Sparsity meets correlation in Gaussian sequence model

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kotekal, Subhodh, Gao, Chao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Kotekal, Subhodh
Gao, Chao
author_facet Kotekal, Subhodh
Gao, Chao
contents We study estimation of an $s$-sparse signal in the $p$-dimensional Gaussian sequence model with equicorrelated observations and derive the minimax rate. A new phenomenon emerges from correlation, namely the rate scales with respect to $p-2s$ and exhibits a phase transition at $p-2s \asymp \sqrt{p}$. Correlation is shown to be a blessing provided it is sufficiently strong, and the critical correlation level exhibits a delicate dependence on the sparsity level. Due to correlation, the minimax rate is driven by two subproblems: estimation of a linear functional (the average of the signal) and estimation of the signal's $(p-1)$-dimensional projection onto the orthogonal subspace. The high-dimensional projection is estimated via sparse regression and the linear functional is cast as a robust location estimation problem. Existing robust estimators turn out to be suboptimal, and we show a kernel mode estimator with a widening bandwidth exploits the Gaussian character of the data to achieve the optimal estimation rate.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_09356
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sparsity meets correlation in Gaussian sequence model
Kotekal, Subhodh
Gao, Chao
Statistics Theory
Methodology
We study estimation of an $s$-sparse signal in the $p$-dimensional Gaussian sequence model with equicorrelated observations and derive the minimax rate. A new phenomenon emerges from correlation, namely the rate scales with respect to $p-2s$ and exhibits a phase transition at $p-2s \asymp \sqrt{p}$. Correlation is shown to be a blessing provided it is sufficiently strong, and the critical correlation level exhibits a delicate dependence on the sparsity level. Due to correlation, the minimax rate is driven by two subproblems: estimation of a linear functional (the average of the signal) and estimation of the signal's $(p-1)$-dimensional projection onto the orthogonal subspace. The high-dimensional projection is estimated via sparse regression and the linear functional is cast as a robust location estimation problem. Existing robust estimators turn out to be suboptimal, and we show a kernel mode estimator with a widening bandwidth exploits the Gaussian character of the data to achieve the optimal estimation rate.
title Sparsity meets correlation in Gaussian sequence model
topic Statistics Theory
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09356