arXiv subjects

Jianqing Fan

Publications and source records attributed to Jianqing Fan.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Distributions of Angles in Random Packing on Spheres

This paper studies the asymptotic behaviors of the pairwise angles among n randomly and uniformly distributed unit vectors in R^p as the number of points n -> infinity, while the dimension p is either fixed or growing with n. For both settings, we derive the limiting empirical distribution of the random angles and the limiting distributions of the extreme angles. The results reveal interesting differences in the two settings and provide a precise characterization of the folklore that "all high-dimensional random vectors are almost always nearly orthogonal to each other". Applications to statistics and machine learning and connections with some open problems in physics and mathematics are also discussed.

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arXiv2013

Homogeneity in Regression

This paper explores the homogeneity of coefficients in high-dimensional regression, which extends the sparsity concept and is more general and suitable for many applications. Homogeneity arises when one expects regression coefficients corresponding to neighboring geographical regions or a similar cluster of covariates to be approximately the same. Sparsity corresponds to a special case of homogeneity with a known atom zero. In this article, we propose a new method called clustering algorithm in regression via data-driven segmentation (CARDS) to explore homogeneity. New mathematics are provided on the gain that can be achieved by exploring homogeneity. Statistical properties of two versions of CARDS are analyzed. In particular, the asymptotic normality of our proposed CARDS estimator is established, which reveals better estimation accuracy for homogeneous parameters than that without homogeneity exploration. When our methods are combined with sparsity exploration, further efficiency can be achieved beyond the exploration of sparsity alone. This provides additional insights into the power of exploring low-dimensional strucuture in high-dimensional regression: homogeneity and sparsity. The newly developed method is further illustrated by simulation studies and applications to real data.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2013

Nonparametric Independence Screening in Sparse Ultra-High Dimensional Varying Coefficient Models

The varying-coefficient model is an important nonparametric statistical model that allows us to examine how the effects of covariates vary with exposure variables. When the number of covariates is big, the issue of variable selection arrives. In this paper, we propose and investigate marginal nonparametric screening methods to screen variables in ultra-high dimensional sparse varying-coefficient models. The proposed nonparametric independence screening (NIS) selects variables by ranking a measure of the nonparametric marginal contributions of each covariate given the exposure variable. The sure independent screening property is established under some mild technical conditions when the dimensionality is of nonpolynomial order, and the dimensionality reduction of NIS is quantified. To enhance practical utility and the finite sample performance, two data-driven iterative NIS methods are proposed for selecting thresholding parameters and variables: conditional permutation and greedy methods, resulting in Conditional-INIS and Greedy-INIS. The effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed methods are further illustrated by simulation studies and real data applications.

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arXiv2013

Risks of Large Portfolios

Estimating and assessing the risk of a large portfolio is an important topic in financial econometrics and risk management. The risk is often estimated by a substitution of a good estimator of the volatility matrix. However, the accuracy of such a risk estimator for large portfolios is largely unknown, and a simple inequality in the previous literature gives an infeasible upper bound for the estimation error. In addition, numerical studies illustrate that this upper bound is very crude. In this paper, we propose factor-based risk estimators under a large amount of assets, and introduce a high-confidence level upper bound (H-CLUB) to assess the accuracy of the risk estimation. The H-CLUB is constructed based on three different estimates of the volatility matrix: sample covariance, approximate factor model with known factors, and unknown factors (POET, Fan, Liao and Mincheva, 2013). For the first time in the literature, we derive the limiting distribution of the estimated risks in high dimensionality. Our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed upper bounds significantly outperform the traditional crude bounds, and provide insightful assessment of the estimation of the portfolio risks. In addition, our simulated results quantify the relative error in the risk estimation, which is usually negligible using 3-month daily data. Finally, the proposed methods are applied to an empirical study.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2013

Large Covariance Estimation by Thresholding Principal Orthogonal Complements

This paper deals with the estimation of a high-dimensional covariance with a conditional sparsity structure and fast-diverging eigenvalues. By assuming sparse error covariance matrix in an approximate factor model, we allow for the presence of some cross-sectional correlation even after taking out common but unobservable factors. We introduce the Principal Orthogonal complEment Thresholding (POET) method to explore such an approximate factor structure with sparsity. The POET estimator includes the sample covariance matrix, the factor-based covariance matrix (Fan, Fan, and Lv, 2008), the thresholding estimator (Bickel and Levina, 2008) and the adaptive thresholding estimator (Cai and Liu, 2011) as specific examples. We provide mathematical insights when the factor analysis is approximately the same as the principal component analysis for high-dimensional data. The rates of convergence of the sparse residual covariance matrix and the conditional sparse covariance matrix are studied under various norms. It is shown that the impact of estimating the unknown factors vanishes as the dimensionality increases. The uniform rates of convergence for the unobserved factors and their factor loadings are derived. The asymptotic results are also verified by extensive simulation studies. Finally, a real data application on portfolio allocation is presented.

math.ST↗

arXiv2012

Communication Learning in Social Networks: Finite Population and the Rates

Following the Bayesian communication learning paradigm, we propose a finite population learning concept to capture the level of information aggregation in any given network, where agents are allowed to communicate with neighbors repeatedly before making a single decision. This concept helps determine the occurrence of effective information aggregation in a finite network and reveals explicit interplays among parameters. It also enables meaningful comparative statics regarding the effectiveness of information aggregation in networks. Moreover, it offers a solid foundation to address, with a new perfect learning concept, long run dynamics of learning behavior and the associated learning rates as population diverges. Our conditions for the occurrence of finite population learning and perfect learning in communication networks are very tractable and transparent.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2012

Sure independence screening in generalized linear models with NP-dimensionality

Ultrahigh-dimensional variable selection plays an increasingly important role in contemporary scientific discoveries and statistical research. Among others, Fan and Lv [J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. B Stat. Methodol. 70 (2008) 849-911] propose an independent screening framework by ranking the marginal correlations. They showed that the correlation ranking procedure possesses a sure independence screening property within the context of the linear model with Gaussian covariates and responses. In this paper, we propose a more general version of the independent learning with ranking the maximum marginal likelihood estimates or the maximum marginal likelihood itself in generalized linear models. We show that the proposed methods, with Fan and Lv [J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. B Stat. Methodol. 70 (2008) 849-911] as a very special case, also possess the sure screening property with vanishing false selection rate. The conditions under which the independence learning possesses a sure screening is surprisingly simple. This justifies the applicability of such a simple method in a wide spectrum. We quantify explicitly the extent to which the dimensionality can be reduced by independence screening, which depends on the interactions of the covariance matrix of covariates and true parameters. Simulation studies are used to illustrate the utility of the proposed approaches. In addition, we establish an exponential inequality for the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator which is useful for high-dimensional statistical learning.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2012

Conditional Sure Independence Screening

Independence screening is a powerful method for variable selection for `Big Data' when the number of variables is massive. Commonly used independence screening methods are based on marginal correlations or variations of it. In many applications, researchers often have some prior knowledge that a certain set of variables is related to the response. In such a situation, a natural assessment on the relative importance of the other predictors is the conditional contributions of the individual predictors in presence of the known set of variables. This results in conditional sure independence screening (CSIS). Conditioning helps for reducing the false positive and the false negative rates in the variable selection process. In this paper, we propose and study CSIS in the context of generalized linear models. For ultrahigh-dimensional statistical problems, we give conditions under which sure screening is possible and derive an upper bound on the number of selected variables. We also spell out the situation under which CSIS yields model selection consistency. Moreover, we provide two data-driven methods to select the thresholding parameter of conditional screening. The utility of the procedure is illustrated by simulation studies and analysis of two real data sets.

math.ST↗

arXiv2012

Regularization for Cox's proportional hazards model with NP-dimensionality

High throughput genetic sequencing arrays with thousands of measurements per sample and a great amount of related censored clinical data have increased demanding need for better measurement specific model selection. In this paper we establish strong oracle properties of nonconcave penalized methods for nonpolynomial (NP) dimensional data with censoring in the framework of Cox's proportional hazards model. A class of folded-concave penalties are employed and both LASSO and SCAD are discussed specifically. We unveil the question under which dimensionality and correlation restrictions can an oracle estimator be constructed and grasped. It is demonstrated that nonconcave penalties lead to significant reduction of the "irrepresentable condition" needed for LASSO model selection consistency. The large deviation result for martingales, bearing interests of its own, is developed for characterizing the strong oracle property. Moreover, the nonconcave regularized estimator, is shown to achieve asymptotically the information bound of the oracle estimator. A coordinate-wise algorithm is developed for finding the grid of solution paths for penalized hazard regression problems, and its performance is evaluated on simulated and gene association study examples.

math.ST↗

arXiv2012

High-dimensional covariance matrix estimation in approximate factor models

The variance--covariance matrix plays a central role in the inferential theories of high-dimensional factor models in finance and economics. Popular regularization methods of directly exploiting sparsity are not directly applicable to many financial problems. Classical methods of estimating the covariance matrices are based on the strict factor models, assuming independent idiosyncratic components. This assumption, however, is restrictive in practical applications. By assuming sparse error covariance matrix, we allow the presence of the cross-sectional correlation even after taking out common factors, and it enables us to combine the merits of both methods. We estimate the sparse covariance using the adaptive thresholding technique as in Cai and Liu [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 106 (2011) 672--684], taking into account the fact that direct observations of the idiosyncratic components are unavailable. The impact of high dimensionality on the covariance matrix estimation based on the factor structure is then studied.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2011

Estimating False Discovery Proportion Under Arbitrary Covariance Dependence

Multiple hypothesis testing is a fundamental problem in high dimensional inference, with wide applications in many scientific fields. In genome-wide association studies, tens of thousands of tests are performed simultaneously to find if any SNPs are associated with some traits and those tests are correlated. When test statistics are correlated, false discovery control becomes very challenging under arbitrary dependence. In the current paper, we propose a novel method based on principal factor approximation, which successfully subtracts the common dependence and weakens significantly the correlation structure, to deal with an arbitrary dependence structure. We derive an approximate expression for false discovery proportion (FDP) in large scale multiple testing when a common threshold is used and provide a consistent estimate of realized FDP. This result has important applications in controlling FDR and FDP. Our estimate of realized FDP compares favorably with Efron (2007)'s approach, as demonstrated in the simulated examples. Our approach is further illustrated by some real data applications. We also propose a dependence-adjusted procedure, which is more powerful than the fixed threshold procedure.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2011

A ROAD to Classification in High Dimensional Space

For high-dimensional classification, it is well known that naively performing the Fisher discriminant rule leads to poor results due to diverging spectra and noise accumulation. Therefore, researchers proposed independence rules to circumvent the diverse spectra, and sparse independence rules to mitigate the issue of noise accumulation. However, in biological applications, there are often a group of correlated genes responsible for clinical outcomes, and the use of the covariance information can significantly reduce misclassification rates. The extent of such error rate reductions is unveiled by comparing the misclassification rates of the Fisher discriminant rule and the independence rule. To materialize the gain based on finite samples, a Regularized Optimal Affine Discriminant (ROAD) is proposed based on a covariance penalty. ROAD selects an increasing number of features as the penalization relaxes. Further benefits can be achieved when a screening method is employed to narrow the feature pool before hitting the ROAD. An efficient Constrained Coordinate Descent algorithm (CCD) is also developed to solve the associated optimization problems. Sampling properties of oracle type are established. Simulation studies and real data analysis support our theoretical results and demonstrate the advantages of the new classification procedure under a variety of correlation structures. A delicate result on continuous piecewise linear solution path for the ROAD optimization problem at the population level justifies the linear interpolation of the CCD algorithm.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2011

Multiple testing via $FDR_L$ for large-scale imaging data

The multiple testing procedure plays an important role in detecting the presence of spatial signals for large-scale imaging data. Typically, the spatial signals are sparse but clustered. This paper provides empirical evidence that for a range of commonly used control levels, the conventional $\operatorname {FDR}$ procedure can lack the ability to detect statistical significance, even if the $p$-values under the true null hypotheses are independent and uniformly distributed; more generally, ignoring the neighboring information of spatially structured data will tend to diminish the detection effectiveness of the $\operatorname {FDR}$ procedure. This paper first introduces a scalar quantity to characterize the extent to which the "lack of identification phenomenon" ($\operatorname {LIP}$) of the $\operatorname {FDR}$ procedure occurs. Second, we propose a new multiple comparison procedure, called $\operatorname {FDR}_L$, to accommodate the spatial information of neighboring $p$-values, via a local aggregation of $p$-values. Theoretical properties of the $\operatorname {FDR}_L$ procedure are investigated under weak dependence of $p$-values. It is shown that the $\operatorname {FDR}_L$ procedure alleviates the $\operatorname {LIP}$ of the $\operatorname {FDR}$ procedure, thus substantially facilitating the selection of more stringent control levels. Simulation evaluations indicate that the $\operatorname {FDR}_L$ procedure improves the detection sensitivity of the $\operatorname {FDR}$ procedure with little loss in detection specificity. The computational simplicity and detection effectiveness of the $\operatorname {FDR}_L$ procedure are illustrated through a real brain fMRI dataset.

math.ST↗

arXiv2011

Varying-coefficient functional linear regression

Functional linear regression analysis aims to model regression relations which include a functional predictor. The analog of the regression parameter vector or matrix in conventional multivariate or multiple-response linear regression models is a regression parameter function in one or two arguments. If, in addition, one has scalar predictors, as is often the case in applications to longitudinal studies, the question arises how to incorporate these into a functional regression model. We study a varying-coefficient approach where the scalar covariates are modeled as additional arguments of the regression parameter function. This extension of the functional linear regression model is analogous to the extension of conventional linear regression models to varying-coefficient models and shares its advantages, such as increased flexibility; however, the details of this extension are more challenging in the functional case. Our methodology combines smoothing methods with regularization by truncation at a finite number of functional principal components. A practical version is developed and is shown to perform better than functional linear regression for longitudinal data. We investigate the asymptotic properties of varying-coefficient functional linear regression and establish consistency properties.

math.ST↗

arXiv2011

Nonparametric Independence Screening in Sparse Ultra-High Dimensional Additive Models

A variable screening procedure via correlation learning was proposed Fan and Lv (2008) to reduce dimensionality in sparse ultra-high dimensional models. Even when the true model is linear, the marginal regression can be highly nonlinear. To address this issue, we further extend the correlation learning to marginal nonparametric learning. Our nonparametric independence screening is called NIS, a specific member of the sure independence screening. Several closely related variable screening procedures are proposed. Under the nonparametric additive models, it is shown that under some mild technical conditions, the proposed independence screening methods enjoy a sure screening property. The extent to which the dimensionality can be reduced by independence screening is also explicitly quantified. As a methodological extension, an iterative nonparametric independence screening (INIS) is also proposed to enhance the finite sample performance for fitting sparse additive models. The simulation results and a real data analysis demonstrate that the proposed procedure works well with moderate sample size and large dimension and performs better than competing methods.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2010

Variance Estimation Using Refitted Cross-validation in Ultrahigh Dimensional Regression

Variance estimation is a fundamental problem in statistical modeling. In ultrahigh dimensional linear regressions where the dimensionality is much larger than sample size, traditional variance estimation techniques are not applicable. Recent advances on variable selection in ultrahigh dimensional linear regressions make this problem accessible. One of the major problems in ultrahigh dimensional regression is the high spurious correlation between the unobserved realized noise and some of the predictors. As a result, the realized noises are actually predicted when extra irrelevant variables are selected, leading to serious underestimate of the noise level. In this paper, we propose a two-stage refitted procedure via a data splitting technique, called refitted cross-validation (RCV), to attenuate the influence of irrelevant variables with high spurious correlations. Our asymptotic results show that the resulting procedure performs as well as the oracle estimator, which knows in advance the mean regression function. The simulation studies lend further support to our theoretical claims. The naive two-stage estimator which fits the selected variables in the first stage and the plug-in one stage estimators using LASSO and SCAD are also studied and compared. Their performances can be improved by the proposed RCV method.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2010

Control of the False Discovery Rate Under Arbitrary Covariance Dependence

Multiple hypothesis testing is a fundamental problem in high dimensional inference, with wide applications in many scientific fields. In genome-wide association studies, tens of thousands of tests are performed simultaneously to find if any genes are associated with some traits and those tests are correlated. When test statistics are correlated, false discovery control becomes very challenging under arbitrary dependence. In the current paper, we propose a new methodology based on principal factor approximation, which successfully substracts the common dependence and weakens significantly the correlation structure, to deal with an arbitrary dependence structure. We derive the theoretical distribution for false discovery proportion (FDP) in large scale multiple testing when a common threshold is used and provide a consistent FDP. This result has important applications in controlling FDR and FDP. Our estimate of FDP compares favorably with Efron (2007)'s approach, as demonstrated by in the simulated examples. Our approach is further illustrated by some real data applications.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2010

Nonparametric tests of the Markov hypothesis in continuous-time models

We propose several statistics to test the Markov hypothesis for $β$-mixing stationary processes sampled at discrete time intervals. Our tests are based on the Chapman--Kolmogorov equation. We establish the asymptotic null distributions of the proposed test statistics, showing that Wilks's phenomenon holds. We compute the power of the test and provide simulations to investigate the finite sample performance of the test statistics when the null model is a diffusion process, with alternatives consisting of models with a stochastic mean reversion level, stochastic volatility and jumps.

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