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Estimating the mean counterfactual outcome under a treatment rule is a central problem in causal inference and policy evaluation. Standard estimators, including inverse probability weighting (IPW), augmented IPW (AIPW), and targeted maximum…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-06 Yichen Xu , Mark J. van der Laan

Nonparametric empirical Bayes methods provide a flexible and attractive approach to high-dimensional data analysis. One particularly elegant empirical Bayes methodology, involving the Kiefer-Wolfowitz nonparametric maximum likelihood…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-07-11 Lee H. Dicker , Sihai D. Zhao

Estimating model parameters is a crucial step in mathematical modelling and typically involves minimizing the disagreement between model predictions and experimental data. This calibration data can change throughout a study, particularly if…

Quantitative Methods · Quantitative Biology 2023-11-03 Tyler Cassidy

A statistical model is said to be un-normalised when its likelihood function involves an intractable normalising constant. Two popular methods for parameter inference for these models are MC-MLE (Monte Carlo maximum likelihood estimation),…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-02-01 Lionel Riou-Durand , Nicolas Chopin

Introduced by Kiefer and Wolfowitz \cite{KW56}, the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (NPMLE) is a widely used methodology for learning mixture odels and empirical Bayes estimation. Sidestepping the non-convexity in mixture…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-09-08 Yury Polyanskiy , Yihong Wu

The Highly-Adaptive-LASSO Targeted Minimum Loss Estimator (HAL-TMLE) is an efficient plug-in estimator of a pathwise differentiable parameter in a statistical model that at minimal (and possibly only) assumes that the sectional variation…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-02-12 Weixin Cai , Mark van der Laan

We advocate for a practical Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) approach towards designing loss functions for regression and forecasting, as an alternative to the typical approach of direct empirical risk minimization on a specific target…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-12 Pranjal Awasthi , Abhimanyu Das , Rajat Sen , Ananda Theertha Suresh

We consider the problem of estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) when both randomized control trial (RCT) data and external real-world data (RWD) are available. We decompose the ATE estimand as the difference between a pooled-ATE…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-01-22 Mark van der Laan , Sky Qiu , Jens Magelund Tarp , Lars van der Laan

In this paper, a nonparametric maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for band-limited (BL) probability density functions (pdfs) is proposed. The BLML estimator is consistent and computationally efficient. To compute the BLML estimator, three…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-06-30 Rahul Agarwal , Zhe Chen , Sridevi V. Sarma

Maximum regularized likelihood estimators (MRLEs) are arguably the most established class of estimators in high-dimensional statistics. In this paper, we derive guarantees for MRLEs in Kullback-Leibler divergence, a general measure of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-10-18 Rui Zhuang , Johannes Lederer

Nonparametric maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) in inverse problems often have non-normal limit distributions, like Chernoff's distribution. However, if one considers smooth functionals of the model, with corresponding functionals of the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-10-24 Piet Groeneboom

Anomaly estimation, or the problem of finding a subset of a dataset that differs from the rest of the dataset, is a classic problem in machine learning and data mining. In both theoretical work and in applications, the anomaly is assumed to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-14 Uthsav Chitra , Kimberly Ding , Jasper C. H. Lee , Benjamin J. Raphael

This paper studies parameter estimation using L-moments, an alternative to traditional moments with attractive statistical properties. The estimation of model parameters by matching sample L-moments is known to outperform maximum likelihood…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-28 Luis Alvarez , Chang Chiann , Pedro Morettin

Joint maximum likelihood (JML) estimation is one of the earliest approaches to fitting item response theory (IRT) models. This procedure treats both the item and person parameters as unknown but fixed model parameters and estimates them…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-06-17 Yunxiao Chen , Xiaoou Li , Siliang Zhang

Asymptotic properties of three estimators of probability density function of sample maximum $f_{(m)}:=mfF^{m-1}$ are derived, where $m$ is a function of sample size $n$. One of the estimators is the parametrically fitted by the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-06-13 Taku Moriyama

We study behavior of the restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimator under a misspecified linear mixed model (LMM) that has received much attention in recent gnome-wide association studies. The asymptotic analysis establishes consistency…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-04-10 Jiming Jiang , Cong Li , Debashis Paul , Can Yang , Hongyu Zhao

We give answer to an open problem regarding consistency of the maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) in generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) involving crossed random effects. The solution to the open problem introduces an interesting,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2013-03-13 Jiming Jiang

This paper establishes asymptotic results for the maximum likelihood and restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimators of the parameters in the nested error regression model for clustered data when both of the number of independent…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-01-25 Ziyang Lyu , A. H. Welsh

In this paper, we study the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of a convex hazard function. We show that the MLE is consistent and converges at a local rate of $n^{2/5}$ at points $x_0$ where the true hazard function is…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2010-01-14 Hanna K. Jankowski , Jon A. Wellner

We present a general framework for studying regularized estimators; such estimators are pervasive in estimation problems wherein "plug-in" type estimators are either ill-defined or ill-behaved. Within this framework, we derive, under…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-07-14 Michael Jansson , Demian Pouzo