Inference In High-dimensional Models Research Articles

IPAD: Stable Interpretable Forecasting with Knockoffs Inference

Interpretability and stability are two important features that are desired in many contemporary big data applications arising in statistics, economics, and finance. While the former is enjoyed to some extent by many existing forecasting approaches, the latter in the sense of controlling the fraction of wrongly discovered features which can enhance greatly the interpretability is still largely underdeveloped. To this end, in this article, we exploit the general framework of model-X knockoffs introduced recently in Candès, Fan, Janson and Lv [(2018 ), “Panning for Gold: ‘model X’ Knockoffs for High Dimensional Controlled Variable Selection,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 80, 551–577], which is nonconventional for reproducible large-scale inference in that the framework is completely free of the use of p-values for significance testing, and suggest a new method of intertwined probabilistic factors decoupling (IPAD) for stable interpretable forecasting with knockoffs inference in high-dimensional models. The recipe of the method is constructing the knockoff variables by assuming a latent factor model that is exploited widely in economics and finance for the association structure of covariates. Our method and work are distinct from the existing literature in which we estimate the covariate distribution from data instead of assuming that it is known when constructing the knockoff variables, our procedure does not require any sample splitting, we provide theoretical justifications on the asymptotic false discovery rate control, and the theory for the power analysis is also established. Several simulation examples and the real data analysis further demonstrate that the newly suggested method has appealing finite-sample performance with desired interpretability and stability compared to some popularly used forecasting methods. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Debiasing the lasso: Optimal sample size for Gaussian designs

Performing statistical inference in high-dimensional models is challenging because of the lack of precise information on the distribution of high-dimensional regularized estimators. Here, we consider linear regression in the high-dimensional regime $p>>n$ and the Lasso estimator: we would like to perform inference on the parameter vector $\theta^{*}\in\mathbb{R}^{p}$. Important progress has been achieved in computing confidence intervals and $p$-values for single coordinates $\theta^{*}_{i}$, $i\in\{1,\dots,p\}$. A key role in these new inferential methods is played by a certain debiased estimator $\widehat{\theta}^{\mathrm{d}}$. Earlier work establishes that, under suitable assumptions on the design matrix, the coordinates of $\widehat{\theta}^{\mathrm{d}}$ are asymptotically Gaussian provided the true parameters vector $\theta^{*}$ is $s_{0}$-sparse with $s_{0}=o(\sqrt{n}/\log p)$. The condition $s_{0}=o(\sqrt{n}/\log p)$ is considerably stronger than the one for consistent estimation, namely $s_{0}=o(n/\log p)$. In this paper, we consider Gaussian designs with known or unknown population covariance. When the covariance is known, we prove that the debiased estimator is asymptotically Gaussian under the nearly optimal condition $s_{0}=o(n/(\log p)^{2})$. The same conclusion holds if the population covariance is unknown but can be estimated sufficiently well. For intermediate regimes, we describe the trade-off between sparsity in the coefficients $\theta^{*}$, and sparsity in the inverse covariance of the design. We further discuss several applications of our results beyond high-dimensional inference. In particular, we propose a thresholded Lasso estimator that is minimax optimal up to a factor $1+o_{n}(1)$ for i.i.d. Gaussian designs.

Efficient Covariance Approximations for Large Sparse Precision Matrices

ABSTRACTThe use of sparse precision (inverse covariance) matrices has become popular because they allow for efficient algorithms for joint inference in high-dimensional models. Many applications require the computation of certain elements of the covariance matrix, such as the marginal variances, which may be nontrivial to obtain when the dimension is large. This article introduces a fast Rao–Blackwellized Monte Carlo sampling-based method for efficiently approximating selected elements of the covariance matrix. The variance and confidence bounds of the approximations can be precisely estimated without additional computational costs. Furthermore, a method that iterates over subdomains is introduced, and is shown to additionally reduce the approximation errors to practically negligible levels in an application on functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Both methods have low memory requirements, which is typically the bottleneck for competing direct methods.

IPAD: Stable Interpretable Forecasting with Knockoffs Inference

Interpretability and stability are two important features that are desired in many contemporary big data applications arising in economics and finance. While the former is enjoyed to some extent by many existing forecasting approaches, the latter in the sense of controlling the fraction of wrongly discovered features which can enhance greatly the interpretability is still largely underdeveloped in the econometric settings. To this end, in this paper we exploit the general framework of model-X knockoffs introduced recently in Cand\`{e}s, Fan, Janson and Lv (2018), which is nonconventional for reproducible large-scale inference in that the framework is completely free of the use of p-values for significance testing, and suggest a new method of intertwined probabilistic factors decoupling (IPAD) for stable interpretable forecasting with knockoffs inference in high-dimensional models. The recipe of the method is constructing the knockoff variables by assuming a latent factor model that is exploited widely in economics and finance for the association structure of covariates. Our method and work are distinct from the existing literature in that we estimate the covariate distribution from data instead of assuming that it is known when constructing the knockoff variables, our procedure does not require any sample splitting, we provide theoretical justifications on the asymptotic false discovery rate control, and the theory for the power analysis is also established. Several simulation examples and the real data analysis further demonstrate that the newly suggested method has appealing finite-sample performance with desired interpretability and stability compared to some popularly used forecasting methods.

Likelihood-Free Inference in High-Dimensional Models.

Methods that bypass analytical evaluations of the likelihood function have become an indispensable tool for statistical inference in many fields of science. These so-called likelihood-free methods rely on accepting and rejecting simulations based on summary statistics, which limits them to low-dimensional models for which the value of the likelihood is large enough to result in manageable acceptance rates. To get around these issues, we introduce a novel, likelihood-free Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method combining two key innovations: updating only one parameter per iteration and accepting or rejecting this update based on subsets of statistics approximately sufficient for this parameter. This increases acceptance rates dramatically, rendering this approach suitable even for models of very high dimensionality. We further derive that for linear models, a one-dimensional combination of statistics per parameter is sufficient and can be found empirically with simulations. Finally, we demonstrate that our method readily scales to models of very high dimensionality, using toy models as well as by jointly inferring the effective population size, the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of segregating mutations, and selection coefficients for each locus from data of a recent experiment on the evolution of drug resistance in influenza.

A Structural Model of Segregation in Social Networks

In this paper, I develop and estimate a dynamic model of strategic network formation with heterogeneous agents. While existing models have multiple equilibria, I prove the existence of a unique stationary equilibrium, which characterizes the likelihood of observing a specic network in the data. As a consequence, the structural parameters can be estimated using only one observation of the network at a single point in time. The estimation is challenging because the exact evaluation of the likelihood is computationally infeasible. To circumvent this problem, I propose a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm that avoids direct evaluation of the likelihood. This method drastically reduces the computational burden of estimating the posterior distribution and allows inference in high dimensional models. I present an application to the study of segregation in school friendship networks, using data from Add Health containing the actual social networks of students in a representative sample of US schools. My results suggest that for white students, the value of a same-race friend decreases with the fraction of whites in the school. The opposite is true for African American students. The model is used to study how dierent

A Structural Model of Segregation in Social Networks

In this paper, I develop and estimate a dynamic model of strategic network formation with heterogeneous agents. While existing models have multiple equilibria, I prove the existence of a unique stationary equilibrium, which characterizes the likelihood of observing a specific network in the data. As a consequence, the structural parameters can be estimated using only one observation of the network at a single point in time. The estimation is challenging because the exact evaluation of the likelihood is computationally infeasible. To circumvent this problem, I propose a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm that avoids direct evaluation of the likelihood. This method drastically reduces the computational burden of estimating the posterior distribution and allows inference in high dimensional models. I present an application to the study of segregation in school friendship networks, using data from Add Health containing the actual social networks of students in a representative sample of US schools. My results suggest that for white students, the value of a same-race friend decreases with the fraction of whites in the school. The opposite is true for African American students. The model is used to study how different desegregation policies may affect the structure of the network in equilibrium. I find an inverted u-shaped relationship between the fraction of students belonging to a racial group and the expected equilibrium segregation levels. These results suggest that desegregation programs may decrease the degree of interracial interaction within schools.