An Application of Chung's Lemma to the Kiefer-Wolfowitz Stochastic Approximation Procedure

Cyrus Derman

The Annals of Mathematical Statistics · 1956 · 31 citations · 0 references

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Abstract

Let $M(x)$ be a strictly increasing regression function for $x < \theta$, and strictly decreasing regression function for $x > \theta$. Under conditions 1, 2, and 3 given below, the stochastic approximation procedure proposed by Kiefer and Wolfowitz [3] is shown to converge stochastically to $\theta$. Under the additional conditions 4, 5, 6 given below, the procedure is shown to converge in distribution to the normal distribution. Our method is the one used by Chung [2].