Related papers: Stein's Method of Moments
In this paper, we elucidate the geometry of Stein's method of moments (SMoM). SMoM is a parameter estimation method based on the Stein operator, and yields a wide class of estimators that do not depend on the normalizing constant. We…
We use Stein characterizations to obtain new moment-type estimators for the parameters of three classical spherical distributions (namely the Fisher-Bingham, the von Mises-Fisher, and the Watson distributions) in the i.i.d. case. This leads…
For parameter estimation of continuous and discrete distributions, we propose a generalization of the method of moments (MM), where Stein identities are utilized for improved estimation performance. The construction of these Stein-type…
Stein operators are differential operators which arise within the so-called Stein's method for stochastic approximation. We propose a new mechanism for constructing such operators for arbitrary (continuous or discrete) parametric…
We use Stein characterisations to derive new moment-type estimators for the parameters of several truncated multivariate distributions in the i.i.d. case; we also derive the asymptotic properties of these estimators. Our examples include…
We revisit the problem of parameter estimation for discrete probability distributions with values in $\mathbb{Z}^d$. To this end, we adapt a technique called Stein's Method of Moments to discrete distributions which often gives closed-form…
Providing theoretical guarantees for parameter estimation in exponential random graph models is a largely open problem. While maximum likelihood estimation has theoretical guarantees in principle, verifying the assumptions for these…
We propose a new general version of Stein's method for univariate distributions. In particular we propose a canonical definition of the Stein operator of a probability distribution {which is based on a linear difference or differential-type…
Stein's method compares probability distributions through the study of a class of linear operators called Stein operators. While mainly studied in probability and used to underpin theoretical statistics, Stein's method has led to…
In this paper, a new method based on probability generating functions is used to obtain multiple Stein operators for various random variables closely related to Poisson, binomial and negative binomial distributions. Also, Stein operators…
We introduce two types of estimators of the finite-dimensional parameters in the case of observations of inhomogeneous Poisson processes. These are the estimators of the method of moments and multi-step MLE. It is shown that the estimators…
We study estimation in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime for a broad class of Gaussian latent-variable models, including Gaussian mixtures and orbit recovery problems. We show that, in this regime, the generalized method-of-moments…
An important task in computational statistics and machine learning is to approximate a posterior distribution $p(x)$ with an empirical measure supported on a set of representative points $\{x_i\}_{i=1}^n$. This paper focuses on methods…
Stein's method is used to approximate sums of discrete and locally dependent random variables by a centered and symmetric Binomial distribution. Under appropriate smoothness properties of the summands, the same order of accuracy as in the…
This paper provides a general framework for Stein's density method for multivariate continuous distributions. The approach associates to any probability density function a canonical operator and Stein class, as well as an infinite…
Gradient estimation -- approximating the gradient of an expectation with respect to the parameters of a distribution -- is central to the solution of many machine learning problems. However, when the distribution is discrete, most common…
Moment restrictions and their conditional counterparts emerge in many areas of machine learning and statistics ranging from causal inference to reinforcement learning. Estimators for these tasks, generally called methods of moments, include…
We provide a general result for finding Stein operators for the product of two independent random variables whose Stein operators satisfy a certain assumption, extending a recent result of Gaunt, Mijoule and Swan \cite{gms18}. This…
The author uses a Stein-type covariance identity to obtain moment estimators for the parameters of the quadratic polynomial subfamily of Pearson distributions. The asymptotic distribution of the estimators is obtained, and normality and…
We define a moment-based estimator that maximizes the empirical saddlepoint (ESP) approximation of the distribution of solutions to empirical moment conditions. We call it the ESP estimator. We prove its existence, consistency and…