Pointwise convergence of purely random partition estimators: from random trees to prototype rules

Abstract

We study pointwise convergence rates of purely random partition estimators in nonparametric regression, where the partition -- into hyper-rectangles by purely random trees, or into Voronoi cells by prototype rules -- is built independently of the responses. Our analysis rests on a single geometric criterion, shape regularity, relating the diameter of a cell to its volume, which is shown by Bettinger, Portier and Saumard (2026) to be necessary and sufficient, up to logarithmic factors, for achieving the minimax rate $n^{-1/(d+2)}$. We show that centered and uniform trees are not shape-regular -- their cells' aspect ratio grows exponentially with the number of splits with probability bounded away from zero -- explaining the super-logarithmic corrections in their error bounds, whereas Mondrian trees, whose splits adapt to the current cell geometry, are shape-regular in probability and attain the minimax rate. The same analysis applied to Voronoi partitions yields the first pointwise concentration bounds for Proto-NN, resolving an open problem of Györfi and Weiss (2021), and shows that OptiNet achieves the minimax rate with markedly better success probability -- even almost surely, for a suitable choice of parameters -- thanks to its $η$-net construction.