De Bruijn's identity relates two important concepts in information theory: Fisher information and differential entropy. Unlike the common practice in the literature, in this paper we consider general additive non-Gaussian noise channels where more realistically, the input signal and additive noise are not independently distributed. It is shown that, for general dependent signal and noise, the first derivative of the differential entropy is directly related to the conditional mean estimate of the input. Then, by using Gaussian and Farlie–Gumbel–Morgenstern copulas, special versions of the result are given in the respective case of additive normally distributed noise. The previous result on independent Gaussian noise channels is included as a special case. Illustrative examples are also provided.

Left-invariant PDE-evolutions on the roto-translation group SE(2)(and their resolvent equations) have been widely studied in the fields of cortical modeling and image analysis. They include hypo-elliptic diffusion (for contour enhancement) proposed by Citti & Sarti, and Petitot, and they include the direction process (for contour completion) proposed by Mumford. This paper presents a thorough study and comparison of the many numerical approaches, which, remarkably, are missing in the literature. Existing numerical approaches can be classified into 3 categories: Finite difference methods, Fourier based methods (equivalent to SE(2)-Fourier methods), and stochastic methods (Monte Carlo simulations). There are also 3 types of exact solutions to the PDE-evolutions that were derived explicitly (in the spatial Fourier domain) in previous works by Duits and van Almsick in 2005. Here we provide an overview of these 3 types of exact solutions and explain how they relate to each of the 3 numerical approaches. We compute relative errors of all numerical approaches to the exact solutions, and the Fourier based methods show us the best performance with smallest relative errors. We also provide an improvement of Mathematica algorithms for evaluating Mathieu-functions, crucial in implementations of the exact solutions. Furthermore, we include an asymptotical analysis of the singularities within the kernels and we propose a probabilistic extension of underlying stochastic processes that overcomes the singular behavior in the origin of time-integrated kernels. Finally, we show retinal imaging applications of combining left-invariant PDE-evolutions with invertible orientation scores.

It is often helpful to compute the intrinsic volumes of a set of which only a pixel image is observed. A computationally efficient approach, which is suggested by several authors and used in practice, is to approximate the intrinsic volumes by linear combinations of the pixel configuration counts. However, we will show that when this approach is used for the computation of an intrinsic volume other than volume or surface area, an asymptotic error of 100% of the correct value cannot be avoided. As a consequence we derive that estimators which ignore the data and return constant values are optimal with respect to a natural criterion which has already been applied successfully for the estimation of the surface area.

We study the relations between the tail order of copulas and hidden regular variation (HRV) on subcones generated by order statistics. Multivariate regular variation (MRV) and HRV deal with extremal dependence of random vectors with Pareto-like univariate margins. Alternatively, if one uses a copula to model the dependence structure of a random vector then the upper exponent and tail order functions can be used to capture the extremal dependence structure. After defining upper exponent functions on a series of subcones, we establish the relation between the tail order of a copula and the tail indexes for MRV and HRV. We show that upper exponent functions of a copula and intensity measures of MRV/HRV can be represented by each other, and the upper exponent function on subcones can be expressed by a Pickands-type integral representation. Finally, a mixture model is given with the mixing random vector leading to the finite-directional measure in a product-measure representation of HRV intensity measures.

We consider the incidence semirings of graphs and prove that every incidence semiring has convenient visible bases for its right ideals and for its left ideals, and that these visible bases can be used to determine the weights of all right ideals that have maximum weight and all left ideals that have maximum weight.

Spatial data sets can be analysed by counting the number of objects in equally sized bins. The bin counts are related to the Pólya urn process, where coloured balls (for example, white or black) are removed from the urn at random. If there are insufficient white or black balls for the prescribed number of trials, the Pólya urn process becomes untenable. In this case, we modify the Pólya urn process so that it continues to describe the removal of volume within a spatial distribution of objects. We determine when the standard formula for the variance of the standard Pólya distribution gives a good approximation to the true variance. The variance quantifies an index for assessing whether a spatial point data set is at its most randomly distributed state, called the complete spatial randomness (CSR) state. If the bin size is an order of magnitude larger than the size of the objects, then the standard formula for the CSR limit is indicative of when the CSR state has been attained. For the special case when the object size divides the bin size, the standard formula is in fact exact.

In this paper, we propose a matrix-variate generalization of the Gauss hypergeometric distribution and study several of its properties. We also derive probability density functions of the product of two independent random matrices when one of them is Gauss hypergeometric. These densities are expressed in terms of Appell’s first hypergeometric function F1 and Humbert’s confluent hypergeometric function Φ1of matrix arguments.

Most finite spatial point process models specified by a density are locally stable, implying that the Papangelou intensity is bounded by some integrable function β defined on the space for the points of the process. It is possible to superpose a locally stable spatial point process X with a complementary spatial point process Y to obtain a Poisson process X ⋃ Y with intensity function β. Underlying this is a bivariate spatial birth-death process (Xt, Yt) which converges towards the distribution of (X, Y). We study the joint distribution of X and Y, and their marginal and conditional distributions. In particular, we introduce a fast and easy simulation procedure for Y conditional on X. This may be used for model checking: given a model for the Papangelou intensity of the original spatial point process, this model is used to generate the complementary process, and the resulting superposition is a Poisson process with intensity function β if and only if the true Papangelou intensity is used. Whether the superposition is actually such a Poisson process can easily be examined using well-known results and fast simulation procedures for Poisson processes. We illustrate this approach to model checking in the case of a Strauss process.

Consider a continuous-time renewal risk model with a constant force of interest. We assume that claim sizes and interarrival times correspondingly form a sequence of independent and identically distributed random pairs and that each pair obeys a dependence structure described via the conditional tail probability of a claim size given the interarrival time before the claim. We focus on determining the impact of this dependence structure on the asymptotic tail probability of discounted aggregate claims. Assuming that the claim size distribution is subexponential, we derive an exact locally uniform asymptotic formula, which quantitatively captures the impact of the dependence structure. When the claim size distribution is extended regularly varying tailed, we show that this asymptotic formula is globally uniform.

The tail dependence of multivariate distributions is frequently studied via the tool of copulas. In this paper we develop a general method, which is based on multivariate regular variation, to evaluate the tail dependence of heavy-tailed scale mixtures of multivariate distributions, whose copulas are not explicitly accessible. Tractable formulae for tail dependence parameters are derived, and a sufficient condition under which the parameters are monotone with respect to the heavy tail index is obtained. The multivariate elliptical distributions are discussed to illustrate the results.

We study sample covariance matrices of the form W = (1 / n)CCT, where C is a k x n matrix with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) mean 0 entries. This is a generalization of the so-called Wishart matrices, where the entries of C are i.i.d. standard normal random variables. Such matrices arise in statistics as sample covariance matrices, and the high-dimensional case, when k is large, arises in the analysis of DNA experiments. We investigate the large deviation properties of the largest and smallest eigenvalues of W when either k is fixed and n → ∞ or kn → ∞ with kn = o(n / log log n), in the case where the squares of the i.i.d. entries have finite exponential moments. Previous results, proving almost sure limits of the eigenvalues, require only finite fourth moments. Our most explicit results for large k are for the case where the entries of C are ∓ 1 with equal probability. We relate the large deviation rate functions of the smallest and largest eigenvalues to the rate functions for i.i.d. standard normal entries of C. This case is of particular interest since it is related to the problem of decoding of a signal in a code-division multiple-access (CDMA) system arising in mobile communication systems. In this example, k is the number of users in the system and n is the length of the coding sequence of each of the users. Each user transmits at the same time and uses the same frequency; the codes are used to distinguish the signals of the separate users. The results imply large deviation bounds for the probability of a bit error due to the interference of the various users.

A systematic study of random Laguerre tessellations, weighted generalisations of the well-known Voronoi tessellations, is presented. We prove that every normal tessellation with convex cells in dimension three and higher is a Laguerre tessellation. Tessellations generated by stationary marked Poisson processes are then studied in detail. For these tessellations, we obtain integral formulae for geometric characteristics and densities of the typical k-faces. We present a formula for the linear contact distribution function and prove various limit results for convergence of Laguerre to Poisson-Voronoi tessellations. The obtained integral formulae are subsequently evaluated numerically for the planar case, demonstrating their applicability for practical purposes.

In this paper we study the asymptotic tail probabilities of sums of subexponential, nonnegative random variables, which are dependent according to certain general structures with tail independence. The results show that the subexponentiality of the summands eliminates the impact of the dependence on the tail behavior of the sums.

We present a minimum counterexample to the conjecture that a negatively associated random variable has an ultra-log-concave rank sequence. The rank sequence does not in fact even need to be unimodal.

The notion of conditional comonotonicity was first used implicitly by Kaas, Dhaene, and Goovaerts (2000) and was formally introduced by Jouini and Napp (2004) as a generalization of the classical concept of comonotonicity. The objective of the present paper is to further investigate this relatively new concept. The main result is that a random vector is comonotonic conditional to a certain σ-field if and only if it is almost surely comonotonic locally on each atom of the conditioning σ-field. We also provide a new proof of a distributional representation and an almost sure representation of a conditionally comonotonic random vector.

Dependence structures for bivariate extremal events are analyzed using particular types of copula. Weak convergence results for copulas along the lines of the Pickands-Balkema-de Haan theorem provide limiting dependence structures for bivariate tail events. A characterization of these limiting copulas is also provided by means of invariance properties. The results obtained are applied to the credit risk area, where, for intensity-based default models, stress scenario dependence structures for widely traded products such as credit default swap baskets or first-to-default contract types are proposed.