# Superefficiency

If you have $$X_1,\ldots,X_n$$ independent from an $$N(\mu,1)$$ distribution you don’t have to think too hard to work out that $$\bar X_n$$, the sample mean, is the right estimator of $$\mu$$ (unless you have quite detailed prior knowledge). As people who have taken an advanced course in mathematical statistics will know, there is a famous estimator that appears to do better.

Hodges’ estimator is given by $$H_n=\bar X_n$$ if $$|\bar X_n|>n^{-1/4}$$, and $$H_n=0$$ if $$|\bar X_n|\leq n^{-1/4}$$. If $$\mu\neq 0$$, $$H_n=\bar X_n$$ for all large enough $$n$$, so $\sqrt{n}(H_n-\mu)\stackrel{d}{\to}N(0,1)$ just as for $$\bar X_n$$. On the other hand, if $$\mu=0$$$\sqrt{n}(H_n-\mu)\stackrel{p}{\to}0.$ $$H_n$$ is asymptotically better than $$\bar X_n$$ for $$\mu=0$$ and asymptotically as good for any other value of $$\mu$$. Of course there’s something wrong with it: it sucks for $$n^{-1/2}\ll\mu<n^{-1/4}$$. Here’s its mean squared error:

Even Wikipedia knows this much. What I recently got around to doing was extending this to an estimator that’s asymptotically superior to $$\bar X_n$$ on a dense set. This isn’t new – Le Cam did it in his PhD thesis. It may even be the same as Le Cam’s construction (which isn’t online, as far as I can tell). [Actually, Le Cam’s construction is a draft exercise in a draft chapter for David Pollard’s long-awaited ‘Asymptopia’. And it is basically my one, so it’s quite likely that as a Pollard fan I got at least the idea from there.]

First, instead of just setting the estimate to zero when it’s close enough to zero, we can set it to the nearest integer when it’s close enough to an integer.  Define $$\tilde H_n=i$$ if $$|\bar X_n-i|<0.5n^{-1/4}$$, with $$\tilde H_n=\bar X_n$$ otherwise.

If $$n$$ is large enough, we can shrink to multiples of 1/2. For example, using the same threshold for closeness, if $$n>16$$ there is at most one multiple of 1/2 within $$0.5n^{-1/4}$$. If $$n>256$$ there is at most one multiple of 1/4 within that range.

Define $$H_{n,k}=2^{-k}i$$ if $$|x-2^{-k}i|< 0.5n^{-1/4}$$ and $$H_{n,k}=\bar X_n$$ otherwise. This is well-defined if $$n>2^{4k}$$. For any fixed $$k$$, $$\tilde H_{n,k}$$ satisfies $\sqrt{n}(H_n-\mu)\stackrel{p}{\to}0$ if $$\mu$$ is a multiple of $$2^{-k}$$ and $\sqrt{n}(H_n-\mu)\stackrel{d}{\to}N(0,1)$ otherwise.

The obvious thing to do now is to let $$k$$ increase slowly with $$n$$. This doesn’t work. Consider a value for $$\mu$$ whose binary expansion has infinitely many 1s, but with increasingly many zeroes between them. Whatever your rule for $$k(n)$$ there will be values of this type that are close enough to multiples of $$2^{-k(n)}$$ to get pulled to the wrong value infinitely often as $$n$$ increases. $$H_{n,k(n)}$$ will be asymptotically superior to $$\bar X_n$$ on a dense set, but it will be asymptotically inferior on another dense set, violating the rules of the game.

What we can do is pick $$k$$ at random. The efficiency gain isn’t 100% as it was for fixed $$k$$, but it’s still there.

Let $$K$$ be a random variable with probability mass function $$p(k)$$, independent of the $$X$$s.  The distribution of $$H_{n,K}$$ conditional on $$K=k$$ is the distribution of $$H_{n,k}$$. If $$p(k)>0$$ for all $$k$$, the probability  of seeing $$K=k$$ infinitely often is 1, so we can look the limiting distribution of $$\sqrt{n}(H_{n,K}-\mu)$$ along subsequences with $$K=k$$. This limiting distribution is a point mass at zero  if $$2^k\mu$$ is an integer, and $$N(0,1)$$ otherwise. So, $\sqrt{n}(H_{n,K}-\mu)\stackrel{d}{\to}q_k\delta_0+(1-q_k)N(0,1)$ where $q_k=\sum_k p_k I(2^k\mu\textrm{ is an integer})$

For a dense set of real numbers, and in particular for all numbers representable in binary floating point, $$H_{n,K}$$ has greater asymptotic efficiency than the efficient estimator $$\bar X_n.$$  The disadvantage of this randomised construction is that working out the finite-sample MSE is just horrible to think about.

The other interesting thing to think about is why the ‘overflow’ heuristic doesn’t work. Why doesn’t superefficiency for all fixed $$k$$ translate into superefficiency for sufficiently-slowly increasing $$k(n)$$? As a heuristic, this sort of thing has been around since the early days of analysis, but it’s more than that: the field of non-standard analysis is basically about making it rigorous.

My guess is that $$H_{n,k}$$ for infinite $$n$$ is close to the superefficient distribution on the dense set only for ‘large enough’ infinite $$k$$, and close to $$N(0,1)$$ off the dense set only for ‘small enough’ infinite $$k$$. The failure of the heuristic is similar to the failure in Cauchy’s invalid proof that a convergent sequence of continuous functinons has a continuous limit, the proof into which later analysis retconned the concepts of ‘uniform convergence’ and ‘equicontinuity’.