Covariance estimation via fiducial inference

Abstract

As a classical problem, covariance estimation has drawn much attention from the statistical community for decades. Much work has been done under the frequentist and Bayesian frameworks. Aiming to quantify the uncertainty of the estimators without having to choose a prior, we have developed a fiducial approach to the estimation of covariance matrix. Built upon the Fiducial Berstein–von Mises Theorem, we show that the fiducial distribution of the covariate matrix is consistent under our framework. Consequently, the samples generated from this fiducial distribution are good estimators to the true covariance matrix, which enable us to define a meaningful confidence region for the covariance matrix. Lastly, we also show that the fiducial approach can be a powerful tool for identifying clique structures in covariance matrices.