In some invariant estimation problems under a group, the Bayes estimator against an invariant prior has equivariance as well. This is useful notably for evaluating the frequentist risk of the Bayes estimator. This paper addresses the problem of estimating a matrix of means in normal distributions relative to quadratic loss. It is shown that a matricial shrinkage Bayes estimator against an orthogonally invariant hierarchical prior is admissible and minimax by means of equivariance. The analytical improvement upon every overshrinkage equivariant estimator is also considered and this paper justifies the corresponding positive-part estimator preserving the order of the sample singular values.
The problem of estimating a normal covariance matrix is considered from a decision-theoretic point of view, where the dimension of the covariance matrix is larger than the sample size. This paper addresses not only the nonsingular case but also the singular case in terms of the covariance matrix. Based on James and Stein's minimax estimator and on an orthogonally invariant estimator, some classes of estimators are unifiedly defined for any possible ordering on the dimension, the sample size and the rank of the covariance matrix. Unified dominance results on such classes are provided under a Stein-type entropy loss. The unified dominance results are applied to improving on an empirical Bayes estimator of a high-dimensional covariance matrix.
The problem of estimating the precision matrix of a multivariate normal distribution model is considered with respect to a quadratic loss function. A number of covariance estimators originally intended for a variety of loss functions are adapted so as to obtain alternative estimators of the precision matrix. It is shown that the alternative estimators have analytically smaller risks than the unbiased estimator of the precision matrix. Through numerical studies of risk values, it is shown that the new estimators have substantial reduction in risk. In addition, we consider the problem of the estimation of discriminant coefficients, which arises in linear discriminant analysis when Fisher's linear discriminant function is viewed as the posterior log-odds under the assumption that two classes differ in mean but have a common covariance matrix. The above method is also adapted for this problem in order to obtain improved estimators of the discriminant coefficients under the quadratic loss function. Furthermore, a numerical study is undertaken to compare the properties of a collection of alternatives to the "unbiased" estimator of the discriminant coefficients.
This paper addresses the problem of estimating the mean vector of a singular multivariate normal distribution with an unknown singular covariance matrix. The maximum likelihood estimator is shown to be minimax relative to a quadratic loss weighted by the Moore-Penrose inverse of the covariance matrix. An unbiased risk estimator relative to the weighted quadratic loss is provided for a Baranchik type class of shrinkage estimators. Based on the unbiased risk estimator, a sufficient condition for the minimaxity is expressed not only as a differential inequality, but also as an integral inequality. Also, generalized Bayes minimax estimators are established by using an interesting structure of singular multivariate normal distribution.
a b s t r a c tThis paper addresses the problem of estimating the normal mean matrix in the case of unknown covariance matrix. This problem is solved by considering generalized Bayesian hierarchical models. The resulting generalized Bayes estimators with respect to an invariant quadratic loss function are shown to be matricial shrinkage equivariant estimators and the conditions for their minimaxity are given.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.