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E-values
In statistical hypothesis testing, e-values quantify the evidence in the data against a null hypothesis (e.g., "the coin is fair", or, in a medical context, "this new treatment has no effect"). They serve as a more robust alternative to p-values, addressing some shortcomings of the latter. In contrast to p-values, e-values can deal with optional continuation: e-values of subsequent experiments (e.g. clinical trials concerning the same treatment) may simply be multiplied to provide a new, "product" e-value that represents the evidence in the joint experiment. This works even if, as often happens in practice, the decision to perform later experiments may depend in vague, unknown ways on the data observed in earlier experiments, and it is not known beforehand how many trials will be conducted: the product e-value remains a meaningful quantity, leading to tests with Type-I error control. For this reason, e-values and their sequential extension, the ''e-process'', are the fundamenta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Projection
In information theory, the information projection or I-projection of a probability distribution ''q'' onto a set of distributions ''P'' is :p^* = \underset \operatorname_(p, , q). where D_ is the Kullback–Leibler divergence from ''q'' to ''p''. Viewing the Kullback–Leibler divergence as a measure of distance, the I-projection p^* is the "closest" distribution to ''q'' of all the distributions in ''P''. The I-projection is useful in setting up information geometry, notably because of the following inequality, valid when ''P'' is convex: \operatorname_(p, , q) \geq \operatorname_(p, , p^*) + \operatorname_(p^*, , q). This inequality can be interpreted as an information-geometric version of Pythagoras' triangle-inequality theorem, where KL divergence is viewed as squared distance in a Euclidean space. It is worthwhile to note that since \operatorname_(p, , q) \geq 0 and continuous in p, if ''P'' is closed and non-empty, then there exists at least one minimizer to the optim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Statistical Hypothesis Testing
A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis. Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters. History Early use While hypothesis testing was popularized early in the 20th century, early forms were used in the 1700s. The first use is credited to John Arbuthnot (1710), followed by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1770s), in analyzing the human sex ratio at birth; see . Modern origins and early controversy Modern significance testing is largely the product of Karl Pearson ( ''p''-value, Pearson's chi-squared test), William Sealy Gosset ( Student's t-distribution), and Ronald Fisher ("null hypothesis", analysis of variance, "significance test"), while hypothesis testing was developed by Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson (son of Karl). Ronald Fisher began his life in statistics as a Bayesian (Zabell 1992), but Fisher soon grew disenchanted with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ville's Inequality
In probability theory, Ville's inequality provides an upper bound on the probability that a supermartingale exceeds a certain value. The inequality is named after Jean Ville, who proved it in 1939. The inequality has applications in statistical testing. Statement Let X_0, X_1, X_2, \dots be a non-negative supermartingale. Then, for any real number a > 0, : \operatorname \left \sup_ X_n \ge a \right\le \frac \ . The inequality is a generalization A generalization is a form of abstraction whereby common properties of specific instances are formulated as general concepts or claims. Generalizations posit the existence of a domain or set of elements, as well as one or more common characteri ... of Markov's inequality. References Probabilistic inequalities Martingale theory {{Probability-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stopping Time
In probability theory, in particular in the study of stochastic processes, a stopping time (also Markov time, Markov moment, optional stopping time or optional time ) is a specific type of “random time”: a random variable whose value is interpreted as the time at which a given stochastic process exhibits a certain behavior of interest. A stopping time is often defined by a stopping rule, a mechanism for deciding whether to continue or stop a process on the basis of the present position and past events, and which will almost always lead to a decision to stop at some finite time. Stopping times occur in decision theory, and the optional stopping theorem is an important result in this context. Stopping times are also frequently applied in mathematical proofs to “tame the continuum of time”, as Chung put it in his book (1982). Definition Discrete time Let \tau be a random variable, which is defined on the filtered probability space (\Omega, \mathcal F, (\mathcal F_n)_, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discrete-time Stochastic Process
In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic () or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables. Stochastic processes are widely used as mathematical models of systems and phenomena that appear to vary in a random manner. Examples include the growth of a bacterial population, an electrical current fluctuating due to thermal noise, or the movement of a gas molecule. Stochastic processes have applications in many disciplines such as biology, chemistry, ecology, neuroscience, physics, image processing, signal processing, control theory, information theory, computer science, cryptography and telecommunications. Furthermore, seemingly random changes in financial markets have motivated the extensive use of stochastic processes in finance. Applications and the study of phenomena have in turn inspired the proposal of new stochastic processes. Examples of such stochastic processes include the Wiener process or Brownian motion pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Likelihood Ratio Test
In statistics, the likelihood-ratio test assesses the goodness of fit of two competing statistical models based on the ratio of their likelihoods, specifically one found by maximization over the entire parameter space and another found after imposing some constraint. If the constraint (i.e., the null hypothesis) is supported by the observed data, the two likelihoods should not differ by more than sampling error. Thus the likelihood-ratio test tests whether this ratio is significantly different from one, or equivalently whether its natural logarithm is significantly different from zero. The likelihood-ratio test, also known as Wilks test, is the oldest of the three classical approaches to hypothesis testing, together with the Lagrange multiplier test and the Wald test. In fact, the latter two can be conceptualized as approximations to the likelihood-ratio test, and are asymptotically equivalent. In the case of comparing two models each of which has no unknown parameters, use o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ridge Regression
Ridge regression is a method of estimating the coefficients of multiple-regression models in scenarios where the independent variables are highly correlated. It has been used in many fields including econometrics, chemistry, and engineering. Also known as Tikhonov regularization, named for Andrey Tikhonov, it is a method of regularization of ill-posed problems. It is particularly useful to mitigate the problem of multicollinearity in linear regression, which commonly occurs in models with large numbers of parameters. In general, the method provides improved efficiency in parameter estimation problems in exchange for a tolerable amount of bias (see bias–variance tradeoff). The theory was first introduced by Hoerl and Kennard in 1970 in their ''Technometrics'' papers “RIDGE regressions: biased estimation of nonorthogonal problems” and “RIDGE regressions: applications in nonorthogonal problems”. This was the result of ten years of research into the field of ridge analysis. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minimum Description Length
Minimum Description Length (MDL) is a model selection principle where the shortest description of the data is the best model. MDL methods learn through a data compression perspective and are sometimes described as mathematical applications of Occam's razor. The MDL principle can be extended to other forms of inductive inference and learning, for example to estimation and sequential prediction, without explicitly identifying a single model of the data. MDL has its origins mostly in information theory and has been further developed within the general fields of statistics, theoretical computer science and machine learning, and more narrowly computational learning theory. Historically, there are different, yet interrelated, usages of the definite noun phrase "''the'' minimum description length ''principle''" that vary in what is meant by ''description'': * Within Jorma Rissanen's theory of learning, a central concept of information theory, models are statistical hypotheses and descrip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jorma Rissanen
Jorma Johannes Rissanen (October 20, 1932 – May 9, 2020) was an information theorist, known for originating the minimum description length (MDL) principle and practical approaches to arithmetic coding for lossless data compression. His work inspired the development of the theory of stochastic chains with memory of variable length. Education and career Rissanen was born in Pielisjärvi (now Lieksa in Finland and grew up in Kemi, a border town between Finland and Sweden. He moved to Helsinki and studied at the Helsinki University of Technology, where he obtained his Master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1956 and licentiate in control theory in 1960. He studied there under Olli Lokki and Hans Blomberg. Rissanen became an IBM researcher since 1960, first in Stockholm, Sweden, while still a Ph.D. student under Hans Blomberg. Most of his PhD work was done remotely as a result and he received his Ph.D. from the Helsinki University of Technology in 1965 with a topic on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maximum Likelihood Estimation
In statistics, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a method of estimating the parameters of an assumed probability distribution, given some observed data. This is achieved by maximizing a likelihood function so that, under the assumed statistical model, the observed data is most probable. The point in the parameter space that maximizes the likelihood function is called the maximum likelihood estimate. The logic of maximum likelihood is both intuitive and flexible, and as such the method has become a dominant means of statistical inference. If the likelihood function is differentiable, the derivative test for finding maxima can be applied. In some cases, the first-order conditions of the likelihood function can be solved analytically; for instance, the ordinary least squares estimator for a linear regression model maximizes the likelihood when all observed outcomes are assumed to have Normal distributions with the same variance. From the perspective of Bayesian inference, M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marginal Density
In probability theory and statistics, the marginal distribution of a subset of a collection of random variables is the probability distribution of the variables contained in the subset. It gives the probabilities of various values of the variables in the subset without reference to the values of the other variables. This contrasts with a conditional distribution, which gives the probabilities contingent upon the values of the other variables. Marginal variables are those variables in the subset of variables being retained. These concepts are "marginal" because they can be found by summing values in a table along rows or columns, and writing the sum in the margins of the table. The distribution of the marginal variables (the marginal distribution) is obtained by marginalizing (that is, focusing on the sums in the margin) over the distribution of the variables being discarded, and the discarded variables are said to have been marginalized out. The context here is that the theoretical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
