Stats 300B: Theory of Statistics II

John Duchi, Stanford University, Winter 2021

Course Schedule (subject to change)

Lecture Notes Topics Reading
Tue, Jan 12 Lecture 1 Overview, Convergence of random variables VDV Chapters 2.1, 2.2
Thu, Jan 14 Lecture 2 Convergence of random variables, delta method VDV Chapters 2, 3
Tue, Jan 19 Lecture 3 Asymptotic normality, Fisher information VDV Chapter 5.1-5.6; ELST Chapter 7.1-7.3
Thu, Jan 21 Lecture 4 Fisher information, Moment method VDV Chapter 4; TPE Chapter 2.5
Tue, Jan 26 Lecture 5 Superefficiency, Testing and Confidence Regions ELST Chapter 3.1, 3.2, 4.1; TSH Chapter 12.4
Thu, Jan 28 Lecture 6 Testing: likelihood ratio, Wald, Score tests ELST Chapter 3.1, 3.2, 4.1; TSH Chapter 12.4
Tue, Feb 2 Lecture 7 U-Statistics VDV Chapter 12
Thu, Feb 4 Lecture 8 U-Statistics: Hajek projections and asymptotic normality VDV Chapter 11, 12
Tue, Feb 9 Lecture 9 Uniform laws of large numbers, Covering and Bracketing VDV Chapter 5.2, 19.1, 19.2
Thu, Feb 11 Lecture 10 Subgaussianity, Symmetrization, Rademacher complexity and metric entropy VDV Chapter 19, HDP Chapter 1, 2, 8
Tue, Feb 16 Lecture 11 Symmetrization, Chaining HDP Chapter 8, VDV Chapter 18-19
Thu, Feb 18 Lecture 12 Uniform laws via entropy numbers, classes with finite entropy, VC classes VDV Chapter 18-19
Tue, Feb 23 Lecture 13 Rademacher complexity and ULLNs VDV Chapter 18-19
Thu, Feb 25 Lecture 14 Moduli of continuity, rates of convergence VDV Chapter 18-19
Tue, Mar 2 Lecture 15 Weak convergence of random functions VDV Chapter 18-19, Notes on Arzela-Ascoli theorem
Thu, Mar 4 Lecture 16 Goodness-of-fit tests, M-estimators with non-differentiable losses VDV Chapter 19.3 & 5.3
Tue, Mar 9 Quadratic mean differentiability TSH Chapter 12, VDV Chapter 6
Thu, Mar 11 Lecture 18 Absolute continuity of measure, Contiguity, LeCams's lemmas, Distance for distributions TSH Chapter 12.3, VDV Chapter 6
Tue, Mar 16 Lecture 19 Hellinger distance, Quadratic mean differentiability, Local asymptotic normality, Asymptotically most powerful tests TSH Chapter 12.3, 13.1-13.3, VDV Chapter 6, 7.1-7.3
Thu, Mar 18 Lecture 20 Limiting Gaussian experiments, Local asymptotic minimax theorem VDV Chapters 7 and 8, Notes on class website


  • VDV = van der Vaart (Asymptotic Statistics)

  • HDS = Wainwright (High Dimensional Statistics: A Non-Asymptotic Viewpoint)

  • HDP = Vershynin (High Dimensional Probability)

  • TSH = Testing Statistical Hypotheses (Lehmann and Romano)

  • TPE = Theory of Point Estimation (Lehmann)

  • ELST = Elements of Large Sample Theory (Lehmann)

  • GE = Gaussian estimation: Sequence and wavelet models (Johnstone)

Additional Notes

Topic Link
Arzela-Ascoli Theorem pdf
VC Dimension pdf
Rates of convergence and moduli of continuity pdf
Asymptotics for non-differentiable losses pdf
Contiguity and asymptotics pdf

Scribing

The scribe notes should be written in prose English, as if in a textbook, so that someone who did not attend the class will understand the material. Please do your best, as it is good practice for communicating with others when you write research papers.

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All tex files and scribe notes from 2017, 2018, and 2019 are available from their respective syllabi (2017, 2018, 2019). You can download the LaTeX template and style file for scribing lecture notes.