Nonparametric Functional Estimation And Related Topics

About three years ago, an idea was discussed among some colleagues in the Division of Statistics at the University of California, Davis, as to the possibility of holding an international conference, focusing exclusively on nonparametric curve estimation. The fruition of this idea came about with the enthusiastic support of this project by Luc Devroye of McGill University, Canada, and Peter Robinson of the London School of Economics, UK. The response of colleagues, contacted to ascertain interest in participation in such a conference, was gratifying and made the effort involved worthwhile. Devroye and Robinson, together with this editor and George Metakides of the University of Patras, Greece and of the European Economic Communities, Brussels, formed the International Organizing Committee for a two week long Advanced Study Institute (ASI) sponsored by the Scientific Affairs Division of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The ASI was held on the Greek Island of Spetses between July 29 and August 10, 1990. Nonparametric functional estimation is a central topic in statistics, with applications in numerous substantive fields in mathematics, natural and social sciences, engineering and medicine. While there has been interest in nonparametric functional estimation for many years, this has grown of late, owing to increasing availability of large data sets and the ability to process them by means of improved computing facilities, along with the ability to display the results by means of sophisticated graphical procedures.

Nonparametric Functional Estimation is a compendium of papers, written by experts, in the area of nonparametric functional estimation. This book attempts to be exhaustive in nature and is written both for specialists in the area as well as for students of statistics taking courses at the postgraduate level. The main emphasis throughout the book is on the discussion of several methods of estimation and on the study of their large sample properties. Chapters are devoted to topics on estimation of density and related functions, the application of density estimation to classification problems, and the different facets of estimation of distribution functions. Statisticians and students of statistics and engineering will find the text very useful.

Topics emphasized include nonparametric density estimation as an exploratory device plus the deeper models to which the exploratory analysis points, multi-dimensional data analysis, and analysis of remote sensing data, cancer progression, chaos theory, epidemiological modeling, and parallel based algorithms. New methods discussed are quick nonparametric density estimation based techniques for resampling and simulation based estimation techniques not requiring closed form solutions.

The computer has created new fields in statistic. Numerical and statistical problems that were untackable five to ten years ago can now be computed even on portable personal computers. A computer intensive task is for example the numerical calculation of posterior distributions in Bayesian analysis. The Bootstrap and image analysis are two other fields spawned by the almost unlimited computing power. It is not only the computing power through that has revolutionized statistics, the graphical interactiveness on modern statistical environments has given us the possibility for deeper insight into our data. On November 21,22 1991 a conference on computer Intensive Methods in Statistics has been organized at the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium. The organizers were Jan Beirlant (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Wolfgang Hardie (Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin) and Leopold Simar (Universite Catholique de Louvain and Facultes Universitaires Saint-Louis). The meeting was the Xllth in the series of the Rencontre Franco-Beige des Statisticians. Following this tradition both theoretical statistical results and practical contributions of this active field of statistical research were presented. The four topics that have been treated in more detail were: Bayesian Computing; Interfacing Statistics and Computers; Image Analysis; Resampling Methods. Selected and refereed papers have been edited and collected for this book. 1) Bayesian Computing.

This volume is composed of peer-reviewed papers that have developed from the First Conference of the International Society for Non Parametric Statistics (ISNPS). This inaugural conference took place in Chalkidiki, Greece, June 15-19, 2012. It was organized with the co-sponsorship of the IMS, the ISI and other organizations. M.G. Akritas, S.N. Lahiri and D.N. Politis are the first executive committee members of ISNPS and the editors of this volume. ISNPS has a distinguished Advisory Committee that includes Professors R.Beran, P.Bickel, R. Carroll, D. Cook, P. Hall, R. Johnson, B. Lindsay, E. Parzen, P. Robinson, M. Rosenblatt, G. Roussas, T. SubbaRao and G. Wahba. The Charting Committee of ISNPS consists of more than 50 prominent researchers from all over the world. The chapters in this volume bring forth recent advances and trends in several areas of nonparametric statistics. In this way, the volume facilitates the exchange of research ideas, promotes collaboration among researchers from all over the world and contributes to the further development of the field. The conference program included over 250 talks, including special invited talks, plenary talks and contributed talks on all areas of nonparametric statistics. Out of these talks, some of the most pertinent ones have been refereed and developed into chapters that share both research and developments in the field.

This book gives a systematic, comprehensive, and unified account of modern nonparametric statistics of density estimation, nonparametric regression, filtering signals, and time series analysis. The companion software package, available over the Internet, brings all of the discussed topics into the realm of interactive research. Virtually every claim and development mentioned in the book is illustrated with graphs which are available for the reader to reproduce and modify, making the material fully transparent and allowing for complete interactivity.

This volume collects selected papers from the 8th High Dimensional Probability meeting held at Casa Matemática Oaxaca (CMO), Mexico. High Dimensional Probability (HDP) is an area of mathematics that includes the study of probability distributions and limit theorems in infinite-dimensional spaces such as Hilbert spaces and Banach spaces. The most remarkable feature of this area is that it has resulted in the creation of powerful new tools and perspectives, whose range of application has led to interactions with other subfields of mathematics, statistics, and computer science. These include random matrices, nonparametric statistics, empirical processes, statistical learning theory, concentration of measure phenomena, strong and weak approximations, functional estimation, combinatorial optimization, random graphs, information theory and convex geometry. The contributions in this volume show that HDP theory continues to thrive and develop new tools, methods, techniques and perspectives to analyze random phenomena.

This book is devoted to the theory and applications of nonparametic functional estimation and prediction. Chapter 1 provides an overview of inequalities and limit theorems for strong mixing processes. Density and regression estimation in discrete time are studied in Chapter 2 and 3. The special rates of convergence which appear in continuous time are presented in Chapters 4 and 5. This second edition is extensively revised and it contains two new chapters. Chapter 6 discusses the surprising local time density estimator. Chapter 7 gives a detailed account of implementation of nonparametric method and practical examples in economics, finance and physics. Comarison with ARMA and ARCH methods shows the efficiency of nonparametric forecasting. The prerequisite is a knowledge of classical probability theory and statistics. Denis Bosq is Professor of Statistics at the Unviersity of Paris 6 (Pierre et Marie Curie). He is Editor-in-Chief of "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Processes" and an editor of "Journal of Nonparametric Statistics". He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He has published about 90 papers or works in nonparametric statistics and four books.