English

Omnibus CLTs for Fr\'echet means and nonparametric inference on non-Euclidean spaces

Statistics Theory 2016-03-29 v3 Statistics Theory

Abstract

Two central limit theorems for sample Fr\'echet means are derived, both significant for nonparametric inference on non-Euclidean spaces. The first one, Theorem 2.2, encompasses and improves upon most earlier CLTs on Fr\'echet means and broadens the scope of the methodology beyond manifolds to diverse new non-Euclidean data including those on certain stratified spaces which are important in the study of phylogenetic trees. It does not require that the underlying distribution QQ have a density, and applies to both intrinsic and extrinsic analysis. The second theorem, Theorem 3.3, focuses on intrinsic means on Riemannian manifolds of dimensions d>2d>2 and breaks new ground by providing a broad CLT without any of the earlier restrictive support assumptions. It makes the statistically reasonable assumption of a somewhat smooth density of QQ. The excluded case of dimension d=2d=2 proves to be an enigma, although the first theorem does provide a CLT in this case as well under a support restriction. Theorem 3.3 immediately applies to spheres SdS^d, d>2d>2, which are also of considerable importance in applications to axial spaces and to landmarks based image analysis, as these spaces are quotients of spheres under a Lie group G\mathcal G of isometries of SdS^d.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1306.5806,
  title  = {Omnibus CLTs for Fr\'echet means and nonparametric inference on non-Euclidean spaces},
  author = {Rabi Bhattacharya and Lizhen Lin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1306.5806},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society (2016)