Do we need to estimate the variance in robust mean estimation?

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Sun, Qiang
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2021
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author Sun, Qiang
author_facet Sun, Qiang
contents In this paper, we propose self-tuned robust estimators for estimating the mean of heavy-tailed distributions, which refer to distributions with only finite variances. Our approach introduces a new loss function that considers both the mean parameter and a robustification parameter. By jointly optimizing the empirical loss function with respect to both parameters, the robustification parameter estimator can automatically adapt to the unknown data variance, and thus the self-tuned mean estimator can achieve optimal finite-sample performance. Our method outperforms previous approaches in terms of both computational and asymptotic efficiency. Specifically, it does not require cross-validation or Lepski's method to tune the robustification parameter, and the variance of our estimator achieves the Cramér-Rao lower bound. Project source code is available at \url{https://github.com/statsle/automean}.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2107_00118
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do we need to estimate the variance in robust mean estimation?
Sun, Qiang
Methodology
Statistics Theory
In this paper, we propose self-tuned robust estimators for estimating the mean of heavy-tailed distributions, which refer to distributions with only finite variances. Our approach introduces a new loss function that considers both the mean parameter and a robustification parameter. By jointly optimizing the empirical loss function with respect to both parameters, the robustification parameter estimator can automatically adapt to the unknown data variance, and thus the self-tuned mean estimator can achieve optimal finite-sample performance. Our method outperforms previous approaches in terms of both computational and asymptotic efficiency. Specifically, it does not require cross-validation or Lepski's method to tune the robustification parameter, and the variance of our estimator achieves the Cramér-Rao lower bound. Project source code is available at \url{https://github.com/statsle/automean}.
title Do we need to estimate the variance in robust mean estimation?
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00118