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U-statistics represent a fundamental class of statistics arising from modeling quantities of interest defined by multi-subject responses. U-statistics generalize the empirical mean of a random variable X to sums over every m-tuple of distinct observations of X. W. Stute [Ann. Probab. 19 (1991) 812–825] introduced a class of so-called conditional U-statistics, which may be viewed as a generalization of the Nadaraya-Watson estimates of a regression function. Stute proved their strong pointwise consistency to : m (t) : = E [ φ (Y 1 , ... , Y m) | (X 1 , ... , X m) = t ] , for t ∈ X m. In this paper we are mainly interested in establishing weak convergence of conditional U-processes in a functional mixing data framework. More precisely, we investigate the weak convergence of the conditional empirical process indexed by a suitable class of functions and of conditional U-processes when the explicative variable is functional. We treat the weak convergence in both cases when the class of functions is bounded or unbounded satisfying some moment conditions. These results are proved under some standard structural conditions on the Vapnik-Chervonenkis classes of functions and some mild conditions on the model. The theoretical results established in this paper are (or will be) key tools for many further developments in functional data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bivariate extreme-value copula is characterized by its Pickands dependence function, i.e., a convex function defined on the unit interval satisfying boundary conditions. This paper investigates the large-sample behavior of a nonparametric estimator of this function due to Cormier et al. (Extremes 17:633–659, 2014). These authors showed how to construct this estimator through constrained quadratic median B-spline smoothing of pairs of pseudo-observations derived from a random sample. Their estimator is shown here to exist whatever the order m ≥ 3 of the B-spline basis, and its consistency is established under minimal conditions. The large-sample distribution of this estimator is also determined under the additional assumption that the underlying Pickands dependence function is a B-spline of given order with a known set of knots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the standard and kth record values arising in sequences of independent identically distributed continuous and positive random variables with finite expectations. We determine necessary and sufficient conditions on the type of record k, its number n and moment order r so that the rth moment of the n value of kth record is finite for every parent distribution. Under the conditions we present the optimal upper bounds on these moments expressed in the scale units being the respective powers of the first population moment. The theoretical results are illustrated by some numerical evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the product Π n = ∏ k = 1 n ξ k of n independent normally distributed zero mean random variables ξ 1 , ... , ξ n . We derive an asymptotic formula for the survival probability P (Π n > x) , as x → ∞ , with the first remaining term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new class of location-invariant semi-parametric estimators of a positive extreme value index γ > 0 is proposed. Its asymptotic distributional representation and asymptotic normality are derived, and the optimal choice of the sample fraction by mean squared error is also discussed for some special cases. Finally comparison studies are provided for some familiar models by Monte Carlo simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, some predictive results of dual generalized order statistics (DGOSs) from the inverse Weibull distribution are obtained. For this goal, different predictive and reconstructive pivotal quantities are proposed. Moreover, several predictive and reconstructive intervals concerning DGOSs based on the inverse Weibull distribution are constructed. Furthermore, the maximum likelihood predictor as well as the predictive maximum likelihood estimates based on DGOSs are studied. Finally, simulation studies are carried out to assess the efficiency of the obtained results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a robust estimator of the tail index of a Pareto-type distribution. The estimator is obtained through the use of the minimum density power divergence with an exponential regression model for log-spacings of top order statistics. The proposed estimator is compared to existing minimum density power divergence estimators of the tail index based on fitting an extended Pareto distribution and exponential regression model on log-ratio of spacings of order statistics. We derive the influence function and gross error sensitivity of the proposed estimator of the tail index to study its robustness properties. In addition, a simulation study is conducted to assess the performance of the estimators under different contaminated samples from different distributions. The results show that our proposed estimator of the tail index has better mean square errors and is less sensitive to an increase in the number of top order statistics. In addition, the estimation of the exponential regression model yields estimates of second-order parameters that can be used for estimation of extreme events such as quantiles and exceedance probabilities. The proposed estimator is illustrated with practical datasets on insurance claims and calcium content in soil samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider online monitoring of the network event data to detect local changes in a cluster when the affected data stream distribution shifts from one point process to another with different parameters. Specifically, we are interested in detecting a change point that causes a shift of the underlying data distribution that follows a multivariate Hawkes process with exponential decay temporal kernel, whereby the Hawkes process is considered to account for spatiotemporal correlation between observations. The proposed detection procedure is based on scan score statistics. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the statistic, which enables the self-normalizing property and facilitates the approximation of the instantaneous false alarm probability and the average run length. When detecting a change in the Hawkes process with nonvanishing self-excitation, the procedure does not require estimating the postchange network parameter while assuming the temporal decay parameter, which enjoys computational efficiency. We further present an efficient procedure to accurately determine the false discovery rate via importance sampling, as validated by numerical examples. Using simulated and real stock exchange data, we show the effectiveness of the proposed method in detecting change while enjoying computational efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extremal index is an important parameter in the characterization of extreme values of a stationary sequence. This paper presents a novel approach to estimation of the extremal index based on truncation of interexceedance times. The truncated estimator based on the maximum likelihood method is derived together with its first-order bias. The estimator is further improved using penultimate approximation to the limiting mixture distribution. In order to assess the performance of the proposed estimator, a simulation study is carried out for various stationary processes satisfying the local dependence condition D (k) (u n) . An application to daily maximum temperatures at Uccle, Belgium, is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) processes are widely used for modelling financial returns, with their extremal properties being of interest for market risk management. For GARCH( p , q ) processes with max (p , q) = 1 all extremal features have been fully characterised, but when max (p , q) ≥ 2 much remains to be found. Previous research has identified that both marginal and dependence extremal features of strictly stationary GARCH( p , q ) processes are determined by a multivariate regular variation property and tail processes. Currently there are no reliable methods for evaluating these characterisations, or even assessing the stationarity, for the classes of GARCH( p , q ) processes that are used in practice, i.e., with unbounded and asymmetric innovations. By developing a mixture of new limit theory and particle filtering algorithms for fixed point distributions we produce novel and robust evaluation methods for all extremal features for all GARCH( p , q ) processes, including ARCH and IGARCH processes. We investigate our methods’ performance when evaluating the marginal tail index, the extremogram and the extremal index, the latter two being measures of temporal dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a copula-based measure of asymmetry between the lower and upper tail probabilities of bivariate distributions. The proposed measure has a simple form and possesses some desirable properties as a measure of asymmetry. The limit of the proposed measure as the index goes to the boundary of its domain can be expressed in a simple form under certain conditions on copulas. A sample analogue of the proposed measure for a sample from a copula is presented and its weak convergence to a Gaussian process is shown. Another sample analogue of the presented measure, which is based on a sample from a distribution on R 2 , is given. Simple methods for interval and region estimation are presented. A simulation study is carried out to investigate the performance of the proposed sample analogues and methods for interval estimation. As an example, the presented measure is applied to daily returns of S&P500 and Nikkei225. A trivariate extension of the proposed measure and its sample analogue are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, two pivotal statistics are suggested to construct prediction intervals of future observations from the exponential and Pareto distributions in the context of ordered ranked set sample. Our study encompasses two cases. The first case, when the sample size is assumed to be fixed and the second case when the sample size is assumed to be a positive integer-valued random variable. In addition to deriving explicit forms for the distribution functions of the two pivotal statistics, we consider some special cases for the random size of the sample. Moreover, a simulation study is carried out to assess the efficiency of the suggested methods. Finally, an example representing lifetime data is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent environmental studies, the examination of extreme events has great impact. The block maxima of environment-related indices can be analyzed by the tools of extreme value theory. For instance, the monthly maxima of the fire weather index at stations in British Columbia might be modeled by GEV distribution, but it is questionable whether the underlying stochastic process is stationary. This property can lead us to different approaches to determine whether there is a significant trend in the past few years' data or not. One such approach is a likelihood ratio based procedure, which has favorable asymptotic properties, but for realistic sample sizes it might have large decision errors. In this paper, we analyze the properties of the likelihood ratio test for extremes by bootstrap simulations and present a simulation-based procedure to overcome the problem of small sample sizes. We also propose a return level calculation method. Using our theoretical results we reassess the trends of fire weather index monthly maxima in selected stations of British Columbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A single outlier sequence in which the distribution of the first observation differs from the others is considered and the properties of record statistics extracted from such sequence are studied. The problem of estimating the model parameters is discussed in the proportional hazard rate model. The maximum likelihood estimator and the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator are obtained for the special case of exponential distribution. The best linear unbiased (invariant) estimator is also derived for the location-scale family of distributions and their efficiencies are calculated. The problems of predicting the future records and reconstructing the past records are investigated. Various predictors and reconstructors are presented and some of their properties are stated. The precision of the obtained predictors are compared based on both the mean squared prediction error and Pitman's measure of closeness criteria. Finally, an example with real data is given to illustrate the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a classical chess round-robin tournament, each of $n$ players wins, draws, or loses a game against each of the other $n-1$ players. A win rewards a player with 1 points, a draw with 1/2 point, and a loss with 0 points. We are interested in the distribution of the scores associated with ranks of $n$ players after ${{n \choose 2}}$ games, that is, the distribution of the maximal score, second maximum, and so on. The exact distribution for a general $n$ seems impossible to obtain; we obtain a limit distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the Hoeffding–Sobol decomposition of homogeneous co-survival functions. For this class, the Choquet representation is transferred to the terms of the functional decomposition, and in addition to their individual variances, or to the superset combinations of those. The domain of integration in the resulting formulae is reduced in comparison with the already known expressions. When the function under study is the stable tail dependence function of a random vector, ranking these superset indices corresponds to clustering the components of the random vector with respect to their asymptotic dependence. Their Choquet representation is the main ingredient in deriving a sharp upper bound for the quantities involved in the tail dependograph, a graph in extreme value theory that summarizes asymptotic dependence.

This paper deals with the problem of the nonparametric analysis by the relative-error regression when the explanatory of a variable is of infinite dimension. Based on k-Nearest Neighbors procedure (kNN), we construct an estimator and establish its asymptotic properties. Precisely, we show its Uniform consistency in Number of Neighbors (UNN) with the precision of the convergence rate. Some empirical studies are also performed to highlight the impact of this asymptotic result in nonparametric functional statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characterizations of probability distributions allow the investigator to choose a suitable model from a handful of distributions for a data set in hand. The present study deals with Rényi entropy being treated as a function of the ordered random variable named k-records instead of the unordered random variable to derive some new characterizations of probability distributions. The characterization results are established based on upper k-records as well as lower k-records and uses both upper and lower k-records simultaneously in certain situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a random censoring model for survival analysis, allowing the possibility that only a proportion of individuals in the population are susceptible to death or failure, and the remainder are immune or cured. Susceptibles suffer the event under study eventually, but the time at which this occurs may not be observed due to censoring. Immune individuals have infinite lifetimes which are always censored in the sample. Assuming that the distribution of the susceptibles' lifetimes as well as the censoring distribution have infinite right endpoints and are in the domain of attraction of the Gumbel distribution, we obtain asymptotic distributions, as sample size tends to infinity, of statistics relevant to testing for the possible existence of immunes in the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several tests for multivariate mean vector have been proposed in the recent literature. Generally, these tests are directly concerned with the mean vector of a high-dimensional distribution. The paper presents two new test procedures for testing mean vector in large dimension and small samples. We do not focus on the mean vector directly, which is a different framework from the existing choices. The first test procedure is based on the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic, where the dimension increases with the sample size. The second test procedure is based on the permutation distribution of the test statistic, where the sample size is fixed and the dimension grows to infinity. Simulations are carried out to examine the finite-sample performance of the tests and to compare them with some popular nonparametric tests available in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme Value Theory (EVT) aims to study the tails of probability distributions in order to measure and quantify extreme events of maximum and minimum. In river flow data, an extreme level of a river may be related to the level of a neighboring river that flows into it. In this type of data, it is very common for flooding of a location to have been caused by a very large flow from an affluent river that is tens or hundreds of kilometers from this location. In this sense, an interesting approach is to consider a conditional model for the estimation of a multivariate model. Inspired by this idea, we propose a Bayesian model to describe the dependence of exceedance between rivers, where we considered a conditionally independent structure. In this model, the dependence between rivers is captured by modeling the excess marginally of one river as a consequence of linear functions of the other rivers. The results showed that there is a strong and positive connection between excesses in one river caused by the excesses of the other rivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threshold selection plays a key role in various aspects of statistical inference of rare events. In this work, two new threshold selection methods are introduced. The first approach measures the fit of the exponential approximation above a threshold and achieves good performance in small samples. The second method smoothly estimates the asymptotic mean squared error of the Hill estimator and performs consistently well over a wide range of processes. Both methods are analyzed theoretically, compared to existing procedures in an extensive simulation study and applied to a dataset of financial losses, where the underlying extreme value index is assumed to vary over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new measure of variability in the tail of a distribution by applying a Box–Cox transformation of parameter p ≥ 0 to the tail-Gini functional. It is shown that the so-called Box–Cox Tail Gini Variability measure is a valid variability measure whose condition of existence may be as weak as necessary thanks to the tuning parameter p. The tail behaviour of the measure is investigated under a general extreme-value condition on the distribution tail. We then show how to estimate the Box–Cox Tail Gini Variability measure within the range of the data. These methods provide us with basic estimators that are then extrapolated using the extreme-value assumption to estimate the variability in the very far tails. The finite sample behaviour of the estimators is illustrated both on simulated and real data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertain information on input parameters of computer models is usually modeled by considering these parameters as random, and described by marginal distributions and a dependence structure of these variables. In numerous real-world applications, while information is mainly provided by marginal distributions, typically from samples, little is really known on the dependence structure itself. Faced with this problem of incomplete or missing information, risk studies that make use of these computer models are often conducted by considering independence of input variables, at the risk of including irrelevant situations. This approach is especially used when reliability functions are considered as black-box models. Such analyses remain weakened in absence of in-depth model exploration, at the possible price of a strong risk misestimation. Considering the frequent case where the reliability output is a quantile, this article provides a methodology to improve risk assessment, by exploring a set of pessimistic dependencies using a copula-based strategy. In dimension greater than two, a greedy algorithm is provided to build input regular vine copulas reaching a minimum quantile to which a reliability admissible limit value can be compared, by selecting pairwise components of sensitive influence on the result. The strategy is tested over toy models and a real industrial case-study. The results highlight that current approaches can provide non-conservative results.

We introduce a location-scale model for conditional heavy-tailed distributions when the covariate is deterministic. First, nonparametric estimators of the location and scale functions are introduced. Second, an estimator of the conditional extreme-value index is derived. The asymptotic properties of the estimators are established under mild assumptions and their finite sample properties are illustrated both on simulated and real data.

It is a common practice to describe branching random walks in terms of birth, death and walk of particles, which makes it easier to use them in different applications. The main results obtained for the models of symmetric continuous-time heavy-tailed branching random walks on a multidimensional lattice. We will be mainly interested in studying the problems related to the limiting behavior of branching random walks such as the existence of phase transitions under change of various parameters, the properties of the limiting distribution and the survival probability of a particle population. Emphasis is made on the survival analysis. The answers to these and other questions essentially depend on numerous factors which affect the properties of a branching random walk. Therefore, we will try to describe how the properties of a branching random walk depend on such characteristics of the underlying random walk as finiteness or infiniteness of the variance of jumps. The presented results are based on the Green's function representations of the transition probabilities of a branching random walk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the high-dimensional setting, this article considers a canonical testing problem in multivariate analysis, namely testing coefficients in linear regression models. Several tests for high-dimensional regression coefficients have been proposed in the recent literature. However, these tests are based on the sum of squares type statistics, that perform well under the dense alternatives and suffer from low power under the sparse alternatives. In order to attack this issue, we introduce a new test statistic which is based on the maximum type statistic and magnifies the sparse signals. The limiting null distribution of the test statistic is shown to be the extreme value distribution of type I and the power of the test is analysed. In particular, it is shown theoretically and numerically that the test is powerful against sparse alternatives. Numerical studies are carried out to examine the numerical performance of the test and to compare it with other tests available in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the behaviour of large values of extremal processes at small times, obtaining an analogue of the Fisher-Tippet-Gnedenko Theorem. Thus, necessary and sufficient conditions for local convergence of such maxima, linearly normalised, to the Fréchet or Gumbel distributions, are established. Weibull distributions are not possible limits in this situation. Moreover, assuming second order regular variation, we prove local asymptotic normality for intermediate order statistics, and derive explicit formulae for the normalising constants for tempered stable processes. We adapt Hill's estimator of the tail index to the small time setting and establish its asymptotic normality under second order regular variation conditions, illustrating this with simulations. Applications to the fine structure of asset returns processes, possibly with infinite variation, are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Markov tree is a probabilistic graphical model for a random vector indexed by the nodes of an undirected tree encoding conditional independence relations between variables. One possible limit distribution of partial maxima of samples from such a Markov tree is a max-stable Hüsler–Reiss distribution whose parameter matrix inherits its structure from the tree, each edge contributing one free dependence parameter. Our central assumption is that, upon marginal standardization, the data-generating distribution is in the max-domain of attraction of the said Hüsler–Reiss distribution, an assumption much weaker than the one that data are generated according to a graphical model. Even if some of the variables are unobservable (latent), we show that the underlying model parameters are still identifiable if and only if every node corresponding to a latent variable has degree at least three. Three estimation procedures, based on the method of moments, maximum composite likelihood, and pairwise extremal coefficients, are proposed for usage on multivariate peaks over thresholds data when some variables are latent. A typical application is a river network in the form of a tree where, on some locations, no data are available. We illustrate the model and the identifiability criterion on a data set of high water levels on the Seine, France, with two latent variables. The structured Hüsler–Reiss distribution is found to fit the observed extremal dependence patterns well. The parameters being identifiable we are able to quantify tail dependence between locations for which there are no data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show how fat tails in agricultural commodity returns arise endogenously from productivity shocks in a standard macroeconomic model. Using nearly ninety years of data, we show that the eight agricultural commodities in our sample exhibit fat-tailed return distributions. Statistical tests confirm the heavy-tailedness of price spikes for agricultural commodities. We apply extreme value theory to estimate the size and likelihood of price spikes in agricultural commodities. Back-testing verifies the validity of our risk assessment methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a method for probabilistic prediction of extreme value hot-spots in a spatio-temporal framework, tailored to big datasets containing important gaps. In this setting, direct calculation of summaries from data, such as the minimum over a space-time domain, is not possible. To obtain predictive distributions for such cluster summaries, we propose a two-step approach. We first model marginal distributions with a focus on accurate modeling of the right tail and then, after transforming the data to a standard Gaussian scale, we estimate a Gaussian space-time dependence model defined locally in the time domain for the space-time subregions where we want to predict. In the first step, we detrend the mean and standard deviation of the data and fit a spatially resolved generalized Pareto distribution to apply a correction of the upper tail. To ensure spatial smoothness of the estimated trends, we either pool data using nearest-neighbor techniques, or apply generalized additive regression modeling. To cope with high space-time resolution of data, the local Gaussian models use a Markov representation of the Matérn correlation function based on the stochastic partial differential equations (SPDE) approach. In the second step, they are fitted in a Bayesian framework through the integrated nested Laplace approximation implemented in R-INLA. Finally, posterior samples are generated to provide statistical inferences through Monte-Carlo estimation. Motivated by the 2019 Extreme Value Analysis data challenge, we illustrate our approach to predict the distribution of local space-time minima in anomalies of Red Sea surface temperatures, using a gridded dataset (11315 days, 16703 pixels) with artificially generated gaps. In particular, we show the improved performance of our two-step approach over a purely Gaussian model without tail transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the estimation of the extreme spatio-temporal sea surface temperature data based on the quantile factor model implemented by the SNU multiscale team. The proposed method was developed for the EVA2019 Data Challenge. Various attempts have been conducted to use factor models in spatio-temporal data analysis to find hidden factors in high-dimensional data. Factor models represent high-dimensional data as a linear combination of several factors, and hence, can describe spatially and temporally correlated data in a simple form. Meanwhile, unlike ordinary factor models, there are asymmetric norm-based factor models, such as quantile factor models or expectile dynamic semiparametric factor models, that can help understand the quantitative behavior of data beyond their mean structure. For this purpose, we apply a quantile factor model to the data to obtain significant factors explaining the quantile response of the temperatures and find quantile estimates. We develop a new method for inference of quantiles of extremal levels by extrapolating quantile estimates from the factor model with extreme value theory. The proposed method provides better performance than the benchmark, gives some interpretable insights, and shows the potential to expand the factor model with various data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantile regression at the tail, the estimation of which is challenging because of data sparsity, is of interest in several fields such as financial cost calculations, rainfall prediction, and environmental risk assessment. In linear models, the tail behavior of a quantile regression estimator is well developed. However, for some data, a linear model is unrealistic at the tail, requiring us to use a more flexible model. In this regard, we focus on using models with varying coefficients. Thus, the study presented in this paper is concerned with extremal quantile regression based on models with a varying coefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]