M-Variance Asymptotics and Uniqueness of Descriptors

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Eltzner, Benjamin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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author Eltzner, Benjamin
author_facet Eltzner, Benjamin
contents Asymptotic theory for M-estimation problems usually focuses on the asymptotic convergence of the sample descriptor, defined as the minimizer of the sample loss function. Here, we explore a related question and formulate asymptotic theory for the minimum value of sample loss, the M-variance. Since the loss function value is always a real number, the asymptotic theory for the M-variance is comparatively simple. M-variance often satisfies a standard central limit theorem, even in situations where the asymptotics of the descriptor is more complicated as for example in case of smeariness, or if no asymptotic distribution can be given as can be the case if the descriptor space is a general metric space. We use the asymptotic results for the M-variance to formulate a hypothesis test to systematically determine for a given sample whether the underlying population loss function may have multiple global minima. We discuss three applications of our test to data, each of which presents a typical scenario in which non-uniqueness of descriptors may occur. These model scenarios are the mean on a non-euclidean space, non-linear regression and Gaussian mixture clustering.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2011_14762
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle M-Variance Asymptotics and Uniqueness of Descriptors
Eltzner, Benjamin
Statistics Theory
Methodology
Asymptotic theory for M-estimation problems usually focuses on the asymptotic convergence of the sample descriptor, defined as the minimizer of the sample loss function. Here, we explore a related question and formulate asymptotic theory for the minimum value of sample loss, the M-variance. Since the loss function value is always a real number, the asymptotic theory for the M-variance is comparatively simple. M-variance often satisfies a standard central limit theorem, even in situations where the asymptotics of the descriptor is more complicated as for example in case of smeariness, or if no asymptotic distribution can be given as can be the case if the descriptor space is a general metric space. We use the asymptotic results for the M-variance to formulate a hypothesis test to systematically determine for a given sample whether the underlying population loss function may have multiple global minima. We discuss three applications of our test to data, each of which presents a typical scenario in which non-uniqueness of descriptors may occur. These model scenarios are the mean on a non-euclidean space, non-linear regression and Gaussian mixture clustering.
title M-Variance Asymptotics and Uniqueness of Descriptors
topic Statistics Theory
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.14762