Cross-validation for change-point regression: pitfalls and solutions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Pein, Florian, Shah, Rajen D.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
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author Pein, Florian
Shah, Rajen D.
author_facet Pein, Florian
Shah, Rajen D.
contents Cross-validation is the standard approach for tuning parameter selection in many non-parametric regression problems. However its use is less common in change-point regression, perhaps as its prediction error-based criterion may appear to permit small spurious changes and hence be less well-suited to estimation of the number and location of change-points. We show that in fact the problems of cross-validation with squared error loss are more severe and can lead to systematic under- or over-estimation of the number of change-points, and highly suboptimal estimation of the mean function in simple settings where changes are easily detectable. We propose two simple approaches to remedy these issues, the first involving the use of absolute error rather than squared error loss, and the second involving modifying the holdout sets used. For the latter, we provide conditions that permit consistent estimation of the number of change-points for a general change-point estimation procedure. We show these conditions are satisfied for least squares estimation using new results on its performance when supplied with the incorrect number of change-points. Numerical experiments show that our new approaches are competitive with common change-point methods using classical tuning parameter choices when error distributions are well-specified, but can substantially outperform these in misspecified models. An implementation of our methodology is available in the R package crossvalidationCP on CRAN.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2112_03220
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cross-validation for change-point regression: pitfalls and solutions
Pein, Florian
Shah, Rajen D.
Methodology
Statistics Theory
Computation
Machine Learning
Cross-validation is the standard approach for tuning parameter selection in many non-parametric regression problems. However its use is less common in change-point regression, perhaps as its prediction error-based criterion may appear to permit small spurious changes and hence be less well-suited to estimation of the number and location of change-points. We show that in fact the problems of cross-validation with squared error loss are more severe and can lead to systematic under- or over-estimation of the number of change-points, and highly suboptimal estimation of the mean function in simple settings where changes are easily detectable. We propose two simple approaches to remedy these issues, the first involving the use of absolute error rather than squared error loss, and the second involving modifying the holdout sets used. For the latter, we provide conditions that permit consistent estimation of the number of change-points for a general change-point estimation procedure. We show these conditions are satisfied for least squares estimation using new results on its performance when supplied with the incorrect number of change-points. Numerical experiments show that our new approaches are competitive with common change-point methods using classical tuning parameter choices when error distributions are well-specified, but can substantially outperform these in misspecified models. An implementation of our methodology is available in the R package crossvalidationCP on CRAN.
title Cross-validation for change-point regression: pitfalls and solutions
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
Computation
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.03220