RANK: Large-Scale Inference With Graphical Nonlinear Knockoffs

AbstractPower and reproducibility are key to enabling refined scientific discoveries in contemporary big data applications with general high-dimensional nonlinear models. In this article, we provide theoretical foundations on the power and robustness for the model-X knockoffs procedure introduced recently in Candes, Fan, Janson and Lv in high-dimensional setting when the covariate distribution is characterized by Gaussian graphical model. We establish that under mild regularity conditions, the power of the oracle knockoffs procedure with known covariate distribution in high-dimensional linear models is asymptotically one as sample size goes to infinity. When moving away from the ideal case, we suggest the modified model-X knockoffs method called graphical nonlinear knockoffs (RANK) to accommodate the unknown covariate distribution. We provide theoretical justifications on the robustness of our modified procedure by showing that the false discovery rate (FDR) is asymptotically controlled at the target leve...