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We address the problem of producing a lower bound for the mean of a discrete probability distribution, with known support over a finite set of real numbers, from an iid sample of that distribution. Up to a constant, this is equivalent to…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-02-25 Erik Learned-Miller

We study the problem of estimating an unknown vector $\theta$ from an observation $X$ drawn according to the normal distribution with mean $\theta$ and identity covariance matrix under the knowledge that $\theta$ belongs to a known closed…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-03-03 Xi Chen , Adityanand Guntuboyina , Yuchen Zhang

As opposed to standard empirical risk minimization (ERM), distributionally robust optimization aims to minimize the worst-case risk over a larger ambiguity set containing the original empirical distribution of the training data. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-06 Jaeho Lee , Maxim Raginsky

The fundamental theorem of statistical learning states that for binary classification problems, any Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM) learning rule has close to optimal sample complexity. In this paper we seek for a generic optimal learner…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-05-13 Amit Daniely , Shai Shalev-Shwartz

We revisit the sample average approximation (SAA) approach for non-convex stochastic programming. We show that applying the SAA approach to problems with expected value equality constraints does not necessarily result in asymptotic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-16 Thomas Lew , Riccardo Bonalli , Marco Pavone

It is well known that Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM) may attain minimax suboptimal rates in terms of the mean squared error (Birg\'e and Massart, 1993). In this paper, we prove that, under relatively mild assumptions, the suboptimality…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-11-04 Gil Kur , Eli Putterman , Alexander Rakhlin

This manuscript studies a general approach to construct confidence sets for the solution of stochastic optimization, rendering empirical risk minimization as special cases. Statistical inference for stochastic optimization poses significant…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-05-22 Kenta Takatsu , Arun Kumar Kuchibhotla

We consider quasi-admissibility/inadmissibility of Stein-type shrinkage estimators of the mean of a multivariate normal distribution with covariance matrix an unknown multiple of the identity. Quasi-admissibility/inadmissibility is defined…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-09-13 Yuzo Maruyama , William E. Strawderman

The statistical decision theory pioneered by Wald (1950) has used state-dependent mean loss (risk) to measure the performance of statistical decision functions across potential samples. We think it evident that evaluation of performance…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-08-11 Charles F. Manski , Aleksey Tetenov

Shrinkage estimation has become a basic tool in the analysis of high-dimensional data. Historically and conceptually a key development toward this was the discovery of the inadmissibility of the usual estimator of a multivariate normal…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-03-22 Lawrence D. Brown , Linda H. Zhao

This paper concerns a high-dimensional stochastic programming problem of minimizing a function of expected cost with a matrix argument. To this problem, one of the most widely applied solution paradigms is the sample average approximation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-22 Hongcheng Liu , Charles Hernandez , Hung Yi Lee

We investigate the feasibility of sample average approximation (SAA) for general stochastic optimization problems, including two-stage stochastic programming without the relatively complete recourse assumption. Instead of analyzing problems…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-22 Henry Lam , Fengpei Li

This paper investigates the supervised learning problem with observations drawn from certain general stationary stochastic processes. Here by \emph{general}, we mean that many stationary stochastic processes can be included. We show that…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-05-11 Hanyuan Hang , Yunlong Feng , Ingo Steinwart , Johan A. K. Suykens

In constrained stochastic optimization, one naturally expects that imposing a stricter feasible set does not increase the statistical risk of an estimator defined by projection onto that set. In this paper, we show that this intuition can…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-01-23 Omar Al-Ghattas

We give an exact characterization of admissibility in statistical decision problems in terms of Bayes optimality in a so-called nonstandard extension of the original decision problem, as introduced by Duanmu and Roy. Unlike the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-12-30 Haosui Duanmu , Daniel M. Roy , David Schrittesser

We study randomized algorithms for constrained optimization, in abstract frameworks that include, in strictly increasing generality: convex programming; LP-type problems; violator spaces; and a setting we introduce, consistent spaces. Such…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2019-06-04 Kenneth L. Clarkson , Bernd Gärtner , Johannes Lengler , May Szedlak

We develop a novel procedure for estimating the optimizer of general convex stochastic optimization problems of the form $\min_{x\in\mathcal{X}} \mathbb{E}[F(x,\xi)]$, when the given data is a finite independent sample selected according to…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-01-26 Daniel Bartl , Shahar Mendelson

We consider estimation of a multivariate normal mean vector under sum of squared error loss. We propose a new class of smooth estimators parameterized by \alpha dominating the James-Stein estimator. The estimator for \alpha=1 corresponds to…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2010-09-14 Yuzo Maruyama

Shape-constrained optimization arises in a wide range of problems including distributionally robust optimization (DRO) that has surging popularity in recent years. In the DRO literature, these problems are usually solved via reduction into…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-13 Henry Lam , Zhenyuan Liu , Dashi I. Singham

In this paper we have considered the problem of estimating the population mean in systematic sampling using information on an auxiliary variable in presence of non response. Some modified ratio, product and difference type estimators in…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-03-06 Hemant K. Verma , R. D. Singh , Rajesh Singh