Asymptotic Confidence Regions for Density Ridges

Abstract: We develop large sample theory including nonparametric confidence regions for $r$-dimensional ridges of probability density functions on $\mathbb{R}^d$, where $1\leq r<d$. We view ridges as the intersections of level sets of some special functions. The vertical variation of the plug-in kernel estimators for these functions constrained on the ridges is used as the measure of maximal deviation for ridge estimation. Our confidence regions for the ridges are determined by the asymptotic distribution of this maximal deviation, which is established by utilizing the extreme value distribution of nonstationary $\chi$-fields indexed by manifolds.