Optimal exponential bounds for aggregation of density estimators

Abstract: We consider the problem of model selection type aggregation in the context of density estimation. We first show that empirical risk minimization is sub-optimal for this problem and it shares this property with the exponential weights aggregate, empirical risk minimization over the convex hull of the dictionary functions, and all selectors. Using a penalty inspired by recent works on the $Q$-aggregation procedure, we derive a sharp oracle inequality in deviation under a simple boundedness assumption and we show that the rate is optimal in a minimax sense. Unlike the procedures based on exponential weights, this estimator is fully adaptive under the uniform prior. In particular, its construction does not rely on the sup-norm of the unknown density. By providing lower bounds with exponential tails, we show that the deviation term appearing in the sharp oracle inequalities cannot be improved.