[Math] one dimensional sufficient statistic

statistical-inferencestatistics

$X_1,X_2,…,X_n$ are iid random variables having pdf
$$f_X(x|\theta) = (\theta + 1)\theta x(1-x)^{\theta-1}I_{(0,1)}(x)$$

Give a one-dimensional sufficient statistic.

I started to solve this by factoring $\theta$ away from x as much as possible and ended up with

$$f(x|\theta) = x/(1-x) I_{(0,1)}(x) \theta(\theta + 1)(1-x)^{\theta}$$

Is this the right way to go about this?

Best Answer

Your first issue is that you need to perform the factorization on the joint density of the sample. What you did instead was look at the density of a single observation.

So, your joint density of the sample $\boldsymbol x = (x_1, \ldots, x_n)$ comprising independent and identically distributed observations is simply the product of the densities of each observation: $$f(\boldsymbol x \mid \theta) = \prod_{i=1}^n f(x_i \mid \theta) = \prod_{i=1}^n (\theta+1)\theta x_i (1 - x_i)^{\theta - 1} \mathbb 1 (0 < x_i < 1).$$ Here I have used a slightly different notation for the indicator function, but its meaning should be clear. Now, our goal is to write this in the form $$f(\boldsymbol x \mid \theta) = h(\boldsymbol x) g(\boldsymbol T(\boldsymbol x) \mid \theta),$$ where $\boldsymbol T : \mathbb R^n \to \mathbb R^m$ is some function of the sample that satisfies the following:

  1. $m$ is a positive integer satisfying $m \le n$ and represents the reduction in dimension of the sufficient statistic. In this case we are told to find $\boldsymbol T$ such that $m = 1$; i.e., $\boldsymbol T = T$, a function that maps a vector of dimension $n$ to a scalar.
  2. $T$ does not depend on the parameter $\theta$, only on $\boldsymbol x$ and $n$.

Further, we require that $g$ depend on $\boldsymbol x$ only through $T$; that is to say, if we were given only $T(\boldsymbol x)$ instead of $\boldsymbol x$ itself, we could still compute $g$.

So, with this in mind, we write $$\begin{align*} f(\boldsymbol x \mid \theta) &= (\theta+1)^n \theta^n \prod_{i=1}^n x_i \biggl(\prod_{i=1}^n (1 - x_i)\biggr)^{\theta-1} \prod_{i=1}^n \mathbb 1 (0 < x_i < 1) \\ &= \underbrace{\biggl( \prod_{i=1}^n x_i \biggr) \mathbb 1 (0 < x_{(1)} \le x_{(n)} < 1)}_{h(\boldsymbol x)} \underbrace{(\theta+1)^n \theta^n \biggl(\underbrace{\prod_{i=1}^n (1 - x_i)}_{T(\boldsymbol x)}\biggr)^{\theta-1}}_{g(T(\boldsymbol x) \mid \theta)}. \end{align*}$$ A few important observations: first, $h$ contains the indicator function as well as the product $\prod_{i=1}^n x_i$. You cannot ignore the indicator, because the joint density has finite support on $(0,1)^n$.

Second, the choice of $T$ is not unique: you could also have chosen, for example, $$T(\boldsymbol x) = \frac{1}{n} \log \prod_{i=1}^n (1 - x_i) = \frac{1}{n} \sum_{i=1}^n \log (1 - x_i),$$ which is the mean of a suitably log-transformed sample. This is because the logarithm is one-to-one on the support of $X$.

Third, $h$ and $g$ could also have been chosen differently--these are not necessarily unique. What matters is that we must make the choice such that $g$ can be computed if all we know is $\theta$ and $T(\boldsymbol x)$.

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