Adaptive test for large covariance matrices with missing observations

Abstract

We observe $n$ independent $p-$dimensional Gaussian vectors with missing coordinates, that is each value (which is assumed standardized) is observed with probability $a>0$. We investigate the problem of minimax nonparametric testing that the high-dimensional covariance matrix $\Sigma$ of the underlying Gaussian distribution is the identity matrix, using these partially observed vectors. Here, $n$ and $p$ tend to infinity and $a>0$ tends to 0, asymptotically. We assume that $\Sigma$ belongs to a Sobolev-type ellipsoid with parameter $\alpha >0$. When $\alpha$ is known, we give asymptotically minimax consistent test procedure and find the minimax separation rates $\tilde \varphi_{n,p}= (a^2n \sqrt{p})^{- \frac{2 \alpha}{4 \alpha +1}}$, under some additional constraints on $n,\, p$ and $a$. We show that, in the particular case of Toeplitz covariance matrices,the minimax separation rates are faster, $\tilde \phi_{n,p}= (a^2n p)^{- \frac{2 \alpha}{4 \alpha +1}}$. We note how the "missingness" parameter $a$ deteriorates the rates with respect to the case of fully observed vectors ($a=1$). We also propose adaptive test procedures, that is free of the parameter $\alpha$ in some interval, and show that the loss of rate is $(\ln \ln (a^2 n\sqrt{p}))^{\alpha/(4 \alpha +1)}$ and $(\ln \ln (a^2 n p))^{\alpha/(4 \alpha +1)}$ for Toeplitz covariance matrices, respectively.