Kernel density estimationIn statistics, kernel density estimation (KDE) is the application of kernel smoothing for probability density estimation, i.e., a non-parametric method to estimate the probability density function of a random variable based on kernels as weights. KDE answers a fundamental data smoothing problem where inferences about the population are made, based on a finite data sample. In some fields such as signal processing and econometrics it is also termed the Parzen–Rosenblatt window method, after Emanuel Parzen and Murray Rosenblatt, who are usually credited with independently creating it in its current form.
Nonparametric statisticsNonparametric statistics is the type of statistics that is not restricted by assumptions concerning the nature of the population from which a sample is drawn. This is opposed to parametric statistics, for which a problem is restricted a priori by assumptions concerning the specific distribution of the population (such as the normal distribution) and parameters (such the mean or variance).
Efficiency (statistics)In statistics, efficiency is a measure of quality of an estimator, of an experimental design, or of a hypothesis testing procedure. Essentially, a more efficient estimator needs fewer input data or observations than a less efficient one to achieve the Cramér–Rao bound. An efficient estimator is characterized by having the smallest possible variance, indicating that there is a small deviance between the estimated value and the "true" value in the L2 norm sense.
Density estimationIn statistics, probability density estimation or simply density estimation is the construction of an estimate, based on observed data, of an unobservable underlying probability density function. The unobservable density function is thought of as the density according to which a large population is distributed; the data are usually thought of as a random sample from that population. A variety of approaches to density estimation are used, including Parzen windows and a range of data clustering techniques, including vector quantization.
Multivariate kernel density estimationKernel density estimation is a nonparametric technique for density estimation i.e., estimation of probability density functions, which is one of the fundamental questions in statistics. It can be viewed as a generalisation of histogram density estimation with improved statistical properties. Apart from histograms, other types of density estimators include parametric, spline, wavelet and Fourier series. Kernel density estimators were first introduced in the scientific literature for univariate data in the 1950s and 1960s and subsequently have been widely adopted.
Parametric modelIn statistics, a parametric model or parametric family or finite-dimensional model is a particular class of statistical models. Specifically, a parametric model is a family of probability distributions that has a finite number of parameters. A statistical model is a collection of probability distributions on some sample space. We assume that the collection, P, is indexed by some set Θ. The set Θ is called the parameter set or, more commonly, the parameter space.
Bias of an estimatorIn statistics, the bias of an estimator (or bias function) is the difference between this estimator's expected value and the true value of the parameter being estimated. An estimator or decision rule with zero bias is called unbiased. In statistics, "bias" is an property of an estimator. Bias is a distinct concept from consistency: consistent estimators converge in probability to the true value of the parameter, but may be biased or unbiased; see bias versus consistency for more.
EstimatorIn statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule (the estimator), the quantity of interest (the estimand) and its result (the estimate) are distinguished. For example, the sample mean is a commonly used estimator of the population mean. There are point and interval estimators. The point estimators yield single-valued results. This is in contrast to an interval estimator, where the result would be a range of plausible values.
Semiparametric modelIn statistics, a semiparametric model is a statistical model that has parametric and nonparametric components. A statistical model is a parameterized family of distributions: indexed by a parameter . A parametric model is a model in which the indexing parameter is a vector in -dimensional Euclidean space, for some nonnegative integer . Thus, is finite-dimensional, and . With a nonparametric model, the set of possible values of the parameter is a subset of some space , which is not necessarily finite-dimensional.
Bias–variance tradeoffIn statistics and machine learning, the bias–variance tradeoff is the property of a model that the variance of the parameter estimated across samples can be reduced by increasing the bias in the estimated parameters. The bias–variance dilemma or bias–variance problem is the conflict in trying to simultaneously minimize these two sources of error that prevent supervised learning algorithms from generalizing beyond their training set: The bias error is an error from erroneous assumptions in the learning algorithm.
Kernel (statistics)The term kernel is used in statistical analysis to refer to a window function. The term "kernel" has several distinct meanings in different branches of statistics. In statistics, especially in Bayesian statistics, the kernel of a probability density function (pdf) or probability mass function (pmf) is the form of the pdf or pmf in which any factors that are not functions of any of the variables in the domain are omitted. Note that such factors may well be functions of the parameters of the pdf or pmf.
Kernel regressionIn statistics, kernel regression is a non-parametric technique to estimate the conditional expectation of a random variable. The objective is to find a non-linear relation between a pair of random variables X and Y. In any nonparametric regression, the conditional expectation of a variable relative to a variable may be written: where is an unknown function. Nadaraya and Watson, both in 1964, proposed to estimate as a locally weighted average, using a kernel as a weighting function.
MedianIn statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic feature of the median in describing data compared to the mean (often simply described as the "average") is that it is not skewed by a small proportion of extremely large or small values, and therefore provides a better representation of the center.
Kernel smootherA kernel smoother is a statistical technique to estimate a real valued function as the weighted average of neighboring observed data. The weight is defined by the kernel, such that closer points are given higher weights. The estimated function is smooth, and the level of smoothness is set by a single parameter. Kernel smoothing is a type of weighted moving average. Let be a kernel defined by where: is the Euclidean norm is a parameter (kernel radius) D(t) is typically a positive real valued function, whose value is decreasing (or not increasing) for the increasing distance between the X and X0.
Minimum-variance unbiased estimatorIn statistics a minimum-variance unbiased estimator (MVUE) or uniformly minimum-variance unbiased estimator (UMVUE) is an unbiased estimator that has lower variance than any other unbiased estimator for all possible values of the parameter. For practical statistics problems, it is important to determine the MVUE if one exists, since less-than-optimal procedures would naturally be avoided, other things being equal. This has led to substantial development of statistical theory related to the problem of optimal estimation.
Cross-validation (statistics)Cross-validation, sometimes called rotation estimation or out-of-sample testing, is any of various similar model validation techniques for assessing how the results of a statistical analysis will generalize to an independent data set. Cross-validation is a resampling method that uses different portions of the data to test and train a model on different iterations. It is mainly used in settings where the goal is prediction, and one wants to estimate how accurately a predictive model will perform in practice.
Statistical modelA statistical model is a mathematical model that embodies a set of statistical assumptions concerning the generation of sample data (and similar data from a larger population). A statistical model represents, often in considerably idealized form, the data-generating process. When referring specifically to probabilities, the corresponding term is probabilistic model. A statistical model is usually specified as a mathematical relationship between one or more random variables and other non-random variables.
Loss functionIn mathematical optimization and decision theory, a loss function or cost function (sometimes also called an error function) is a function that maps an event or values of one or more variables onto a real number intuitively representing some "cost" associated with the event. An optimization problem seeks to minimize a loss function. An objective function is either a loss function or its opposite (in specific domains, variously called a reward function, a profit function, a utility function, a fitness function, etc.
Statistical model validationIn statistics, model validation is the task of evaluating whether a chosen statistical model is appropriate or not. Oftentimes in statistical inference, inferences from models that appear to fit their data may be flukes, resulting in a misunderstanding by researchers of the actual relevance of their model. To combat this, model validation is used to test whether a statistical model can hold up to permutations in the data.
Mean squared errorIn statistics, the mean squared error (MSE) or mean squared deviation (MSD) of an estimator (of a procedure for estimating an unobserved quantity) measures the average of the squares of the errors—that is, the average squared difference between the estimated values and the actual value. MSE is a risk function, corresponding to the expected value of the squared error loss. The fact that MSE is almost always strictly positive (and not zero) is because of randomness or because the estimator does not account for information that could produce a more accurate estimate.
