We continue the investigation of Bernstein-von Mises theorems for
nonparametric Bayes procedures from [Ann. Statist. 41 (2013) 1999-2028]. We
introduce multiscale spaces on which nonparametric priors and posteriors are
naturally defined, and prove Bernstein-von Mises theorems for a variety of
priors in the setting of Gaussian nonparametric regression and in the i.i.d.
sampling model. From these results we deduce several applications where
posterior-based inference coincides with efficient frequentist procedures,
including Donsker- and Kolmogorov-Smirnov theorems for the random posterior
cumulative distribution functions. We also show that multiscale posterior
credible bands for the regression or density function are optimal frequentist
confidence bands.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOS1246 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
