English

On the tails of log-concave density estimators

Statistics Theory 2026-02-02 v3 Statistics Theory

Abstract

It is shown that the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator of a univariate log-concave probability density satisfies desirable consistency properties in the tail regions. Specifically, let PP and ff denote the true underlying distribution and density, respectively. If f^n\hat{f}_n is the estimated log-concave density, and φ^n=logf^n\hat{\varphi}_n = \log \hat{f}_n, then we specify sequences (bn)nN(b_n)_{n\in \mathbb{N}} such that P([bn,))0P([b_n,\infty)) \to 0 at a specific speed, ensuring that the absolute errors or absolute relative errors of f^n, φ^n\hat{f}_n, \ \hat{\varphi}_n and φ^n\hat{\varphi}_n' converge to zero uniformly on sets [a,bn][a, b_n]. The main tools, besides characterizations of f^n\hat{f}_n, are exponential and maximal inequalities for truncated moments of log-concave distributions, which are of independent interest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.17910,
  title  = {On the tails of log-concave density estimators},
  author = {Didier B. Ryter and Lutz Duembgen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.17910},
  year   = {2026}
}