## simulating a sum of Uniforms

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2020 by xi'an

When considering the distribution of the sum (or average) of N Uniform variates, called either Irwin-Hall for the sum or Bates for the average, simulating the N uniforms then adding them shows a linear cost in N. The density of the resulting variate is well-known,

$f_X(x;N)=\dfrac{1}{2(N-1)!}\sum_{k=0}^N (-1)^k{N \choose k} (x-k)^{N-1}\text{sign}(x-k)$

but similarly is of order N. Furthermore, controlling the terms in the alternating sum may prove delicate, as shown by the R function unifed::dirwin.hall() whose code

for (k in 0:floor(x)) ret1 <- ret1 + (-1)^k * choose(n, k) *
(x - k)^(n - 1)


quickly becomes unreliable (although I managed an easy fix by using logs and a reference value of the magnitude of the terms in the summation). There is however a quick solution provided by [of course!] Devroye (NURVG, Section XIV.3, p.708), using the fact that the characteristic function of the Irwin-Hall distribution [for Uniforms over (-1,1)] is quite straightforward

$\Phi_N(t) = [\sin(t)/t]^N$

which means the density can be bounded from above and results in an algorithm (NURVG, Section XIV.3, p.714) with complexity at most N to the power 5/8, if not clearly spelled out in the book. Obviously, it can be objected that for N large enough, like N=20, the difference between the true distribution and the CLT approximation is quite negligible (reminding me of my early simulating days where generating a Normal was done by averaging a dozen uniforms and properly rescaling!). But this is not an exact approach and the correction proves too costly. As shown by Section XIV.4 on the simulation of sums in NURVG. So… the game is afoot!

## a computational approach to statistical learning [book review]

Posted in Books, R, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 15, 2020 by xi'an

This book was sent to me by CRC Press for review for CHANCE. I read it over a few mornings while [confined] at home and found it much more computational than statistical. In the sense that the authors go quite thoroughly into the construction of standard learning procedures, including home-made R codes that obviously help in understanding the nitty-gritty of these procedures, what they call try and tell, but that the statistical meaning and uncertainty of these procedures remain barely touched by the book. This is not uncommon to the machine-learning literature where prediction error on the testing data often appears to be the final goal but this is not so traditionally statistical. The authors introduce their work as (a computational?) supplementary to Elements of Statistical Learning, although I would find it hard to either squeeze both books into one semester or dedicate two semesters on the topic, especially at the undergraduate level.

Each chapter includes an extended analysis of a specific dataset and this is an asset of the book. If sometimes over-reaching in selling the predictive power of the procedures. Printed extensive R scripts may prove tiresome in the long run, at least to me, but this may simply be a generational gap! And the learning models are mostly unidimensional, see eg the chapter on linear smoothers with imho a profusion of methods. (Could someone please explain the point of Figure 4.9 to me?) The chapter on neural networks has a fairly intuitive introduction that should reach fresh readers. Although meeting the handwritten digit data made me shift back to the late 1980’s, when my wife was working on automatic character recognition. But I found the visualisation of the learning weights for character classification hinting at their shape (p.254) most alluring!

Among the things I am missing when reading through this book, a life-line on the meaning of a statistical model beyond prediction, attention to misspecification, uncertainty and variability, especially when reaching outside the range of the learning data, and further especially when returning regression outputs with significance stars, discussions on the assessment tools like the distance used in the objective function (for instance lacking in scale invariance when adding errors on the regression coefficients) or the unprincipled multiplication of calibration parameters, some asymptotics, at least one remark on the information loss due to splitting the data into chunks, giving some (asymptotic) substance when using “consistent”, waiting for a single page 319 to see the “data quality issues” being mentioned. While the methodology is defended by algebraic and calculus arguments, there is very little on the probability side, which explains why the authors consider that the students need “be familiar  with the concepts of expectation, bias and variance”. And only that. A few paragraphs on the Bayesian approach are doing more harm than well, especially with so little background in probability and statistics.

The book possibly contains the most unusual introduction to the linear model I can remember reading: Coefficients as derivatives… Followed by a very detailed coverage of matrix inversion and singular value decomposition. (Would not sound like the #1 priority were I to give such a course.)

The inevitable typo “the the” was found on page 37! A less common typo was Jensen’s inequality spelled as “Jenson’s inequality”. Both in the text (p.157) and in the index, followed by a repetition of the same formula in (6.8) and (6.9). A “stwart” (p.179) that made me search a while for this unknown verb. Another typo in the Nadaraya-Watson kernel regression, when the bandwidth h suddenly turns into n (and I had to check twice because of my poor eyesight!). An unusual use of partition where the sets in the partition are called partitions themselves. Similarly, fluctuating use of dots for products in dimension one, including a form of ⊗ for matricial product (in equation (8.25)) followed next page by the notation for the Hadamard product. I also suspect the matrix K in (8.68) is missing 1’s or am missing the point, since K is the number of kernels on the next page, just after a picture of the Eiffel Tower…) A surprising number of references for an undergraduate textbook, with authors sometimes cited with full name and sometimes cited with last name. And technical reports that do not belong to this level of books. Let me add the pedant remark that Conan Doyle wrote more novels “that do not include his character Sherlock Holmes” than novels which do include Sherlock.

[Disclaimer about potential self-plagiarism: this post or an edited version will eventually appear in my Books Review section in CHANCE.]

## comments on Watson and Holmes

Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , on April 1, 2016 by xi'an

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.” The Hound of the Baskervilles

In connection with the incoming publication of James Watson’s and Chris Holmes’ Approximating models and robust decisions in Statistical Science, Judith Rousseau and I wrote a discussion on the paper that has been arXived yesterday.

“Overall, we consider that the calibration of the Kullback-Leibler divergence remains an open problem.” (p.18)

While the paper connects with earlier ones by Chris and coauthors, and possibly despite the overall critical tone of the comments!, I really appreciate the renewed interest in robustness advocated in this paper. I was going to write Bayesian robustness but to differ from the perspective adopted in the 90’s where robustness was mostly about the prior, I would say this is rather a Bayesian approach to model robustness from a decisional perspective. With definitive innovations like considering the impact of posterior uncertainty over the decision space, uncertainty being defined e.g. in terms of Kullback-Leibler neighbourhoods. Or with a Dirichlet process distribution on the posterior. This may step out of the standard Bayesian approach but it remains of definite interest! (And note that this discussion of ours [reluctantly!] refrained from capitalising on the names of the authors to build easy puns linked with the most Bayesian of all detectives!)

## Sherlock [#3]

Posted in Books with tags , , , , , , on March 14, 2015 by xi'an

After watching the first two seasons of the BBC TV Series Sherlock while at the hospital, I found myself looking forward further adventures of Holmes and Watson and eventually “bought” the third season. And watched it over the past weekends. I liked it very much as this new season distanced itself from the sheer depiction of Sherlock’s amazing powers to a quite ironic and self-parodic story, well in tune with a third season where the audience is now utterly familiar with the main characters. They all put on weight (mostly figuratively!), from Sherlock’s acknowledgement of his psychological shortcomings, to Mrs. Hudson’s revealing her drug trafficking past and expressing her dislike of Mycroft, to  John Watson’s engagement and acceptance of Sherlock’s idiosyncrasies, making him the central character of the series in a sort of fatherly figure. Some new characters are also terrific, including Mary Morstan and the new archvillain, C.A. Magnussen. Paradoxically, this makes the detective part of the stories secondary, which is all for the best as, in my opinion, the plots are rather weak and the resolutions hardly relying on high intellectual powers, albeit always surprising. More sleuthing in the new season would be most welcome! As an aside, the wedding place sounded somewhat familiar to me, until I realised it was Goldney Hall, where the recent workshops I attended in Bristol took place.

## hospital series

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2013 by xi'an

While I usually never find enough time to watch series (or even less telly!), I took advantage of those three weeks at the hospital to catch up with Game of Thrones and discovered Sherlock, thanks to Judith. As I have been reading George Martin’s epics, A Song of Ice and Fire, from the very beginning in 1991, I was of course interested to see how those massive books with their intricate politics and complex family trees could be made into 50 minutes episodes. Glimpses caught from my son’s computer had had me looking forward to it. After watching the entire second season and the earlier episodes of the third season, I am quite impressed by both the rendering of the essentials of the book and the quality of the movies. It is indeed amazing that HBO invested so much into the series, with large scale battles and medieval cities and thousands of characters. The filming locations were also well-chosen: while I thought most of the northern scenes had been shot in Scotland, it actually appears that they mostly came from Ireland and Iceland (with incredible scenery like the one above beyond the Wall!).  The cast is not completely perfect, obviously, with both Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and Rob Stark (Richard Madden) being too shallow in my opinion and Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) lacking charisma, but most characters are well-rendered and the Lannisters are terrific, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) being the top actor in my opinion (and Arya (Maisie Williams) coming second). I was also surprised by the popularity of the series at the hospital, as several nurses and doctors started discussing it with me…

Sherlock Holmes is a British series, set in contemporary London, and transposing some of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures in contemporary Britain. While I had not heard about this series previously, I was quite taken by it. It is quite innovative both in its scenario and its filming, it does not try to stick to the books, the dialogues are witty and the variety of accents quite pleasant (if hard to catch at times), and… Watson has a blog! It is also a pleasure to catch glimpses of London (Baker Street is actually Gower Street, near UCL) and the Hound of Baskerville takes place on Dartmoor.  I do not think I will continue watching those series once out of the hospital, but they were a pleasing distraction taking me far, far away from my hospital room for a few hours!