Tuning parameter selection for penalized likelihood estimation of inverse covariance matrix

09/04/2009

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by   Xin Gao, et al.

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In a Gaussian graphical model, the conditional independence between two variables are characterized by the corresponding zero entries in the inverse covariance matrix. Maximum likelihood method using the smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD) penalty (Fan and Li, 2001) and the adaptive LASSO penalty (Zou, 2006) have been proposed in literature. In this article, we establish the result that using Bayesian information criterion (BIC) to select the tuning parameter in penalized likelihood estimation with both types of penalties can lead to consistent graphical model selection. We compare the empirical performance of BIC with cross validation method and demonstrate the advantageous performance of BIC criterion for tuning parameter selection through simulation studies.