Uniform mean estimation for monotonic processes

We consider the problem of deriving uniform confidence bands for the mean of a monotonic stochastic process, such as the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a random variable, based on a sequence of i.i.d. observations. Our approach leverages the coin-betting framework, and inherits several favourable characteristics of coin-betting methods. In particular, for each point in the domain of the mean function, we obtain anytime-valid confidence intervals that are numerically tight and adapt to the variance of the observations. To derive uniform confidence bands, we employ a continuous union bound that crucially leverages monotonicity. In the case of CDF estimation, we also exploit the fact that the empirical CDF is piece-wise constant to obtain simple confidence bands that can be easily computed. In simulations, we find that our confidence bands for the CDF achieve state-of-the-art performance.

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Publication Details

Journal
Statistics & Probability Letters
Published
2025-09-25
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spl.2025.110558
Primary Topic
Legal Cases and Commentary
Type
article
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article

Uniform mean estimation for monotonic processes

Statistics & Probability Letters
Legal Cases and Commentary
article

Uniform mean estimation for monotonic processes

article en

Abstract

We consider the problem of deriving uniform confidence bands for the mean of a monotonic stochastic process, such as the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a random variable, based on a sequence of i.i.d. observations. Our approach leverages the coin-betting framework, and inherits several favourable characteristics of coin-betting methods. In particular, for each point in the domain of the mean function, we obtain anytime-valid confidence intervals that are numerically tight and adapt to the variance of the observations. To derive uniform confidence bands, we employ a continuous union bound that crucially leverages monotonicity. In the case of CDF estimation, we also exploit the fact that the empirical CDF is piece-wise constant to obtain simple confidence bands that can be easily computed. In simulations, we find that our confidence bands for the CDF achieve state-of-the-art performance.

Statistics & Probability LettersVol. 228
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (ES), University of Oxford (GB)
Climate action
Openalex Percentile: Top 38%
Legal Cases and Commentary
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