Skip to main content
Log in

Minimax estimators for location vectors in elliptical distributions with unknown scale parameter and its application to variance reduction in simulation

  • Estimation
  • Published:
Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, we give an ever wider and new class of minimax estimators for the location vector of an elliptical distribution (a scale mixture of normal densities) with an unknown scale parameter. The its application to variance reduction for Monte Carlo simulation when control variates are used is considered. The results obtained thus extend (i) Berger's result concerning minimax estimation of location vectors for scale mixtures of normal densities with known scale parameter and (ii) Strawderman's result on the estimation of the normal mean with common unknown variance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Baranchik, A. J. (1973). A family of minimax estimators of the mean of a multivariate normal distribution. Ann. Math. Statist., 41, 642–645.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauer, K. W. and Wilson, J. (1989). Control-variate selection criteria, SMS 89–29, Department of Statistics and School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, Indiana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berger, J. (1975). Minimax estimation of location vectors for wide class of densities, Ann. Statist., 10, 81–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berger, J. (1985). Statistical Decision Theory and Bayesian Analysis, Springer, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandwein, A. C. and Strawderman, W. E. (1990). Stein estimation: the spherically symmetric case, Statist. Sci., 5, 358–368.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bravo, G. and MacGibbon, B. (1988). Improved shrinkage estimators for the mean vector of a scale mixture of normals with unknown variance, Canad. J. Statist., 16, 237–245.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bravo, G. and MacGibbon, B. (1990). Improved estimators of a location vector with unknown scale parameter. Comm. Statist. Theory Methods, 19, 3657–3670.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, L. D. (1990). An ancillary paradox which appears in multiple regression. Ann. Statist., 18, 471–493.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cellier, D., Fourdrinier, D. and Robert, C. (1989). Robust shrinkage estimators of the location parameter for elliptically symmetric distributions, J. Multivariate Anal., 29, 39–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • DasGupta, A. and Rubin, H. (1988). Bayesian estimation subject to minimaxity of the mean of a multivariate normal distribution in the case of a common unknown variance: a case for Bayesian robustness, Statistical Decisions & Related Topics (eds. J.Berger and S.Gupta), Springer, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fishman, G. S. (1989). Monte Carlo, control variates, and stochastic ordering, SIAM J. Sci. Statist. Comput., 10, 187–204.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gleser, L. J. and Tan, M. (1989). Minimax estimation of location vectors in elliptical distributions with unknown scale parameter, Mimeo. Series, # 89–37, Department of Statistics, Purdue University, Indiana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hwang, J. T. and Casella, G. (1982). Minimax confidence sets for the mean vector of a multivariate normal distribution, Ann. Statist., 10, 868–881.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelker, D. (1970). Distribution theory of spherical distributions and a location-scale parameter generalization, Sankhyā Ser. A, 32, 419–430.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lavenberg, S. S. and Welch, P. D. (1981). A perspective on the use of control variates to increase the efficiency of Monte Carlo simulation, Management Sci., 27, 332–335.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muirhead, R. J. (1982). Aspects of Multivariate Statistical Theory, Wiley, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, B. L. (1987). A perspective on variance reduction in dynamic simulation experiments, Comm, Statist. Simulation Comput., 16, 385–426.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stein, C. (1960). Multiple regression, Contributions to Probability and Statistics, Essays in Honor of Harold Hotelling (eds. I.Olkin, S. G.Ghurye, W.Hoeffding, W. G.Madow and H. B.Mann), Stanford University Press, California.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strawderman, W. E. (1973). Proper Bayes minimax estimators of the multivariate normal mean vector for the case of common unknown variances, Ann. Statist., 1, 1189–1194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takada, Y. (1979). A family of minimax estimators in some multiple regression problems, Ann. Statist., 7, 1144–1147.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tan, M. (1990). Shrinkage, GMANOVA, control variates and their applications, Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Statistics, Purdue University, Indiana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, J. R. (1984). Variance reduction techniques for digital simulation, Mathematics and Management Science, 1, 227–312.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zellner, A. (1976). Bayesian and non-Bayesian analysis of the regression model with multivariate student t-error terms, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 71, 400–405.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zidek, J. (1978). Deriving unbiased risk estimators of multinormal mean and regression coefficient estimators using zonal polynomials, Ann. Statist., 6, 769–782.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

Research partially supported by National Science Foundation, Grant #DMS 8901922.

About this article

Cite this article

Tan, M., Gleser, L.J. Minimax estimators for location vectors in elliptical distributions with unknown scale parameter and its application to variance reduction in simulation. Ann Inst Stat Math 44, 537–550 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00050704

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00050704

Key words and phrases

Navigation