Change-point detection 2026-10-05
Change-point detection estimates locations where a sequence's distribution or mean changes. A piecewise-constant mean has a sparse vector of adjacent differences; one-dimensional total variation denoising exploits this sparsity without fixing the number of changes in advance.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 205 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Estimate the signal by one-dimensional total variation denoising, which penalizes adjacent differences rather than the constant level:This is a fused Lasso objective. Its L1 norm penalty makes many adjacent differences exactly zero, producing a piecewise-constant fit. For change-point detection, estimate the locations by . The tuning parameter controls the strength of the penalty; it can be chosen, for example, using a validation criterion appropriate to the noise model.
For a general family of elementary nulls , the closed testing procedure forms every nonempty intersection and gives it a local test of level . Reject precisely when all intersections with are locally rejected. This gives strong control of the familywise error rate: let be the indices of the true elementary nulls. If is empty there is no false rejection. Otherwise, rejecting any with requires rejection of the true intersection . Its local test has rejection probability at most , henceThis proof of closed-testing control of the familywise error rate needs no independence of the tests.
For the interval procedure, a true tested interval is contained in one maximal constant block . If , the intervals over which takes its maximum are a subset of those used for , so . Therefore rejection of a true forces rejection of its containing block. Conversely, a rejected block is itself a rejected true null.
There is a small indexing issue in the PDF: its testing family excludes singleton intervals, while may contain singleton blocks. Put . Every true tested interval lies in one of these blocks, so the exact statement, using only hypotheses defined in the paper, isSingleton blocks contain no eligible tested interval and can be ignored. Equivalently, one may define their nulls as never rejected.
For each , the term occurs in the maximum defining , giving . A valid p-value is a super-uniform random variable under its null, so for ,The union bound and disjointness of the constant blocks now giveThis establishes weighted interval testing for a piecewise-constant mean even when the interval p-values are dependent. Values do not affect rejection at levels at most one.