title: A SIGNIFICANCE TEST FOR THE LASSO.
abstract: In the sparse linear regression setting, we consider testing the significance of the predictor variable that enters the current lasso model, in the sequence of models visited along the lasso solution path. We propose a simple test statistic based on lasso fitted values, called thecovariance test statistic, and show that when the true model is linear, this statistic has an Exp(1) asymptotic distribution under the null hypothesis (the null being that all truly active variables are contained in the current lasso model). Our proof of this result for the special case of the first predictor to enter the model (i.e., testing for a single significant predictor variable against the global null) requires only weak assumptions on the predictor matrixX. On the other hand, our proof for a general step in the lasso path places further technical assumptions onXand the generative model, but still allows for the important high-dimensional casep>n, and does not necessarily require that the current lasso model achieves perfect recovery of the truly active variables. Of course, for testing the significance of an additional variable between two nested linear models, one typically uses the chi-squared test, comparing the drop in residual sum of squares (RSS) to a [Formula: see text] distribution. But when this additional variable is not fixed, and has been chosen adaptively or greedily, this test is no longer appropriate: adaptivity makes the drop in RSS stochastically much larger than [Formula: see text] under the null hypothesis. Our analysis explicitly accounts for adaptivity, as it must, since the lasso builds an adaptive sequence of linear models as the tuning parameter λ decreases. In this analysis, shrinkage plays a key role: though additional variables are chosen adaptively, the coefficients of lasso active variables are shrunken due to the [Formula: see text] penalty. Therefore, the test statistic (which is based on lasso fitted values) is in a sense balanced by these two opposing properties-adaptivity and shrinkage-and its null distribution is tractable and asymptotically Exp(1).
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lockhart
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: Departments of Statistics and Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon University, 229B Baker Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
authors.forename: Ryan J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Tibshirani
authors.affiliation: Department of Health, Research & Policy, Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tibshirani
keywords: Lasso; least angle regression; p-value; significance test