Haar density estimator 2026-10-14
A Haar density estimator estimates the Haar scaling function coefficients by sample averages. It is exactly the histogram with cells of width . Its expectation is the Haar projection of the density. If the density has bounded derivative and is bounded by , its pointwise expected absolute error is at most : the first term is the Haar projection error for a Lipschitz function, and the second follows from the variance of a cell count and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Choosing gives error while preserving nonnegativity and integral one.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 33 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let be the scaling function and an orthonormal wavelet, with and . For , the wavelet series at a coarse level isThe series converges in the L2 norm. Its coarse part captures broad variation and successive wavelet levels add finer detail. Truncating at levels produces the orthogonal projection onto ; Parseval identity makes its squared approximation error the sum of the omitted squared coefficients. Merely square-integrable functions need not have pointwise convergence.
For the Haar wavelet, use the cell convention and let be the unique such interval containing . The Haar scaling functions are , so the Haar projection isFor a merely locally integrable function this cell-average formula remains defined, even if a global orthogonal projection is unavailable. If , the mean value theorem gives Lipschitz continuity and, since on the cell,Thus the requested bound holds with , by the Haar projection error for a Lipschitz function.
To estimate a density, replace each scaling or wavelet coefficient or by the sample average of that basis function. The finite-resolution Haar density estimator is thereforeIt is the histogram on the dyadic cells, is nonnegative, and integrates to one. Its expectation is . A density with bounded derivative is bounded: the Lipschitz density height bound gives by integrating the triangular lower envelope . The case cannot be a probability density on the whole real line. Hence .
The cell probability is . The sample count has a binomial distribution, soThe Cauchy-Schwarz inequality bounds the mean centered absolute deviation by the square root of this variance. Adding the projection bias givesChoose , so . The two terms have the same order, andThis is a bias-variance tradeoff: refining the cells decreases the averaging bias but increases the sampling variance.
Haar projections of the standard normal density at three resolutions
. Details. The Haar projection averages this normal distribution density on each cell; the finer cells follow its variation more closely. A Haar density estimator replaces these exact cell probabilities by empirical frequencies and therefore also introduces sampling noise.
