English

Improved multivariate normal mean estimation with unknown covariance when p is greater than n

Statistics Theory 2013-02-28 v1 Statistics Theory

Abstract

We consider the problem of estimating the mean vector of a p-variate normal (θ,Σ)(\theta,\Sigma) distribution under invariant quadratic loss, (δθ)Σ1(δθ)(\delta-\theta)'\Sigma^{-1}(\delta-\theta), when the covariance is unknown. We propose a new class of estimators that dominate the usual estimator δ0(X)=X\delta^0(X)=X. The proposed estimators of θ\theta depend upon X and an independent Wishart matrix S with n degrees of freedom, however, S is singular almost surely when p>n. The proof of domination involves the development of some new unbiased estimators of risk for the p>n setting. We also find some relationships between the amount of domination and the magnitudes of n and p.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1302.6746,
  title  = {Improved multivariate normal mean estimation with unknown covariance when p is greater than n},
  author = {Didier Chételat and Martin T. Wells},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.6746},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AOS1067 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org)

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:33:29.049Z