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In modern interdisciplinary research, manifold time series data have been garnering more attention. A critical question in analyzing such data is ``stationarity'', which reflects the underlying dynamic behavior and is crucial across various fields like cell biology, neuroscience and empirical finance. Yet, there has been an absence of a formal definition of stationarity that is tailored to manifold time series. This work bridges this gap by proposing the first definitions of first-order and second-order stationarity for manifold time series. Additionally, we develop novel statistical procedures to test the stationarity of manifold time series and study their asymptotic properties. Our methods account for the curved nature of manifolds, leading to a more intricate analysis than that in Euclidean space. The effectiveness of our methods is evaluated through numerical simulations and their practical merits are demonstrated through analyzing a cell-type proportion time series dataset from a paper recently published in Cell. The first-order stationarity test result aligns with the biological findings of this paper, while the second-order stationarity test provides numerical support for a critical assumption made therein.

This paper explores the field of semi-supervised Fr\'echet regression, driven by the significant costs associated with obtaining non-Euclidean labels. Methodologically, we propose two novel methods: semi-supervised NW Fr\'echet regression and semi-supervised kNN Fr\'echet regression, both based on graph distance acquired from all feature instances. These methods extend the scope of existing semi-supervised Euclidean regression methods. We establish their convergence rates with limited labeled data and large amounts of unlabeled data, taking into account the low-dimensional manifold structure of the feature space. Through comprehensive simulations across diverse settings and applications to real data, we demonstrate the superior performance of our methods over their supervised counterparts. This study addresses existing research gaps and paves the way for further exploration and advancements in the field of semi-supervised Fr\'echet regression.

In response to the unique challenge created by high-dimensional mediators in mediation analysis, this paper presents a novel procedure for testing the nullity of the mediation effect in the presence of high-dimensional mediators. The procedure incorporates two distinct features. Firstly, the test remains valid under all cases of the composite null hypothesis, including the challenging scenario where both exposure-mediator and mediator-outcome coefficients are zero. Secondly, it does not impose structural assumptions on the exposure-mediator coefficients, thereby allowing for an arbitrarily strong exposure-mediator relationship. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed test is the first of its kind to provably possess these two features in high-dimensional mediation analysis. The validity and consistency of the proposed test are established, and its numerical performance is showcased through simulation studies. The application of the proposed test is demonstrated by examining the mediation effect of DNA methylation between smoking status and lung cancer development.

Inspired by logistic regression, we introduce a regression model for data tuples consisting of a binary response and a set of covariates residing in a metric space without vector structures. Based on the proposed model we also develop a binary classifier for metric-space valued data. We propose a maximum likelihood estimator for the metric-space valued regression coefficient in the model, and provide upper bounds on the estimation error under various metric entropy conditions that quantify complexity of the underlying metric space. Matching lower bounds are derived for the important metric spaces commonly seen in statistics, establishing optimality of the proposed estimator in such spaces. Similarly, an upper bound on the excess risk of the developed classifier is provided for general metric spaces. A finer upper bound and a matching lower bound, and thus optimality of the proposed classifier, are established for Riemannian manifolds. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed regression model and the above minimax bounds are the first of their kind for analyzing a binary response with covariates residing in general metric spaces. We also investigate the numerical performance of the proposed estimator and classifier via simulation studies, and illustrate their practical merits via an application to task-related fMRI data.

For nonparametric regression in the streaming setting, where data constantly flow in and require real-time analysis, a main challenge is that data are cleared from the computer system once processed due to limited computer memory and storage. We tackle the challenge by proposing a novel one-pass estimator based on penalized orthogonal basis expansions and developing a general framework to study the interplay between statistical efficiency and memory consumption of estimators. We show that, the proposed estimator is statistically optimal under memory constraint, and has asymptotically minimal memory footprints among all one-pass estimators of the same estimation quality. Numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed one-pass estimator is nearly as efficient as its non-streaming counterpart that has access to all historical data., Comment: To be published in Journal of the American Statistical Association

Hypothesis testing for the slope function in functional linear regression is of both practical and theoretical interest. We develop a novel test for the nullity of the slope function, where testing the slope function is transformed into testing a high-dimensional vector based on functional principal component analysis. This transformation fully circumvents ill-posedness in functional linear regression, thereby enhancing numeric stability. The proposed method leverages the technique of bootstrapping max statistics and exploits the inherent variance decay property of functional data, improving the empirical power of tests especially when the sample size is limited or the signal is relatively weak. We establish validity and consistency of our proposed test when the functional principal components are derived from data. Moreover, we show that the test maintains its asymptotic validity and consistency, even when including \emph{all} empirical functional principal components in our test statistics. This sharply contrasts with the task of estimating the slope function, which requires a delicate choice of the number (at most in the order of $\sqrt n$) of functional principal components to ensure estimation consistency. This distinction highlights an interesting difference between estimation and statistical inference regarding the slope function in functional linear regression. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed test is the first of its kind to utilize all empirical functional principal components., Comment: This new version primarily updates the theory part, to allow $p_1=p_2=n$

We develop a framework of canonical correlation analysis for distribution-valued functional data within the geometry of Wasserstein spaces. Specifically, we formulate an intrinsic concept of correlation between random distributions, propose estimation methods based on functional principal component analysis (FPCA) and Tikhonov regularization, respectively, for the correlation and its corresponding weight functions, and establish the minimax convergence rates of the estimators. The key idea is to extend the framework of tensor Hilbert spaces to distribution-valued functional data to overcome the challenging issue raised by nonlinearity of Wasserstein spaces. The finite-sample performance of the proposed estimators is illustrated via simulation studies, and the practical merit is demonstrated via a study on the association of distributions of brain activities between two brain regions.

Understanding causal relationships is one of the most important goals of modern science. So far, the causal inference literature has focused almost exclusively on outcomes coming from the Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^p$. However, it is increasingly common that complex datasets are best summarized as data points in non-linear spaces. In this paper, we present a novel framework of causal effects for outcomes from the Wasserstein space of cumulative distribution functions, which in contrast to the Euclidean space, is non-linear. We develop doubly robust estimators and associated asymptotic theory for these causal effects. As an illustration, we use our framework to quantify the causal effect of marriage on physical activity patterns using wearable device data collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey., Comment: To appear in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B

In this paper an additive regression model for a symmetric positive-definite matrix valued response and multiple scalar predictors is proposed. The model exploits the abelian group structure inherited from either the Log-Cholesky metric or the Log-Euclidean framework that turns the space of symmetric positive-definite matrices into a Riemannian manifold and further a bi-invariant Lie group. The additive model for responses in the space of symmetric positive-definite matrices with either of these metrics is shown to connect to an additive model on a tangent space. This connection not only entails an efficient algorithm to estimate the component functions but also allows to generalize the proposed additive model to general Riemannian manifolds that might not have a Lie group structure. Optimal asymptotic convergence rates and normality of the estimated component functions are also established. Numerical studies show that the proposed model enjoys superior numerical performance, especially when there are multiple predictors. The practical merits of the proposed model are demonstrated by analyzing diffusion tensor brain imaging data., Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure

A new framework is developed to intrinsically analyze sparsely observed Riemannian functional data. It features four innovative components: a frame-independent covariance function, a smooth vector bundle termed covariance vector bundle, a parallel transport and a smooth bundle metric on the covariance vector bundle. The introduced intrinsic covariance function links estimation of covariance structure to smoothing problems that involve raw covariance observations derived from sparsely observed Riemannian functional data, while the covariance vector bundle provides a rigorous mathematical foundation for formulating such smoothing problems. The parallel transport and the bundle metric together make it possible to measure fidelity of fit to the covariance function. They also play a critical role in quantifying the quality of estimators for the covariance function. As an illustration, based on the proposed framework, we develop a local linear smoothing estimator for the covariance function, analyze its theoretical properties, and provide numerical demonstration via simulated and real datasets. The intrinsic feature of the framework makes it applicable to not only Euclidean submanifolds but also manifolds without a canonical ambient space., Comment: 56 pages

We propose a new approach to the problem of high-dimensional multivariate ANOVA via bootstrapping max statistics that involve the differences of sample mean vectors. The proposed method proceeds via the construction of simultaneous confidence regions for the differences of population mean vectors. It is suited to simultaneously test the equality of several pairs of mean vectors of potentially more than two populations. By exploiting the variance decay property that is a natural feature in relevant applications, we are able to provide dimension-free and nearly-parametric convergence rates for Gaussian approximation, bootstrap approximation, and the size of the test. We demonstrate the proposed approach with ANOVA problems for functional data and sparse count data. The proposed methodology is shown to work well in simulations and several real data applications., Comment: 80 pages, 14 figures

The analysis of samples of random objects that do not lie in a vector space is gaining increasing attention in statistics. An important class of such object data is univariate probability measures defined on the real line. Adopting the Wasserstein metric, we develop a class of regression models for such data, where random distributions serve as predictors and the responses are either also distributions or scalars. To define this regression model, we utilize the geometry of tangent bundles of the space of random measures endowed with the Wasserstein metric for mapping distributions to tangent spaces. The proposed distribution-to-distribution regression model provides an extension of multivariate linear regression for Euclidean data and function-to-function regression for Hilbert space valued data in functional data analysis. In simulations, it performs better than an alternative transformation approach where one maps distributions to a Hilbert space through the log quantile density transformation and then applies traditional functional regression. We derive asymptotic rates of convergence for the estimator of the regression operator and for predicted distributions and also study an extension to autoregressive models for distribution-valued time series. The proposed methods are illustrated with data on human mortality and distributional time series of house prices.

We consider estimation of mean and covariance functions of functional snippets, which are short segments of functions possibly observed irregularly on an individual specific subinterval that is much shorter than the entire study interval. Estimation of the covariance function for functional snippets is challenging since information for the far off-diagonal regions of the covariance structure is completely missing. We address this difficulty by decomposing the covariance function into a variance function component and a correlation function component. The variance function can be effectively estimated nonparametrically, while the correlation part is modeled parametrically, possibly with an increasing number of parameters, to handle the missing information in the far off-diagonal regions. Both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations suggest that this hybrid strategy % divide-and-conquer strategy is effective. In addition, we propose a new estimator for the variance of measurement errors and analyze its asymptotic properties. This estimator is required for the estimation of the variance function from noisy measurements., Comment: 54 pages, 4 figures; to appear in Journal of the American Statistical Association

We present a new Riemannian metric, termed Log-Cholesky metric, on the manifold of symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices via Cholesky decomposition. We first construct a Lie group structure and a bi-invariant metric on Cholesky space, the collection of lower triangular matrices whose diagonal elements are all positive. Such group structure and metric are then pushed forward to the space of SPD matrices via the inverse of Cholesky decomposition that is a bijective map between Cholesky space and SPD matrix space. This new Riemannian metric and Lie group structure fully circumvent swelling effect, in the sense that the determinant of the Fr\'echet average of a set of SPD matrices under the presented metric, called Log-Cholesky average, is between the minimum and the maximum of the determinants of the original SPD matrices. Comparing to existing metrics such as the affine-invariant metric and Log-Euclidean metric, the presented metric is simpler, more computationally efficient and numerically stabler. In particular, parallel transport along geodesics under Log-Cholesky metric is given in a closed and easy-to-compute form., Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure

In neuroscience, functional brain connectivity describes the connectivity between brain regions that share functional properties. Neuroscientists often characterize it by a time series of covariance matrices between functional measurements of distributed neuron areas. An effective statistical model for functional connectivity and its changes over time is critical for better understanding the mechanisms of brain and various neurological diseases. To this end, we propose a matrix-log mean model with an additive heterogeneous noise for modeling random symmetric positive definite matrices that lie in a Riemannian manifold. The heterogeneity of error terms is introduced specifically to capture the curved nature of the manifold. We then propose to use the local scan statistics to detect change patterns in the functional connectivity. Theoretically, we show that our procedure can recover all change points consistently. Simulation studies and an application to the Human Connectome Project lend further support to the proposed methodology., Comment: 17 pages

Estimation of mean and covariance functions is fundamental for functional data analysis. While this topic has been studied extensively in the literature, a key assumption is that there are enough data in the domain of interest to estimate both the mean and covariance functions. In this paper, we investigate mean and covariance estimation for functional snippets in which observations from a subject are available only in an interval of length strictly (and often much) shorter than the length of the whole interval of interest. For such a sampling plan, no data is available for direct estimation of the off-diagonal region of the covariance function. We tackle this challenge via a basis representation of the covariance function. The proposed approach allows one to consistently estimate an infinite-rank covariance function from functional snippets. We establish the convergence rates for the proposed estimators and illustrate their finite-sample performance via simulation studies and two data applications., Comment: 51 pages, 10 figures

Non-Euclidean data that are indexed with a scalar predictor such as time are increasingly encountered in data applications, while statistical methodology and theory for such random objects are not well developed yet. To address the need for new methodology in this area, we develop a total variation regularization technique for nonparametric Fr\'echet regression, which refers to a regression setting where a response residing in a metric space is paired with a scalar predictor and the target is a conditional Fr\'echet mean. Specifically, we seek to approximate an unknown metric-space valued function by an estimator that minimizes the Fr\'echet version of least squares and at the same time has small total variation, appropriately defined for metric-space valued objects. We show that the resulting estimator is representable by a piece-wise constant function and establish the minimax convergence rate of the proposed estimator for metric data objects that reside in Hadamard spaces. We illustrate the numerical performance of the proposed method for both simulated and real data, including metric spaces of symmetric positive-definite matrices with the affine-invariant distance, of probability distributions on the real line with the Wasserstein distance, and of phylogenetic trees with the Billera--Holmes--Vogtmann metric., Comment: This version corrects various typos and some constants

When considering functional principal component analysis for sparsely observed longitudinal data that take values on a nonlinear manifold, a major challenge is how to handle the sparse and irregular observations that are commonly encountered in longitudinal studies. Addressing this challenge, we provide theory and implementations for a manifold version of the principal analysis by conditional expectation (PACE) procedure that produces representations intrinsic to the manifold, extending a well-established version of functional principal component analysis targeting sparsely sampled longitudinal data in linear spaces. Key steps are local linear smoothing methods for the estimation of a Fr\'echet mean curve, mapping the observed manifold-valued longitudinal data to tangent spaces around the estimated mean curve, and applying smoothing methods to obtain the covariance structure of the mapped data. Dimension reduction is achieved via representations based on the first few leading principal components. A finitely truncated representation of the original manifold-valued data is then obtained by mapping these tangent space representations to the manifold. We show that the proposed estimates of mean curve and covariance structure achieve state-of-the-art convergence rates. For longitudinal emotional well-being data for unemployed workers as an example of time-dynamic compositional data that are located on a sphere, we demonstrate that our methods lead to interpretable eigenfunctions and principal component scores. In a second example, we analyze the body shapes of wallabies by mapping the relative size of their body parts onto a spherical pre-shape space. Compared to standard functional principal component analysis, which is based on Euclidean geometry, the proposed approach leads to improved trajectory recovery for sparsely sampled data on nonlinear manifolds.

In this work we develop a novel and foundational framework for analyzing general Riemannian functional data, in particular a new development of tensor Hilbert spaces along curves on a manifold. Such spaces enable us to derive Karhunen-Loeve expansion for Riemannian random processes. This framework also features an approach to compare objects from different tensor Hilbert spaces, which paves the way for asymptotic analysis in Riemannian functional data analysis. Built upon intrinsic geometric concepts such as vector field, Levi-Civita connection and parallel transport on Riemannian manifolds, the developed framework applies to not only Euclidean submanifolds but also manifolds without a natural ambient space. As applications of this framework, we develop intrinsic Riemannian functional principal component analysis (iRFPCA) and intrinsic Riemannian functional linear regression (iRFLR) that are distinct from their traditional and ambient counterparts. We also provide estimation procedures for iRFPCA and iRFLR, and investigate their asymptotic properties within the intrinsic geometry. Numerical performance is illustrated by simulated and real examples., Comment: 46 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables

We study a scalar-on-function historical linear regression model which assumes that the functional predictor does not influence the response when the time passes a certain cutoff point. We approach this problem from the perspective of locally sparse modeling, where a function is locally sparse if it is zero on a substantial portion of its defining domain. In the historical linear model, the slope function is exactly a locally sparse function that is zero beyond the cutoff time. A locally sparse estimate then gives rise to an estimate of the cutoff time. We propose a nested group bridge penalty that is able to specifically shrink the tail of a function. Combined with the B-spline basis expansion and penalized least squares, the nested group bridge approach can identify the cutoff time and produce a smooth estimate of the slope function simultaneously. The proposed locally sparse estimator is shown to be consistent, while its numerical performance is illustrated by simulation studies. The proposed method is demonstrated with an application of determining the effect of the past engine acceleration on the current particulate matter emission.

In recent years, bootstrap methods have drawn attention for their ability to approximate the laws of "max statistics" in high-dimensional problems. A leading example of such a statistic is the coordinate-wise maximum of a sample average of $n$ random vectors in $\mathbb{R}^p$. Existing results for this statistic show that the bootstrap can work when $n\ll p$, and rates of approximation (in Kolmogorov distance) have been obtained with only logarithmic dependence in $p$. Nevertheless, one of the challenging aspects of this setting is that established rates tend to scale like $n^{-1/6}$ as a function of $n$. The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that improvement in rate is possible when extra model structure is available. Specifically, we show that if the coordinate-wise variances of the observations exhibit decay, then a nearly $n^{-1/2}$ rate can be achieved, independent of $p$. Furthermore, a surprising aspect of this dimension-free rate is that it holds even when the decay is very weak. Lastly, we provide examples showing how these ideas can be applied to inference problems dealing with functional and multinomial data., Comment: 64 pages; to appear in The Annals of Statistics, 2019+

We propose a new method for functional nonparametric regression with a predictor that resides on a finite-dimensional manifold but is only observable in an infinite-dimensional space. Contamination of the predictor due to discrete/noisy measurements is also accounted for. By using functional local linear manifold smoothing, the proposed estimator enjoys a polynomial rate of convergence that adapts to the intrinsic manifold dimension and the contamination level. This is in contrast to the logarithmic convergence rate in the literature of functional nonparametric regression. We also observe a phase transition phenomenon regarding the interplay of the manifold dimension and the contamination level. We demonstrate that the proposed method has favorable numerical performance relative to commonly used methods via simulated and real data examples., Comment: 49 pages, 2 figures; to appear in Biometrika

In this paper, we propose a new regularization technique called "functional SCAD". We then combine this technique with the smoothing spline method to develop a smooth and locally sparse (i.e., zero on some sub-regions) estimator for the coefficient function in functional linear regression. The functional SCAD has a nice shrinkage property that enables our estimating procedure to identify the null subregions of the coefficient function without over shrinking the non-zero values of the coefficient function. Additionally, the smoothness of our estimated coefficient function is regularized by a roughness penalty rather than by controlling the number of knots. Our method is more theoretically sound and is computationally simpler than the other available methods. An asymptotic analysis shows that our estimator is consistent and can identify the null region with the probability tending to one. Furthermore, simulation studies show that our estimator has superior numerical performance. Finally, the practical merit of our method is demonstrated on two real applications., Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures