite forests attain a strictly better risk rate (with respect to the sample size) than single trees. Furthermore, our results allow to derive a minimum number of trees sufficient to reach the same rate as an infinite forest. As a by-product of our analysis, we also show a link between the bias of purely random forests and the bias of some kernel estimators

Some nonasymptotic results on resampling in high dimension, I: Confidence regions, II: Multiple tests

We study generalized bootstrap confidence regions for the mean of a random vector whose coordinates have an unknown dependency structure. The random vector is supposed to be either Gaussian or to have a symmetric and bounded distribution. The dimensionality of the vector can possibly be much larger than the number of observations and we focus on a nonasymptotic control of the confidence level, following ideas inspired by recent results in learning theory. We consider two approaches, the first based on a concentration principle (valid for a large class of resampling weights) and the second on a resampled quantile, specifically using Rademacher weights. Several intermediate results established in the approach based on concentration principles are of interest in their own right. We also discuss the question of accuracy when using Monte Carlo approximations of the resampled quantities.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOS667; http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOS668 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Multi-task Regression using Minimal Penalties

In this paper we study the kernel multiple ridge regression framework, which we refer to as multi-task regression, using penalization techniques. The theoretical analysis of this problem shows that the key element appearing for an optimal calibration is the covariance matrix of the noise between the different tasks. We present a new algorithm to estimate this covariance matrix, based on the concept of minimal penalty, which was previously used in the single-task regression framework to estimate the variance of the noise. We show, in a non-asymptotic setting and under mild assumptions on the target function, that this estimator converges towards the covariance matrix. Then plugging this estimator into the corresponding ideal penalty leads to an oracle inequality. We illustrate the behavior of our algorithm on synthetic examples

Coupling the Yoccoz-Birkeland population model with price dynamics: chaotic livestock commodities market cycles

We propose a new model for the time evolution of livestock commodities which exhibits endogenous deterministic stochastic behaviour. The model is based on the Yoccoz-Birkeland integral equation, a model first developed for studying the time-evolution of single species with high average fertility, a relatively short mating season and density dependent reproduction rates. This equation is then coupled with a differential equation describing the price of a livestock commodity driven by the unbalance between its demand and supply. At its birth the cattle population is split into two parts: reproducing females and cattle for butchery. The relative amount of the two is determined by the spot price of the meat. We prove the existence of an attractor and we investigate numerically its properties: the strange attractor existing for the original Yoccoz-Birkeland model is persistent but its chaotic behaviour depends also from the price evolution in an essential way.Comment: 26 pages, 19 figure

Metric Learning for Temporal Sequence Alignment

In this paper, we propose to learn a Mahalanobis distance to perform alignment of multivariate time series. The learning examples for this task are time series for which the true alignment is known. We cast the alignment problem as a structured prediction task, and propose realistic losses between alignments for which the optimization is tractable. We provide experiments on real data in the audio to audio context, where we show that the learning of a similarity measure leads to improvements in the performance of the alignment task. We also propose to use this metric learning framework to perform feature selection and, from basic audio features, build a combination of these with better performance for the alignment

Model selection by resampling penalization

In this paper, a new family of resampling-based penalization procedures for model selection is defined in a general framework. It generalizes several methods, including Efron's bootstrap penalization and the leave-one-out penalization recently proposed by Arlot (2008), to any exchangeable weighted bootstrap resampling scheme. In the heteroscedastic regression framework, assuming the models to have a particular structure, these resampling penalties are proved to satisfy a non-asymptotic oracle inequality with leading constant close to 1. In particular, they are asympotically optimal. Resampling penalties are used for defining an estimator adapting simultaneously to the smoothness of the regression function and to the heteroscedasticity of the noise. This is remarkable because resampling penalties are general-purpose devices, which have not been built specifically to handle heteroscedastic data. Hence, resampling penalties naturally adapt to heteroscedasticity. A simulation study shows that resampling penalties improve on V-fold cross-validation in terms of final prediction error, in particular when the signal-to-noise ratio is not large.Comment: extended version of hal-00125455, with a technical appendi

V-fold cross-validation improved: V-fold penalization

We study the efficiency of V-fold cross-validation (VFCV) for model selection from the non-asymptotic viewpoint, and suggest an improvement on it, which we call ``V-fold penalization''. Considering a particular (though simple) regression problem, we prove that VFCV with a bounded V is suboptimal for model selection, because it ``overpenalizes'' all the more that V is large. Hence, asymptotic optimality requires V to go to infinity. However, when the signal-to-noise ratio is low, it appears that overpenalizing is necessary, so that the optimal V is not always the larger one, despite of the variability issue. This is confirmed by some simulated data. In order to improve on the prediction performance of VFCV, we define a new model selection procedure, called ``V-fold penalization'' (penVF). It is a V-fold subsampling version of Efron's bootstrap penalties, so that it has the same computational cost as VFCV, while being more flexible. In a heteroscedastic regression framework, assuming the models to have a particular structure, we prove that penVF satisfies a non-asymptotic oracle inequality with a leading constant that tends to 1 when the sample size goes to infinity. In particular, this implies adaptivity to the smoothness of the regression function, even with a highly heteroscedastic noise. Moreover, it is easy to overpenalize with penVF, independently from the V parameter. A simulation study shows that this results in a significant improvement on VFCV in non-asymptotic situations.Comment: 40 pages, plus a separate technical appendi

Minimal penalties and the slope heuristics: a survey

Birg{\'e} and Massart proposed in 2001 the slope heuristics as a way to choose optimally from data an unknown multiplicative constant in front of a penalty. It is built upon the notion of minimal penalty, and it has been generalized since to some "minimal-penalty algorithms". This paper reviews the theoretical results obtained for such algorithms, with a self-contained proof in the simplest framework, precise proof ideas for further generalizations, and a few new results. Explicit connections are made with residual-variance estimators-with an original contribution on this topic, showing that for this task the slope heuristics performs almost as well as a residual-based estimator with the best model choice-and some classical algorithms such as L-curve or elbow heuristics, Mallows' C p , and Akaike's FPE. Practical issues are also addressed, including two new practical definitions of minimal-penalty algorithms that are compared on synthetic data to previously-proposed definitions. Finally, several conjectures and open problems are suggested as future research directions