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Main Authors: Dolera, Emanuele, Favaro, Stefano, Giordano, Matteo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.06981
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author Dolera, Emanuele
Favaro, Stefano
Giordano, Matteo
author_facet Dolera, Emanuele
Favaro, Stefano
Giordano, Matteo
contents In this article, we investigate the problem of estimating a spatially inhomogeneous function and its derivatives in the white noise model using Besov-Laplace priors. We show that smoothness-matching priors attains minimax optimal posterior contraction rates, in strong Sobolev metrics, over the Besov spaces $B^β_{11}$, $β> d/2$, closing a gap in the existing literature. Our strong posterior contraction rates also imply that the posterior distributions arising from Besov-Laplace priors with matching regularity enjoy a desirable plug-in property for derivative estimation, entailing that the push-forward measures under differential operators optimally recover the derivatives of the unknown regression function. The proof of our results relies on the novel approach to posterior contraction rates, based on Wasserstein distance, recently developed by Dolera, Favaro and Mainini (Probability Theory and Related Fields, 2024). We show how this approach allows to overcome some technical challenges that emerge in the frequentist analysis of smoothness-matching Besov-Laplace priors.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_06981
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On strong posterior contraction rates for Besov-Laplace priors in the white noise model
Dolera, Emanuele
Favaro, Stefano
Giordano, Matteo
Statistics Theory
In this article, we investigate the problem of estimating a spatially inhomogeneous function and its derivatives in the white noise model using Besov-Laplace priors. We show that smoothness-matching priors attains minimax optimal posterior contraction rates, in strong Sobolev metrics, over the Besov spaces $B^β_{11}$, $β> d/2$, closing a gap in the existing literature. Our strong posterior contraction rates also imply that the posterior distributions arising from Besov-Laplace priors with matching regularity enjoy a desirable plug-in property for derivative estimation, entailing that the push-forward measures under differential operators optimally recover the derivatives of the unknown regression function. The proof of our results relies on the novel approach to posterior contraction rates, based on Wasserstein distance, recently developed by Dolera, Favaro and Mainini (Probability Theory and Related Fields, 2024). We show how this approach allows to overcome some technical challenges that emerge in the frequentist analysis of smoothness-matching Besov-Laplace priors.
title On strong posterior contraction rates for Besov-Laplace priors in the white noise model
topic Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.06981