arXiv:2510.15132cs.LGstat.ML2025-10

用图滤波法平滑大支持集上的多峰重尾概率质量函数。

A Simple Method for PMF Estimation on Large Supports

  • 将经验分布视为线图信号,用低通滤波降噪。
  • 在合成与真实数据上有效保留结构、抑制噪声,优于对数样条和高斯核密度估计。
  • 无需调参、计算快,适合自动化分析与大规模探索。

研究在大离散支持集上对多峰重尾的概率质量函数(PMF)进行非参数估计。核心思想是将经验PMF视为线图上的信号,施加数据相关的低通滤波。具体地,构造一个对称三对角算子——由路径图拉普拉斯矩阵加上基于经验PMF的对角扰动构成,计算对应最小若干特征值的特征向量。将经验PMF投影到该低维子空间,得到平滑且多峰的估计,保留粗粒度结构同时抑制噪声。通过简单的截断与归一化后处理,获得有效的PMF。由于只需计算对称三对角矩阵的特征对,计算时间与内存开销与支持集大小及目标子空间维度成正比。我们还提出一种基于正交级数风险估计的实用数据驱动规则来选择维度,使方法“即插即用”、极少调参。在合成与真实重尾示例中,该方法在预期场景下表现良好,优于对数样条和高斯核密度估计(Gaussian-KDE)。但存在已知失效情形(如突变间断)。方法实现简短,跨样本量鲁棒,适合自动化流水线与大规模探索性分析。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

We study nonparametric estimation of a probability mass function (PMF) on a large discrete support, where the PMF is multi-modal and heavy-tailed. The core idea is to treat the empirical PMF as a signal on a line graph and apply a data-dependent low-pass filter. Concretely, we form a symmetric tri-diagonal operator, the path graph Laplacian perturbed with a diagonal matrix built from the empirical PMF, then compute the eigenvectors, corresponding to the smallest feq eigenvalues. Projecting the empirical PMF onto this low dimensional subspace produces a smooth, multi-modal estimate that preserves coarse structure while suppressing noise. A light post-processing step of clipping and re-normalizing yields a valid PMF. Because we compute the eigenpairs of a symmetric tridiagonal matrix, the computation is reliable and runs time and memory proportional to the support times the dimension of the desired low-dimensional supspace. We also provide a practical, data-driven rule for selecting the dimension based on an orthogonal-series risk estimate, so the method "just works" with minimal tuning. On synthetic and real heavy-tailed examples, the approach preserves coarse structure while suppressing sampling noise, compares favorably to logspline and Gaussian-KDE baselines in the intended regimes. However, it has known failure modes (e.g., abrupt discontinuities). The method is short to implement, robust across sample sizes, and suitable for automated pipelines and exploratory analysis at scale because of its reliability and speed.

概率估计图信号非参数降噪

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