Penalised spline regression is a popular new approach to smoothing, but its theoretical properties are not yet well understood. In this paper, mean squared error expressions and consistency results are derived by using a white-noise model representation for the estimator. The effect of the...

Motivated by applications in high-dimensional settings, we suggest a test of the hypothesis H-sub-0 that two sampled distributions are identical. It is assumed that two independent datasets are drawn from the respective populations, which may be very general. In particular, the distributions may...

One of the attractions of crossvalidation, as a tool for smoothing-parameter choice, is its applicability to a wide variety of estimator types and contexts. However, its detractors comment adversely on the relatively high variance of crossvalidatory smoothing parameters, noting that this...

We consider mixture models in which the components of data vectors from any given subpopulation are statistically independent, or independent in blocks. We argue that if, under this condition of independence, we take a nonparametric view of the problem and allow the number of subpopulations to...

We study methods for constructing confidence intervals and confidence bands for estimators of receiver operating characteristics. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which smoothing should be implemented, when estimating either the characteristic itself or its variance. We show that...

Properties of the periodogram are seldom studied in the setting of nonparametric regression, although that is the context in which the periodogram is widely applied in astronomy. There it is a competitor with more recent least-squares methods. The periodogram has the advantage of providing...

Arising from an omitted term in a calculation in the Appendix, variance formulae in the paper should be adjusted. In particular, the constants in the numerators of equations (2·4) and (2·15) should be 6 rather than 18. Variances are, however, still higher than in the case of least-squares...

If Fourier series are used as the basis for inference in deconvolution problems, the effects of the errors factorise out in a way that is easily exploited empirically. This property is the consequence of elementary addition formulae for sine and cosine functions, and is not readily available...

We suggest a completely empirical approach to the construction of confidence bands for hazard functions, based on smoothing the Nelsen-Aalen estimator. In particular, we introduce a local bandwidth-choice method. Our approach uses empirical information about both the survival rate and the...

We suggest a nonparametric approach to making inference about the structure of distributions in a potentially infinite-dimensional space, for example a function space, and displaying information about that structure. It is suggested that the simplest way of presenting the structure is through...