We propose a novel Rayleigh quotient based sparse quadratic dimension reduction methodnamed QUADRO (Qua dratic D imension R eduction via Rayleigh O ptimization)for analyzing high-dimensional data. Unlike in the linear setting where Rayleigh quotient optimization coincides with classification, these two problems are very different under nonlinear settings. In this paper, we clarify this difference and show that Rayleigh quotient optimization may be of independent scientific interests. One major challenge of Rayleigh quotient optimization is that the variance of quadratic statistics involves all fourth cross-moments of predictors, which are infeasible to compute for high-dimensional applications and may accumulate too many stochastic errors. This issue is resolved by considering a family of elliptical models. Moreover, for heavy-tail distributions, robust estimates of mean vectors and covariance matrices are

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Large-scale multiple testing with correlated and heavy-tailed data arises in a wide range of research areas from genomics, medical imaging to finance. Conventional methods for estimating the false discovery proportion (FDP) often ignore the effect of heavy-tailedness and the dependence structure among test statistics, and thus may lead to inefficient or even inconsistent estimation. Also, the assumption of joint normality is often imposed, which is too stringent for many applications. To address these challenges, in this paper we propose a factoradjusted robust procedure for large-scale simultaneous inference with control of the false discovery proportion. We demonstrate that robust factor adjustments are extremely important in both improving the power of the tests and controlling FDP. We identify general conditions under which the proposed method produces consistent estimate of the FDP. As a byproduct that is of independent interest, we establish an exponential-type deviation inequality for a robust U-type covariance estimator under the spectral norm. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate the advantage of the proposed method over several state-of-the-art methods especially when the data are generated from heavy-tailed distributions. Our proposed procedures are implemented in the R-package FarmTest. Supported by NSF Grants DMS-1662139, DMS-1712591, and NIH Grant R01-GM072611-12.

Regularity properties such as the incoherence condition, the restricted isometry property, compatibility, restricted eigenvalue and iq sensitivity of covariate matrices play a pivotal role in high-dimensional regression and compressed sensing. Yet, like computing the spark of a matrix, we first show that it is NP-hard to check the conditions involving all submatrices of a given size.

Value at Risk is a fundamental tool for managing market risks. It measures the worst loss to be expected of a portfolio over a given time horizon under normal market conditions at a given confidence level. Calculation of VaR frequently involves estimating the volatility of return processes and quantiles of standardized returns. In this paper, several semiparametric techniques are introduced to estimate the volatilities of the market prices of a portfolio. In addition, both parametric and nonparametric techniques are proposed to estimate the quantiles of standardized return processes. The newly proposed techniques also have the flexibility to adapt automatically to the changes in the dynamics of market prices over time. Their statistical efficiencies are studied both theoretically and empirically. The combination of newly proposed techniques for estimating volatility and standardized quantiles yields several new techniques for forecasting multiple period VaR. The performance of the newly proposed VaR estimators is evaluated and compared with some of existing methods. Our simulation results and empirical studies endorse the newly proposed time-dependent semiparametric approach for estimating VaR.