Put and . The density Hölder class consists of nonnegative functions integrating to one, with derivatives through order , such that
This is the density version of the Hölder class. A kernel for density estimation is an integrable function with . It has order when for and .
Choose a bounded kernel of order at least with , and use the kernel density estimator
Taylor's theorem at and the vanishing kernel moments cancel every polynomial term below the remainder. Hence, for a constant depending only on and the fixed kernel,
We also need a uniform density bound. The standard Hölder interpolation argument combines nonnegativity, , and the Hölder constraint to give
Indeed, near a point where is close to its maximum , Taylor's theorem and the derivative bounds implied by the Hölder constraint keep of order on an interval of length comparable to ; integrating over that interval gives .
Using this bound and independence,
Thus
Choose
Both terms then have order . Since the infimum over all measurable estimators is no larger than the risk of this particular estimator,
This is the pointwise minimax rate for Hölder density estimation upper bound.