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Testing one hypothesis multiple times

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In applied settings, hypothesis testing when a nuisance parameter is identifiable only under the alternative often reduces to a problem of testing one hypothesis multiple times (TOHM). Specifically, a fine discretization of the space of the nonidentifiable parameter is specified, and the null hypothesis is tested against a set of sub-alternative hypotheses, one for each point of the discretization. The resulting sub-test statistics are then combined to obtain a global p-value. We propose a computationally efficient inferential tool to perform TOHM under stringent significance requirements, such as those typically required in the physical sciences, (e.g., a p-value < 10-7). The resulting procedure leads to a generalized approach to performing inferences under nonstandard conditions, including non-nested model comparisons.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)959-979
Number of pages21
JournalStatistica Sinica
Volume31
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors thank two anonymous referees and the Associate Editor for their constructive feedback. SA and DvD also thank Jan Conrad for the valuable discussion on the physics problems that motivated this work, and Brandon Anderson, who provided the Fermi-LAT data sets used in the analyses. Finally the authors acknowledge support from the Marie-Skodowska-Curie RISE (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015-691164) Grant provided by the European Commission.

Funding Information:
The authors thank two anonymous referees and the Associate Editor for their constructive feedback. SA and DvD also thank Jan Conrad for the valuable discussion on the physics problems that motivated this work, and Brandon Anderson, who provided the Fermi-LAT data sets used in the analyses. Finally the authors acknowledge support from the Marie-Skodowska-Curie RISE (H2020- MSCA-RISE-2015-691164) Grant provided by the European Commission.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Institute of Statistical Science. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Bump hunting
  • Multiple hypothesis testing
  • Non-identifiability in hypothesis testing
  • Non-nested models comparison

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