In statistics and machine learning, people are often interested in the eigenvectors (or singular vectors) of certain matrices (eg covariance matrices, data matrices, etc). However, those matrices are usually perturbed by noises or statistical errors, either from random sampling or structural patterns. One usually employs Davis-Kahan \sin theorem to bound the difference between the eigenvectors of a matrix \sin and those of a perturbed matrix \sin , in terms of \sin norm. In this paper, we prove that when \sin is a low-rank and incoherent matrix, the \sin norm perturbation bound of singular vectors (or eigenvectors in the symmetric case) is smaller by a factor of \sin or \sin for left and right vectors, where \sin and \sin are the matrix dimensions. The power of this new perturbation result is shown in robust covariance estimation, particularly when random variables have heavy tails. There, we propose new robust covariance estimators and establish their asymptotic properties using the newly developed perturbation bound. Our theoretical results are verified through extensive numerical experiments.

An effective bandwidth selection method for local linear regression is proposed in Fan and Gijbels [1995, J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B, 57, 371394]. The method is based on the idea of the pre-asymptotic substitution and has been tested extensively. This paper investigates the rate of convergence of this method. In particular, we show that the relative rate of convergence is of order <i>n</i>^2/7 if the locally cubic fitting is used in the pilot stage, and the rate of convergence is <i>n</i>^2/5 when the local polynomial of degree 5 is used in the pilot fitting. The study also reveals a marked difference between the bandwidth selection for nonparametric regression and that for density estimation: The plug-in approach for the latter case can admit the root-<i>n</i> rate of convergence while for the former case the best rate is of order <i>n</i>^2/5.

Errors-in-variables regression is the study of the association between covariates and responses where covariates are observed with errors. In this paper, we consider the estimation of multivariate regression functions for dependent data with errors in covariates. Nonparametric deconvolution technique is used to account for errors-in-variables. The asymptotic behavior of regression estimators depends on the smoothness of the error distributions, which are characterized as either ordinarily smooth or super smooth. Asymptotic normality is established for both strongly mixing and -mixing processes, when the error distribution function is either ordinarily smooth or super smooth.

Sure screening technique has been considered as a powerful tool to handle the ultrahigh dimensional variable selection problems, where the dimensionality p and the sample size n can satisfy the NP dimensionality logp =O(na) for some a>0[J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. B. Stat. Methodol. 70 (2008) 849–911]. The current paper aims to simultaneously tackle the “universality” and “effectiveness” of sure screening procedures. For the “universality,” we develop a general and unified framework for nonparametric screening methods from a loss function perspective. Consider a loss function to measure the divergence of the response variable and the underlying nonparametric function of covariates. We newly propose a class of loss functions called conditional strictly convex loss, which contains, but is not limited to, negative log likelihood loss from one-parameter exponential families, exponential loss for binary classification and quantile regression loss. The sure screening property and model selection size control will be established within this class of loss functions. For the “effectiveness,” we focus on a goodness-of-fit nonparametric screening (Goffins) method under conditional strictly convex loss. Interestingly, we can achieve a better convergence probability of containing the true model compared with related literature. The superior performance of our proposed method has been further demonstrated by extensive simulation studies and some real scientific data example.

The leverage effect refers to the generally negative correlation between an asset return and its changes of volatility. A natural estimate consists in using the empirical correlation between the daily returns and the changes of daily volatility estimated from high frequency data. The puzzle lies in the fact that such an intuitively natural estimate yields nearly zero correlation for most assets tested, despite the many economic reasons for expecting the estimated correlation to be negative. To better understand the sources of the puzzle, we analyze the different asymptotic biases that are involved in high frequency estimation of the leverage effect, including biases due to discretization errors, to smoothing errors in estimating spot volatilities, to estimation error, and to market microstructure noise. This decomposition enables us to propose novel bias correction methods for estimating the leverage effect.