Convergence of Probability Measures. By P. Billingsley. Chichester, Sussex, Wiley, 1968. xii, 253 p. 9 1/4“. 117s.

Convergence of Probability Measures

Weak Convergence and Empirical Processes - A. W. van der Vaart; J. A. Wellner.

1 Introduction.- 2 Experiments, Deficiencies, Distances v.- 2.1 Comparing Risk Functions.- 2.2 Deficiency and Distance between Experiments.- 2.3 Likelihood Ratios and Blackwell's Representation.- 2.4 Further Remarks on the Convergence of Distri butions of Likelihood Ratios.- 2.5 Historical Remarks.- 3 Contiguity - Hellinger Transforms.- 3.1 Contiguity.- 3.2 Hellinger Distances, Hellinger Transforms.- 3.3 Historical Remarks.- 4 Gaussian Shift and Poisson Experiments.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Gaussian Experiments.- 4.3 Poisson Experiments.- 4.4 Historical Remarks.- 5 Limit Laws for Likelihood Ratios.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Auxiliary Results.- 5.2.1 Lindeberg's Procedure.- 5.2.2 Levy Splittings.- 5.2.3 Paul Levy's Symmetrization Inequalities.- 5.2.4 Conditions for Shift-Compactness.- 5.2.5 A Central Limit Theorem for Infinitesimal Arrays.- 5.2.6 The Special Case of Gaussian Limits.- 5.2.7 Peano Differentiable Functions.- 5.3 Limits for Binary Experiments.- 5.4 Gaussian Limits.- 5.5 Historical Remarks.- 6 Local Asymptotic Normality.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 Locally Asymptotically Quadratic Families.- 6.3 A Method of Construction of Estimates.- 6.4 Some Local Bayes Properties.- 6.5 Invariance and Regularity.- 6.6 The LAMN and LAN Conditions.- 6.7 Additional Remarks on the LAN Conditions.- 6.8 Wald's Tests and Confidence Ellipsoids.- 6.9 Possible Extensions.- 6.10 Historical Remarks.- 7 Independent, Identically Distributed Observations.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 The Standard i.i.d. Case: Differentiability in Quadratic Mean.- 7.3 Some Examples.- 7.4 Some Nonparametric Considerations.- 7.5 Bounds on the Risk of Estimates.- 7.6 Some Cases Where the Number of Observations Is Random.- 7.7 Historical Remarks.- 8 On Bayes Procedures.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Bayes Procedures Behave Nicely.- 8.3 The Bernstein-von Mises Phenomenon.- 8.4 A Bernstein-von Mises Result for the i.i.d. Case.- 8.5 Bayes Procedures Behave Miserably.- 8.6 Historical Remarks.- Author Index.

Asymptotics in Statistics–Some Basic Concepts

1. Preliminaries 2. Two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations 3. Uniqueness of stationary measure and mixing 4. Ergodicity and limiting theorems 5. Inviscid limit 6. Miscellanies 7. Appendix 8. Solutions to some exercises.

/pdf/mathematics-of-two-dimensional-turbulence-1e4x50dyq4.pdf

Mathematics of Two-Dimensional Turbulence

The pseudomarginal algorithm is a Metropolis–Hastings‐type scheme which samples asymptotically from a target probability density when we can only estimate unbiasedly an unnormalized version of it. In a Bayesian context, it is a state of the art posterior simulation technique when the likelihood function is intractable but can be estimated unbiasedly by using Monte Carlo samples. However, for the performance of this scheme not to degrade as the number T of data points increases, it is typically necessary for the number N of Monte Carlo samples to be proportional to T to control the relative variance of the likelihood ratio estimator appearing in the acceptance probability of this algorithm. The correlated pseudomarginal method is a modification of the pseudomarginal method using a likelihood ratio estimator computed by using two correlated likelihood estimators. For random‐effects models, we show under regularity conditions that the parameters of this scheme can be selected such that the relative variance of this likelihood ratio estimator is controlled when N increases sublinearly with T and we provide guidelines on how to optimize the algorithm on the basis of a non‐standard weak convergence analysis. The efficiency of computations for Bayesian inference relative to the pseudomarginal method empirically increases with T and exceeds two orders of magnitude in some examples.

The correlated pseudomarginal method

A new type of stochastic dependence for a sequence of random variables is introduced and studied. Precisely, (Xn)n≥1 is said to be conditionally identically distributed (c.i.d.), with respect to a filtration $(\mathcal{G}_{n})_{n\geq 0}$ , if it is adapted to $(\mathcal{G}_{n})_{n\geq 0}$ and, for each n≥0, (Xk)k>n is identically distributed given the past $\mathcal{G}_{n}$ . In case $\mathcal{G}_{0}=\{\varnothing,\Omega\}$ and $\mathcal{G}_{n}=\sigma(X_{1},\ldots,X_{n})$ , a result of Kallenberg implies that (Xn)n≥1 is exchangeable if and only if it is stationary and c.i.d. After giving some natural examples of nonexchangeable c.i.d. sequences, it is shown that (Xn)n≥1 is exchangeable if and only if (Xτ(n))n≥1 is c.i.d. for any finite permutation τ of {1,2,…}, and that the distribution of a c.i.d. sequence agrees with an exchangeable law on a certain sub-σ-field. Moreover, (1/n)∑k=1nXk converges a.s. and in L1 whenever (Xn)n≥1 is (real-valued) c.i.d. and E[|X1|]<∞. As to the CLT, three types of random centering are considered. One such centering, significant in Bayesian prediction and discrete time filtering, is $E[X_{n+1}\vert \mathcal{G}_{n}]$ . For each centering, convergence in distribution of the corresponding empirical process is analyzed under uniform distance.

/pdf/limit-theorems-for-a-class-of-identically-distributed-random-1znyqup462.pdf

Limit theorems for a class of identically distributed random variables

Given a sequence (μ n ) of random probability measures on a metric space S, consider the conditions: (i) μ n →μ (weakly) a.s. for some random probability measure μ on S; (ii) μ n (f) converges a.s. for all f∈C b (S). Then, (i) implies (ii), while the converse is not true, even if S is separable. For (i) and (ii) to be equivalent, it is enough that S is Radon (i.e. each probability on the Borel sets of S is tight) or that the sequence (P μ n ) is tight, where Pμ n (·)=E(μ n (·)). In particular, (i)⇔(ii) in case S is Polish. The latter result is still available if a.s. convergence is weakened into convergence in probability. In case S=T ∞ with T Radon, a.s. convergence of μ n (f), for those f∈C b (S) which are finite products of elements of C b (T), is sufficient for (i). In case and the limit μ is given in advance, a.s. convergence of characteristic functions is enough for μ n →μ (weakly) a.s. Almost sure weak convergence of random probability measures.

Almost sure weak convergence of random probability measures

A Strong Form of Stable Convergence

Let Xn be a sequence of integrable real random variables, adapted to a filtration (Gn). Define Cn = √{(1 / n)∑k=1nXk - E(Xn+1 | Gn)} and Dn = √n{E(Xn+1 | Gn) - Z}, where Z is the almost-sure limit of E(Xn+1 | Gn) (assumed to exist). Conditions for (Cn, Dn) → N(0, U) x N(0, V) stably are given, where U and V are certain random variables. In particular, under such conditions, we obtain √n{(1 / n)∑k=1nX_k - Z} = Cn + Dn → N(0, U + V) stably. This central limit theorem has natural applications to Bayesian statistics and urn problems. The latter are investigated, by paying special attention to multicolor randomly reinforced urns.

/pdf/a-central-limit-theorem-and-its-applications-to-multicolor-2r5ls2e8zk.pdf

A central limit theorem and its applications to multicolor randomly reinforced urns

The Hirsch index (commonly referred to as h-index) is a bibliometric indicator which is widely recognized as effective for measuring the scientific production of a scholar since it summarizes size and impact of the research output. In a formal setting, the h-index is actually an empirical functional of the distribution of the citation counts received by the scholar. Under this approach, the asymptotic theory for the empirical h-index has been recently exploited when the citation counts follow a continuous distribution and, in particular, variance estimation has been considered for the Pareto-type and the Weibull-type distribution families. However, in bibliometric applications, citation counts display a distribution supported by the integers. Thus, we provide general properties for the empirical h-index under the small- and large-sample settings. In addition, we also introduce consistent nonparametric variance estimation, which allows for the implemention of large-sample set estimation for the theoretical h-index.

Luca Pratelli

Papers

Limit theorems for a class of identically distributed random variables

Almost sure weak convergence of random probability measures

A Strong Form of Stable Convergence

A central limit theorem and its applications to multicolor randomly reinforced urns

Statistical analysis of the Hirsch Index