
Statistics Papers
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
2012
Publication Source
Statistical Science
Volume
27
Issue
1
Start Page
24
Last Page
30
DOI
10.1214/11-STS382
Abstract
Shrinkage estimation has become a basic tool in the analysis of high-dimensional data. Historically and conceptually a key development toward this was the discovery of the inadmissibility of the usual estimator of a multivariate normal mean.
This article develops a geometrical explanation for this inadmissibility. By exploiting the spherical symmetry of the problem it is possible to effectively conceptualize the multidimensional setting in a two-dimensional framework that can be easily plotted and geometrically analyzed. We begin with the heuristic explanation for inadmissibility that was given by Stein [In Proceedings of the Third Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, 1954–1955, Vol. I (1956) 197–206, Univ. California Press]. Some geometric figures are included to make this reasoning more tangible. It is also explained why Stein’s argument falls short of yielding a proof of inadmissibility, even when the dimension, p, is much larger than p = 3.
We then extend the geometric idea to yield increasingly persuasive arguments for inadmissibility when p ≥ 3, albeit at the cost of increased geometric and computational detail.
Keywords
Stein estimation, shrinkage, minimax, empirical Bayes, high-dimensional geometry
Recommended Citation
Brown, L. D., & Zhao, L. H. (2012). A Geometrical Explanation of Stein Shrinkage. Statistical Science, 27 (1), 24-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-STS382
Date Posted: 27 November 2017
This document has been peer reviewed.