Resource Allocation for Statistical Estimation

8 years 23 days ago

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Statistical estimation in many contemporary settings involves the acquisition, analysis, and aggregation of datasets from multiple sources, which can have signiﬁcant diﬀerences in character and in value. Due to these variations, the eﬀectiveness of employing a given resource – e.g., a sensing device or computing power – for gathering or processing data from a particular source depends on the nature of that source. As a result, the appropriate division and assignment of a collection of resources to a set of data sources can substantially impact the overall performance of an inferential strategy. In this expository article, we adopt a general view of the notion of a resource and its eﬀect on the quality of a data source, and we describe a framework for the allocation of a given set of resources to a collection of sources in order to optimize a speciﬁed metric of statistical eﬃciency. We discuss several stylized examples involving inferential tasks such as parameter estim...

Quentin Berthet, Venkat Chandrasekaran

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