Thursday, October 31 2013, 3:30pm Cao Auburn University We consider nonparametric estimation of the covariance function for dense functional data using computationally efficient tensor product B-splines. We develop both local and global asymptotic distributions for the proposed estimator, and show that our estimator is as efficient as an "oracle" estimator where the true mean function is known. Simultaneous confidence envelopes are developed based on asymptotic theory to quantify the variability in the covariance estimator and to make global inferences on the true covariance. Monte Carlo simulation experiments provide strong evidence that corroborates the asymptotic theory. Two real data examples on the near infrared spectroscopy data and speech recognition data are also provided to illustrate the proposed method. This Colloquium is sponsored jointly by the University of Georgia Department of Statistics and the University of Georgia Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
