## The Annals of Statistics

### Empirical risk minimization for heavy-tailed losses

#### Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss empirical risk minimization when the losses are not necessarily bounded and may have a distribution with heavy tails. In such situations, usual empirical averages may fail to provide reliable estimates and empirical risk minimization may provide large excess risk. However, some robust mean estimators proposed in the literature may be used to replace empirical means. In this paper, we investigate empirical risk minimization based on a robust estimate proposed by Catoni. We develop performance bounds based on chaining arguments tailored to Catoni’s mean estimator.

#### Article information

Source
Ann. Statist., Volume 43, Number 6 (2015), 2507-2536.

Dates
Revised: May 2015
First available in Project Euclid: 7 October 2015

https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aos/1444222083

Digital Object Identifier
doi:10.1214/15-AOS1350

Mathematical Reviews number (MathSciNet)
MR3405602

Zentralblatt MATH identifier
1326.62066

Subjects
Primary: 62F35: Robustness and adaptive procedures
Secondary: 62F12: Asymptotic properties of estimators

#### Citation

Brownlees, Christian; Joly, Emilien; Lugosi, Gábor. Empirical risk minimization for heavy-tailed losses. Ann. Statist. 43 (2015), no. 6, 2507--2536. doi:10.1214/15-AOS1350. https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aos/1444222083

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