arXiv subjects

Ching-Kang Ing

Publications and source records attributed to Ching-Kang Ing.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

High-Dimensional Importance-Weighted Information Criteria: Theory and Optimality

Imori and Ing (2025) proposed the importance-weighted orthogonal greedy algorithm (IWOGA) for model selection in high-dimensional misspecified regression models under covariate shift. To determine the number of IWOGA iterations, they introduced the high-dimensional importance-weighted information criterion (HDIWIC). They argued that the combined use of IWOGA and HDIWIC, IWOGA + HDIWIC, achieves an optimal trade-off between variance and squared bias, leading to optimal convergence rates in terms of conditional mean squared prediction error. In this article, we provide a theoretical justification for this claim by establishing the optimality of IWOGA + HDIWIC under a set of reasonable assumptions.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2025

Model Selection for Unit-root Time Series with Many Predictors

This paper studies model selection for general unit-root time series, including the case with many exogenous predictors. We propose a new model selection algorithm, FHTD, that leverages forward stepwise regression (FSR), a high-dimensional information criterion (HDIC), a backward elimination method based on HDIC, and a data-driven thresholding (DDT) approach. Under some mild assumptions that allow for unknown locations and multiplicities of the characteristic roots on the unit circle of the time series and conditional heteroscedasticity in the predictors and errors, we establish the sure screening property of FSR and the selection consistency of FHTD. Our theoretical analysis relies on two novel technical contributions, namely a functional central limit theorem for multivariate linear processes and a uniform lower bound for the minimum eigenvalue of the sample covariance matrices, both of which are of independent interest. Simulation results corroborate the theoretical properties and show the superior performance of FHTD in model selection. We apply the proposed FHTD to model U.S. monthly housing starts and unemployment data, showcasing its practical utility.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2023

Negative Moment Bounds for Sample Autocovariance Matrices of Stationary Processes Driven by Conditional Heteroscedastic Errors and Their Applications

We establish a negative moment bound for the sample autocovariance matrix of a stationary process driven by conditional heteroscedastic errors. This moment bound enables us to asymptotically express the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) of the least squares predictor as the sum of three terms related to model complexity, model misspecification, and conditional heteroscedasticity. A direct application of this expression is the development of a model selection criterion that can asymptotically identify the best (in the sense of MSPE) subset AR model in the presence of misspecification and conditional heteroscedasticity. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to confirm our theoretical results.

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arXiv2021

High-Dimensional Knockoffs Inference for Time Series Data

We make some initial attempt to establish the theoretical and methodological foundation for the model-X knockoffs inference for time series data. We suggest the method of time series knockoffs inference (TSKI) by exploiting the ideas of subsampling and e-values to address the difficulty caused by the serial dependence. We also generalize the robust knockoffs inference in Barber, Cand\`es, and Samworth to the time series setting to relax the assumption of known covariate distribution required by model-X knockoffs, since such an assumption is overly stringent for time series data. We establish sufficient conditions under which TSKI achieves the asymptotic false discovery rate (FDR) control. Our technical analysis reveals the effects of serial dependence and unknown covariate distribution on the FDR control. We conduct a power analysis of TSKI using the Lasso coefficient difference knockoff statistic under the generalized linear time series models. The finite-sample performance of TSKI is illustrated with several simulation examples and an economic inflation study.

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arXiv2021

Inference of Random Effects for Linear Mixed-Effects Models with a Fixed Number of Clusters

We consider a linear mixed-effects model with a clustered structure, where the parameters are estimated using maximum likelihood (ML) based on possibly unbalanced data. Inference with this model is typically done based on asymptotic theory, assuming that the number of clusters tends to infinity with the sample size. However, when the number of clusters is fixed, classical asymptotic theory developed under a divergent number of clusters is no longer valid and can lead to erroneous conclusions. In this paper, we establish the asymptotic properties of the ML estimators of random-effects parameters under a general setting, which can be applied to conduct valid statistical inference with fixed numbers of clusters. Our asymptotic theorems allow both fixed effects and random effects to be misspecified, and the dimensions of both effects to go to infinity with the sample size.

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arXiv2020

A generalized information criterion for high-dimensional PCA rank selection

Principal component analysis (PCA) is the most commonly used statistical procedure for dimension reduction. An important issue for applying PCA is to determine the rank, which is the number of dominant eigenvalues of the covariance matrix. The Akaike information criterion (AIC) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC) are among the most widely used rank selection methods. Both use the number of free parameters for assessing model complexity. In this work, we adopt the generalized information criterion (GIC) to propose a new method for PCA rank selection under the high-dimensional framework. The GIC model complexity takes into account the sizes of covariance eigenvalues and can be better adaptive to practical applications. Asymptotic properties of GIC are derived and the selection consistency is established under the generalized spiked covariance model.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2019

Model selection for high-dimensional linear regression with dependent observations

We investigate the prediction capability of the orthogonal greedy algorithm (OGA) in high-dimensional regression models with dependent observations. The rates of convergence of the prediction error of OGA are obtained under a variety of sparsity conditions. To prevent OGA from overfitting, we introduce a high-dimensional Akaike's information criterion (HDAIC) to determine the number of OGA iterations. A key contribution of this work is to show that OGA, used in conjunction with HDAIC, can achieve the optimal convergence rate without knowledge of how sparse the underlying high-dimensional model is.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2016

Mixed domain asymptotics for a stochastic process model with time trend and measurement error

We consider a stochastic process model with time trend and measurement error. We establish consistency and derive the limiting distributions of the maximum likelihood (ML) estimators of the covariance function parameters under a general asymptotic framework, including both the fixed domain and the increasing domain frameworks, even when the time trend model is misspecified or its complexity increases with the sample size. In particular, the convergence rates of the ML estimators are thoroughly characterized in terms of the growing rate of the domain and the degree of model misspecification/complexity.

math.ST↗

arXiv2016

Estimation of inverse autocovariance matrices for long memory processes

This work aims at estimating inverse autocovariance matrices of long memory processes admitting a linear representation. A modified Cholesky decomposition is used in conjunction with an increasing order autoregressive model to achieve this goal. The spectral norm consistency of the proposed estimate is established. We then extend this result to linear regression models with long-memory time series errors. In particular, we show that when the objective is to consistently estimate the inverse autocovariance matrix of the error process, the same approach still works well if the estimated (by least squares) errors are used in place of the unobservable ones. Applications of this result to estimating unknown parameters in the aforementioned regression model are also given. Finally, a simulation study is performed to illustrate our theoretical findings.

math.ST↗

arXiv2015

Toward optimal model averaging in regression models with time series errors

Consider a regression model with infinitely many parameters and time series errors. We are interested in choosing weights for averaging across generalized least squares (GLS) estimators obtained from a set of approximating models. However, GLS estimators, depending on the unknown inverse covariance matrix of the errors, are usually infeasible. We therefore construct feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) estimators using a consistent estimator of the unknown inverse matrix. Based on this inverse covariance matrix estimator and FGLS estimators, we develop a feasible autocovariance-corrected Mallows model averaging criterion to select weights, thereby providing an FGLS model averaging estimator of the true regression function. We show that the generalized squared error loss of our averaging estimator is asymptotically equivalent to the minimum one among those of GLS model averaging estimators with the weight vectors belonging to a continuous set, which includes the discrete weight set used in Hansen (2007) as its proper subset.

math.ST↗

arXiv2014

Asymptotic theory of generalized information criterion for geostatistical regression model selection

Information criteria, such as Akaike's information criterion and Bayesian information criterion are often applied in model selection. However, their asymptotic behaviors for selecting geostatistical regression models have not been well studied, particularly under the fixed domain asymptotic framework with more and more data observed in a bounded fixed region. In this article, we study the generalized information criterion (GIC) for selecting geostatistical regression models under a more general mixed domain asymptotic framework. Via uniform convergence developments of some statistics, we establish the selection consistency and the asymptotic loss efficiency of GIC under some regularity conditions, regardless of whether the covariance model is correctly or wrongly specified. We further provide specific examples with different types of explanatory variables that satisfy the conditions. For example, in some situations, GIC is selection consistent, even when some spatial covariance parameters cannot be estimated consistently. On the other hand, GIC fails to select the true polynomial order consistently under the fixed domain asymptotic framework. Moreover, the growth rate of the domain and the degree of smoothness of candidate regressors in space are shown to play key roles for model selection.

math.ST↗

arXiv2013

Moment bounds and mean squared prediction errors of long-memory time series

A moment bound for the normalized conditional-sum-of-squares (CSS) estimate of a general autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) model with an arbitrary unknown memory parameter is derived in this paper. To achieve this goal, a uniform moment bound for the inverse of the normalized objective function is established. An important application of these results is to establish asymptotic expressions for the one-step and multi-step mean squared prediction errors (MSPE) of the CSS predictor. These asymptotic expressions not only explicitly demonstrate how the multi-step MSPE of the CSS predictor manifests with the model complexity and the dependent structure, but also offer means to compare the performance of the CSS predictor with the least squares (LS) predictor for integrated autoregressive models. It turns out that the CSS predictor can gain substantial advantage over the LS predictor when the integration order is high. Numerical findings are also conducted to illustrate the theoretical results.

math.ST↗

arXiv2012

Uniform moment bounds of Fisher's information with applications to time series

In this paper, a uniform (over some parameter space) moment bound for the inverse of Fisher's information matrix is established. This result is then applied to develop moment bounds for the normalized least squares estimate in (nonlinear) stochastic regression models. The usefulness of these results is illustrated using time series models. In particular, an asymptotic expression for the mean squared prediction error of the least squares predictor in autoregressive moving average models is obtained. This asymptotic expression provides a solid theoretical foundation for some model selection criteria.

math.ST↗

arXiv2009

Toward optimal multistep forecasts in non-stationary autoregressions

This paper investigates multistep prediction errors for non-stationary autoregressive processes with both model order and true parameters unknown. We give asymptotic expressions for the multistep mean squared prediction errors and accumulated prediction errors of two important methods, plug-in and direct prediction. These expressions not only characterize how the prediction errors are influenced by the model orders, prediction methods, values of parameters and unit roots, but also inspire us to construct some new predictor selection criteria that can ultimately choose the best combination of the model order and prediction method with probability 1. Finally, simulation analysis confirms the satisfactory finite sample performance of the newly proposed criteria.

math.ST↗

arXiv2007

Accumulated prediction errors, information criteria and optimal forecasting for autoregressive time series

The predictive capability of a modification of Rissanen's accumulated prediction error (APE) criterion, APE$_{δ_n}$, is investigated in infinite-order autoregressive (AR($\infty$)) models. Instead of accumulating squares of sequential prediction errors from the beginning, APE$_{δ_n}$ is obtained by summing these squared errors from stage $nδ_n$, where $n$ is the sample size and $1/n\leq δ_n\leq 1-(1/n)$ may depend on $n$. Under certain regularity conditions, an asymptotic expression is derived for the mean-squared prediction error (MSPE) of an AR predictor with order determined by APE$_{δ_n}$. This expression shows that the prediction performance of APE$_{δ_n}$ can vary dramatically depending on the choice of $δ_n$. Another interesting finding is that when $δ_n$ approaches 1 at a certain rate, APE$_{δ_n}$ can achieve asymptotic efficiency in most practical situations. An asymptotic equivalence between APE$_{δ_n}$ and an information criterion with a suitable penalty term is also established from the MSPE point of view. This offers new perspectives for understanding the information and prediction-based model selection criteria. Finally, we provide the first asymptotic efficiency result for the case when the underlying AR($\infty$) model is allowed to degenerate to a finite autoregression.

math.ST↗

arXiv2007

Time Series and Related Topics. In Memory of Ching-Zong Wei

A major research area of Ching-Zong Wei (1949--2004) was time series models and their applications in econometrics and engineering, to which he made many important contributions. A conference on time series and related topics in memory of him was held on December 12--14, 2005, at Academia Sinica in Taipei, where he was Director of the Institute of Statistical Science from 1993 to 1999. Of the forty-two speakers at the conference, twenty contributed to this volume. These papers are listed under the following three headings.

math.ST↗

arXiv2007

On prediction errors in regression models with nonstationary regressors

In this article asymptotic expressions for the final prediction error (FPE) and the accumulated prediction error (APE) of the least squares predictor are obtained in regression models with nonstationary regressors. It is shown that the term of order $1/n$ in FPE and the term of order $\log n$ in APE share the same constant, where $n$ is the sample size. Since the model includes the random walk model as a special case, these asymptotic expressions extend some of the results in Wei (1987) and Ing (2001). In addition, we also show that while the FPE of the least squares predictor is not affected by the contemporary correlation between the innovations in input and output variables, the mean squared error of the least squares estimate does vary with this correlation.

math.ST↗

arXiv2006

Order selection for same-realization predictions in autoregressive processes

Assume that observations are generated from an infinite-order autoregressive [AR($\infty$)] process. Shibata [Ann. Statist. 8 (1980) 147--164] considered the problem of choosing a finite-order AR model, allowing the order to become infinite as the number of observations does in order to obtain a better approximation. He showed that, for the purpose of predicting the future of an independent replicate, Akaike's information criterion (AIC) and its variants are asymptotically efficient. Although Shibata's concept of asymptotic efficiency has been widely accepted in the literature, it is not a natural property for time series analysis. This is because when new observations of a time series become available, they are not independent of the previous data. To overcome this difficulty, in this paper we focus on order selection for forecasting the future of an observed time series, referred to as same-realization prediction. We present the first theoretical verification that AIC and its variants are still asymptotically efficient (in the sense defined in Section 4) for same-realization predictions. To obtain this result, a technical condition, easily met in common practice, is introduced to simplify the complicated dependent structures among the selected orders, estimated parameters and future observations. In addition, a simulation study is conducted to illustrate the practical implications of AIC. This study shows that AIC also yields a satisfactory same-realization prediction in finite samples. On the other hand, a limitation of AIC in same-realization settings is pointed out. It is interesting to note that this limitation of AIC does not exist for corresponding independent cases.

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