Comprehensive study of variational Bayes classification for dense deep neural networks

Abstract

Although Bayesian deep neural network models are ubiquitous in classification problems; their Markov Chain Monte Carlo based implementation suffers from high computational cost, limiting the use of this powerful technique in large-scale studies. Variational Bayes (VB) has emerged as a competitive alternative to overcome some of these computational issues. This paper focuses on the variational Bayesian deep neural network estimation methodology and discusses the related statistical theory and algorithmic implementations in the context of classification. For a dense deep neural network-based classification, the paper compares and contrasts the true posterior’s consistency and contraction rates and the corresponding variational posterior. Based on the complexity of the deep neural network (DNN), this paper provides an assessment of the loss in classification accuracy due to VB’s use and guidelines on the characterization of the prior distributions and the variational family. The difficulty of the numerical optimization for obtaining the variational Bayes solution has also been quantified as a function of the complexity of the DNN. The development is motivated by an important biomedical engineering application, namely building predictive tools for the transition from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease. The predictors are multi-modal and may involve complex interactive relations.

Appendices

Appendix A Algorithms of variational implementation.

Algorithm 3

BBVI-RMS

Algorithm 4

BBVI-CV-RMS

With q and p as in (12) and (10) respectively,

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)= & {} \sum _{j=1}^{K_n} \left( \log \frac{\zeta _{jn}}{s_{jn}}+\frac{s_{jn}^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}+\frac{(m_{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}-\frac{1}{2}\right) \\ \nabla _{m_{jn}}d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)= & {} \frac{(m_{jn}-\mu _{jn})}{2\zeta _{jn}^2} \\ \nabla _{s_{jn}}d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)= & {} -\frac{1}{s_{jn}}+\frac{s_{jn}}{\zeta _{jn}^2}\\ \nabla _{m_{jn}}\mathcal {L}_{\mathcal {V}_q}= & {} E_{q(.|\mathcal {V}_q)}\left( \left( \frac{\theta _{jn}-m_{jn}}{s_{jn}^2}\right) \log L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})\right) \\ \nabla _{s_{jn}}\mathcal {L}_{\mathcal {V}_q}= & {} E_{q(.|\mathcal {V}_q)}\\{} & {} \left( \left( \frac{(\theta _{jn}-m_{jn})^2}{s_{jn}^3}-\frac{1}{s_{jn}}\right) \log L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})\right) \end{aligned}$$

Appendix B Preliminaries

Definition 1

$MVN(\varvec{\mu },\varvec{\Sigma })$ is used to denote the density function of multivariate normal distribution with mean $\varvec{\mu }$ and variance covariance matrix $\varvec{\Sigma }$.

Definition 2

For a vector $\varvec{\alpha }$ and a function g,

• 1. $||\varvec{\alpha }||_1=\sum _i |\alpha _i|$, $||\varvec{\alpha }||_2=\sqrt{\sum _i \alpha _i^2}$, $||\varvec{\alpha }||_\infty =\max _i |\alpha _i|$.

• 2. $||g||_1=\int _{\varvec{x}\in \chi } |g(\varvec{x})|d\varvec{x}$, $||g||_2=\sqrt{\int _{\varvec{x}\in \chi } g(\varvec{x})^2d\varvec{x}}$, $||g||_\infty =\sup _{\varvec{x}\in \chi } |g(\varvec{x})|$

Definition 3

(Bracketing number and entropy) For any two functions l and u, define the bracket [l, u] as the set of all functions f such that $l\le f\le u$ pointwise. Let ||.|| be a metric. Define an $\varepsilon -$bracket as a bracket with $||u-l||\le \varepsilon$. Define the bracketing number of a set of functions $\mathcal {F}^*$ as the minimum number of $\varepsilon -$brackets needed to cover $\mathcal {F}^*$, and denote it by $N_{[]}(\varepsilon ,\mathcal {F}^*,||.||)$. Finally, the Hellinger bracketing entropy, denoted by $H_{[]}(\varepsilon ,\mathcal {F}^*,||.||)$, is the natural logarithm of the bracketing number (Pollard 1990).

Definition 4

(Covering number and entropy) Let (V, ||.||) be a normed space, and $\mathcal {F} \subset V$. $\{V_1,\ldots , V_n \}$ is an $\varepsilon -$covering of $\mathcal {F}$ if $\mathcal {F} \subset \cup _{i=1}^N B(V_i,\varepsilon )$, or equivalently, $\forall$ $\theta \in \mathcal {F}$, $\exists$ i such that $||\theta -V_i||<\varepsilon$. The covering number of $\mathcal {F}$ denoted by $N(\varepsilon ,\mathcal {F},||.||)=\min \{n: \exists \, \varepsilon -\text { covering over }\mathcal {F}\text { of size } n \}$. Finally, the Hellinger covering entropy, denoted by $H(\varepsilon , \mathcal {F},||.||)$, is the natural logarithm of the covering number (Pollard 1990).

Lemma 5 gives a bound on the integral of the Hellinger entropy. Lemma 6 shows that the prior gives negligible probability outside the sieve $\mathcal {F}_n$. Lemma 7 shows that the prior if prior gives sufficient mass on the KL neighborhoods of the true density, the marginal density is well bounded. Lemma 8 shows that if parameters of two neural networks are close then so are the neural networks themselves. Lemmas 5, 6, 7 and 8 will serve as important tools towards the proof of consistency of the true posterior.

Lemma 5

With $H_{[]}(u,\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n,||.||_2)$ as in Definition 3, for $H_{[]}(u,\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n,||.||_2)\le K_n\log (M_n/u)$,

$$\begin{aligned} \int _0^{\varepsilon }H_{[]}(u,\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n,||.||_2)du\lesssim \varepsilon \sqrt{K_n(\log M_n-\log \varepsilon )} \end{aligned}$$

Proof

See proof of lemma 7.14 in Bhattacharya and Maiti (2021). $\square$

Lemma 6

Suppose, $\int _{\mathcal {F}_n^c} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le e^{-n\varepsilon }, n \rightarrow \infty$ for any $\varepsilon >0$. Then, for every $\tilde{\varepsilon }<\varepsilon$.

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {F}_n^c}\frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\ge e^{-n\tilde{\varepsilon } }\right) \le e^{-n(\varepsilon -\tilde{\varepsilon })} \end{aligned}$$

Proof

See proof of lemma 7.16 in Bhattacharya and Maiti (2021). $\square$

Lemma 7

Suppose $\mathcal {N}_\varepsilon =\{\varvec{\theta }_{n}: d_{\text {KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}})<\varepsilon \}$ and $\int _{\mathcal {N}_\varepsilon } p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\ge e^{-n\varepsilon }, n\rightarrow \infty$ then for any $\nu >0$,

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| \ge n \nu \right) \le \frac{2\varepsilon }{\nu } \end{aligned}$$

Proof

See proof of lemma 7.12 in Bhattacharya and Maiti (2021). $\square$

Lemma 8

Let $\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*}(\varvec{x})=\varvec{b}_L^*+\varvec{A}_L^* \psi (\varvec{b}_{L-1}^*+\varvec{A}_{L-1}^* \psi ( \cdots \psi (\varvec{b}_1^*+\varvec{A}_1^*\psi (\varvec{b}_0^*+\varvec{A}_0^* \varvec{x})))$ be a fixed neural network. Let $\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})=\varvec{b}_L+\varvec{A}_L \psi (\varvec{b}_{L-1}+\varvec{A}_{L-1} \psi ( \cdots \psi (\varvec{b}_1+\varvec{A}_1\psi (\varvec{b}_0+\varvec{A}_0 \varvec{x})))$ be a neural network such that

$$|\theta _{jn}-\theta ^*_{jn}|\le \frac{\varepsilon }{\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n}}$$

where $\tilde{k}_{vn}=k_{vn}+1$. Then,

$$\int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} |\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})- \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}(\varvec{x})|dx\le \varepsilon $$

Proof

In the proof, we suppress the dependence on n. Define the projection $P_v$ as $P_V \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})=\varvec{b}_{V-1}+\varvec{A}_{V-1} \psi ( \cdots \psi (\varvec{b}_1+\varvec{A}_1\psi (\varvec{b}_0+\varvec{A}_0\varvec{x})))$. We claim that

$$\begin{aligned} |P_V \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})[s]-P_V \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x})[s]|\le \frac{\varepsilon \sum _{v=0}^V \tilde{k}_v\prod _{v'=v+1}^L a^*_{v'}}{\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_v\prod _{v'=v+1}^L a^*_{v'}}\nonumber \\ \end{aligned}$$

(B2)

We prove this by induction. Let $v=1$ as follows. Let $\tilde{\varepsilon }=\varepsilon /\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_v\prod _{v'=v+1}^L a^*_{v'}$, then

$$\begin{aligned}&|P_1 \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})[s]-P_1 \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x})[s]|\\&\quad \le |\varvec{b}_{1}-\varvec{b}_{1}^*[s]|+|{\varvec{A}_1[s]}^\top \psi (\varvec{b}_0+\varvec{A}_0\varvec{x})\\&\qquad -{\varvec{A}_1^*[s]}^\top \psi (\varvec{b}_0^*+\varvec{A}_0^*\varvec{x})|\\&\quad \le \tilde{\varepsilon }+||\varvec{A}_1[s] -\varvec{A}_1^*[s]||_1\\&\qquad +\sum _{s'=0}^{k_1} |\varvec{A}_{1}^*[s][s'](\psi (\varvec{b}_{0}[s]+\varvec{A}_{0}[s]^\top \varvec{x})\\&\qquad -\psi (\varvec{b}_{0}^*[s]+{\varvec{A}_{0}^*[s]}^\top \varvec{x}))|\\&\quad =\tilde{\varepsilon }+k_{1}\tilde{\varepsilon }+\tilde{\varepsilon }\sum _{s'=0}^{k_{1}}|\varvec{A}_{1}^*[s][s']|(k_{0}+1)\\&\quad =\tilde{\varepsilon }(1+k_1+a^*_{1}(p_n+1))\le \tilde{\varepsilon } (\tilde{k}_1+a^*_{1} \tilde{k}_0) \end{aligned}$$

where the second line holds since $\psi (u)\le 1$ and the third step is shown next. Let $u=-\varvec{b}_{0}[s]-\varvec{A}_{0}[s]^\top \varvec{x}$ and $u_\delta =\varvec{b}_{0}[s]+\varvec{A}_{0}[s]^\top \varvec{x}-\varvec{b}_{0}^*[s]+{\varvec{A}_{0}^*[s]}^\top \varvec{x}$, then for $|u_\delta |<1$

$$\begin{aligned} |\psi (u)-\psi (u+u_\delta )|&=\left| \frac{e^{u+u_\delta }-e^{u}}{(1+e^{u+u_\delta })(1+e^{u})}\right| \nonumber \\&\le \left| \frac{e^u(e^{u_\delta }-1)}{(1+e^u)(1+e^{u+u_\delta })}\right| \nonumber \\&\le \frac{e^u |e^{u_\delta }-1|}{(1+e^u)(1+e^{u-1})}\le |u_\delta | \end{aligned}$$

(B3)

since $e^u/((1+e^u)(1+e^{u-1}))\le 1/2$ and $|e^{u_\delta }-1|\le 2|u_\delta |$ for $|u_\delta |<1$. Now, $|u_\delta |=|\varvec{b}_{0}[s] -\varvec{b}_{0}^*[s]|+\sum _{s'=0}^{p_n} |\varvec{A}_0[s][s']-\varvec{A}_0^*[s][s']| \le (p_n+1)\tilde{\varepsilon }<1$.

Suppose the result hold for $V-1$, we show the result for V as follows:

$$\begin{aligned}&|P_V \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})[s]-P_V \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x})[s]|\\&\quad \le |\varvec{b}_{V}[s]-\varvec{b}_{V}^*[s]|+|{\varvec{A}_{V}[s]}^\top \psi (P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x}))\\&\qquad -{\varvec{A}_{V}^*[s]}^\top \psi (P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x}))|\\&\quad \le \tilde{\varepsilon }+||\varvec{A}_{V}[s] -{\varvec{A}_{V}^*[s]}^\top ||_1\\&\qquad +\sum _{s'=0}^{k_V} |\varvec{A}_{V}^*[s][s'](\psi (P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})[s])\\&\qquad -\psi (P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x})[s]))|\\&\quad \le \tilde{\varepsilon }+||\varvec{A}_{V}[s] -{\varvec{A}_{V}^*[s]}^\top ||_1\\&\qquad +\sum _{s'=0}^{k_V} |\varvec{A}_{V}^*[s][s'](P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})[s])-\psi (P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x})[s])| \end{aligned}$$

where the second step follows since $\psi (u)\le 1$ and the third step follows by relation (B3) provided $|P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})[s]-P_{V-1} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x})[s]|\le 1$. But this holds using relation (B2) with $v=V-1$.

Thus proceeding further we get

$$\begin{aligned}&|P_V \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})[s]-P_V \eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*}(\varvec{x})[s]|\\&\quad \le \tilde{\varepsilon } (1+k_{V})+2\tilde{\varepsilon }\sum _{s'=0}^{k_{V}}|W_{V}^*[s][s']|\sum _{v=0}^{V-1} \tilde{k}_v \prod _{v'=v+1}^{V-1}a^*_{v'}\\&\quad \le \tilde{\varepsilon }\tilde{k}_v+\tilde{\varepsilon } \sum _{v=0}^{V-1} \tilde{k}_v \prod _{v'=v+1}^V\widetilde{\theta }_v'=\tilde{\varepsilon } \sum _{v=0}^{V} \tilde{k}_{v} \prod _{v'=v+1}^V a^*_{v'} \end{aligned}$$

This completes the proof.

Lemma 9 shows that if the expected KL densities between two densities is close then the expected log-likelihood ratio between the two densities is also well bounded where expectation is taken with respect to the variational member q. Lemma 10 shows that if functions are close then so is the logistic loss between them. Lemmas 8, 9 and 10 together will serve as tools towards establishing that the variational and true posterior are close in the KL-distance. $\square$

Lemma 9

Suppose q satisfies $\int d_{\textrm{KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}) q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\le \varepsilon ,$ then for any $\nu >0$,

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \left| \int q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| \ge n\nu \right) \le \frac{\varepsilon }{\nu } \end{aligned}$$

Proof

See proof of lemma 7.13 in Bhattacharya and Maiti (2021). $\square$

Lemma 10

If $|\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})|\le \varepsilon$, then $|h_{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})|\le 2\varepsilon$ where

$$\begin{aligned} h_{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})= & {} \sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))(\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))\\{} & {} + \log (1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))) -\log (1-\sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))) \end{aligned}$$

Proof

Note that,

$$\begin{aligned} |h_{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})|&\le |\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))| |\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})|\\&\quad +|\log (1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))-\log (1-\sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))|\\&\le |\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})| \\&\quad +\left| \log \left( 1+\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))(e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})-\eta _0(\varvec{x})}-1)\right) \right| \\&\le 2|\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})| \end{aligned}$$

where the second step follows by using $\sigma (x)=e^{x}/(1+e^x) \le 1$ and the proof of the third step is shown below. $\square$

Let $p=\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))$, then $0\le p \le 1$ and $r=\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})-\eta _0(\varvec{x})$, then

$$\begin{aligned}&\left| \log \left( 1+\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))(e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})-\eta _0(\varvec{x})}-1)\right) \right| \\&\quad =\left| \log \left( 1+p(e^r-1)\right) \right| \\&r>0:\hspace{2mm}|\log (1+p(e^r-1))|=\log (1+p(e^r-1))\\&\quad \le \log (1+(e^r-1))=r\\&r<0:\hspace{2mm} |\log (1+p(e^r-1))|=-\log (1+p(e^r-1))\\&\quad \le -\log (1+(e^r-1))=-r \end{aligned}$$

Lemma 11 gives a bound on the first order derivatives of a neural network. Lemma 12 gives a bound on the Hellinger entropy under the sieve $\mathcal {F}_n$. Lemmas 11 and 12 will serve as tools to bound the Hellinger entropy of the functional sieve space $\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n$ based on $\mathcal {F}_n$.

Lemma 11

For $\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})=\varvec{b}_L+\varvec{A}_L \psi (\varvec{b}_{L-1}+\varvec{A}_{L-1} \psi ( \cdots \psi (\varvec{b}_1+\varvec{A}_1\psi (\varvec{b}_0+\varvec{A}_0 \varvec{x})))$,

$$\begin{aligned} \sup _{j=1, \ldots , K_n} \nabla _{\theta _j} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}) \le \prod _{v'=1}^{L_n} a_{v'n} \end{aligned}$$

where $a_{v'n}=\sup _{v=0, \ldots , k_{(v'+1)n}} ||\varvec{A}_{v'}[v]]||_1$.

Proof

We suppress the dependence on n. Let $P_{V}=\varvec{b}_V+\varvec{A}_V\psi (\cdots \varvec{b}_1+\varvec{A}_1\psi (\varvec{b}_0+\varvec{A}_0 \varvec{x})))$. Define $G_{V,V}=\varvec{1}_{k_V+1}$ and for $V=0,\ldots , L$, $V'=0,\ldots , V-1$, let

$$\begin{aligned} G_{V',V}&=\varvec{A}_{V}(\psi '(P_{V-1})\odot \varvec{A}_{V-1}(\psi '(P_{V-2})\odot \cdots \varvec{A}_{V+1}(\psi '(P_{V'})))) \end{aligned}$$

where $\odot$ denotes component wise multiplication.

With $\psi (P_{-1})=\varvec{x}$, we define

$$\begin{aligned} {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} \nabla _{\varvec{b}_{v}} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})&{}=G_{v,L} \varvec{1}_{k_{v+1}} \\ \nabla _{\varvec{A}_{v}} \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})&{}=G_{v,L}\varvec{1}_{k_{v+1}}\psi (P_{v-1})^\top \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

By the above form and the fact that $\psi (u),\psi '(u),|x_i|\le 1$, it can be easily checked by induction $|G_{v,L}|\le \prod _{v'=v+1}^L a_{v'}$ which completes the proof. $\square$

Lemma 12

Let, $\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n=\{\sqrt{\ell }: \ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(y,\varvec{x}), \varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {F}_n\}$ where $\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(y,\varvec{x})$ is given by

$$\begin{aligned} \ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(y,\varvec{x})=\exp \left( y \eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})-\log \left( 1+e^{ \eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})}\right) \right) \end{aligned}$$

(B4)

and $\mathcal {F}_n$ is given by

$$\begin{aligned} \mathcal {F}_n=\Big \{\varvec{\theta }_{n}:|\theta _{jn}|\le C_n, j=1,\ldots , K_n\Big \} \end{aligned}$$

(B5)

Then with $H_{[]}(u,\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n,||.||_2)$ is as in Definition 3,

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} \int _{\varepsilon ^2/8}^{\sqrt{2}\varepsilon }\sqrt{H_{[]}(u,\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n,||.||_2)}du\\{} & {} \quad \lesssim \varepsilon \sqrt{K_n((L_n+1) \log K_n+(L_n+2)\log C_n-\log \varepsilon )} \end{aligned}$$

Proof

In this proof, we suppress the dependence on n. By lemma 4.1 in Pollard (1990),

$$\begin{aligned} N(\varepsilon ,\mathcal {F}_n,||.||_\infty )\le \left( \frac{3C}{\varepsilon }\right) ^{K}. \end{aligned}$$

For $\varvec{\theta }_1, \varvec{\theta }_2 \in \mathcal {F}$, let $\widetilde{\ell }(u)=\sqrt{\ell _{u\varvec{\theta }_1+(1-u)\varvec{\theta }_2}(\varvec{x},y)}$. Following Equation (52) in Bhattacharya and Maiti (2021),

$$\begin{aligned} \sqrt{\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_1}(\varvec{x},y)}-\sqrt{\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_2}(\varvec{x},y)}&\le K\sup _{j} \Big |\frac{\partial {\widetilde{\ell }}}{\partial {\theta _j}}\Big |||\varvec{\theta }_1-\varvec{\theta }_2||_{\infty }\nonumber \\&\le F(\varvec{x},y)||\varvec{\theta }_1-\varvec{\theta }_2||_{\infty } \end{aligned}$$

(B6)

where the upper bound $F(\varvec{x},y)=(CK)^L$. This is because $|\partial \widetilde{\ell }/\partial \theta _j|$, the derivative of $\sqrt{\ell }$ w.r.t. is bounded above by $|\partial \eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})/\partial \theta _j|$ as shown below.

$$\begin{aligned} \left| \frac{\partial {\widetilde{\ell }}}{\partial {\theta _j}}\right|&=\left| \frac{1}{2}\frac{\partial {\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}{\partial {\theta _j}}\left( y-\frac{e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}{1+e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}\right) \right. \\&\left. \sqrt{e^{(y\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})-\log (1+e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}))}}\right| \\&\le \left| \frac{1}{2} \frac{\partial {\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}{\partial {\theta _j}}\right| \left( \frac{e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}{1+e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}\right) ^{1/2}\left( \frac{1}{1+e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}\right) ^{1/2}\\&\le \frac{1}{4}\left| \frac{\partial {\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}{\partial {\theta _j}}\right| \end{aligned}$$

Thus, using $e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}/(1+e^{\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})})$ and Lemma 11, we get

$$\begin{aligned} \sup _{j=0, \ldots , K_n}\left| \frac{\partial {\eta _{\varvec{\theta }}(\varvec{x})}}{\partial {\theta _j}}\right| \le \prod _{v=1}^{L} a^*_{v}=\prod _{v=1}^L k_v C\le (KC)^L \end{aligned}$$

In view of (B6) and theorem 2.7.11 in van der Vaart and Wellner (1996), we have

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} N_{[]}(\varepsilon , \widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n, ||.||_2) \le \left( \frac{3K^{L+1}C^{L+2}}{2\varepsilon }\right) ^{K}\\{} & {} \quad \implies H_{[]}(\varepsilon , \widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n, ||.||_2)\lesssim K \log \frac{K^{L+1}C^{L+2} }{\varepsilon } \end{aligned}$$

where $N_{[]}$ and $H_{[]}$ denote the bracketing number and bracketing entropy as in Definition 3. Using, Lemma 5 with $M=K^{L+1}C^{L+2}$, we get

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} \int _0^{\varepsilon } \sqrt{H_{[]}(u, \widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n, ||.||_2)} du\\{} & {} \quad \lesssim \varepsilon \sqrt{K((L+1)\log K +2(L+2)\log C-\log \varepsilon )} \end{aligned}$$

Therefore,

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{\varepsilon ^2/8}^{\sqrt{2}\varepsilon } H_{[]}(u, \widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n, ||.||_2) du\le \int _{0}^{\sqrt{2}\varepsilon } {H_{[]}(u, \widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n, ||.||_2)} du\\&\quad \lesssim \sqrt{2}\varepsilon \sqrt{K((L+1) \log K+(L+2)\log C-\log \sqrt{2} \varepsilon )} \end{aligned}$$

The proof follows by noting $\log \sqrt{2}\varepsilon \ge \log \varepsilon$.

Proposition 13 establishes a bound on the log-likelihood ratio when the neural network lies outside the Hellinger neigborhood of the true density function. Proposition 14 shows that the prior gives negligible probability outside the sieve. Proposition 15 shows that the prior gives sufficiently large probability to KL-neighborhoods of the true density function. Propositions 13, 14 and 15 taken together will be used to establish the posterior consistency of the true posterior. $\square$

Proposition 13

Let $n\epsilon _n^2\rightarrow \infty$. Suppose $K_n\log n =o(n^b\epsilon _n^2)$, for some $0<b<1$, $L_n\sim \log n$ and $p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\mu }_n,\text {diag}(\varvec{\zeta }_n^2))$ where $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n)$ and $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$. Then for every $\varepsilon >0$,

$$\begin{aligned} \log \int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c} \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\le \log 2-\varepsilon ^2 n\epsilon _n^2 + o_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

Proof

It suffices to show

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c} \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}> 2e^{-\varepsilon n\epsilon _n^2}\right) \rightarrow 0,\,\, n \rightarrow \infty \nonumber \\ \end{aligned}$$

(B7)

The expression on the left above is bounded above by

$$\begin{aligned}&P_0^n\left( \int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c \cap \mathcal {F}_n} \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}> e^{-\varepsilon ^2 n\epsilon _n^2}\right) \\&\quad +P_0^n\left( \int _{\mathcal {F}_n^c} \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}> e^{-\varepsilon ^2 n\epsilon _n^2}\right) \end{aligned}$$

Using lemma 12 with $\varepsilon =\varepsilon \epsilon _n$ and $C_n=e^{n^b\epsilon _n^2/K_n}$,

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{\varepsilon ^2\epsilon _n^2/8}^{{\sqrt{2}\varepsilon \epsilon _n}}{H_{[]}(u, \widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n, ||.||_2)} du\\&\quad \lesssim \epsilon _n \varepsilon \sqrt{K_n((L_n+1) \log K_n+(L_n+2)\log C_n-\log \varepsilon \epsilon _n)}\\&\quad \le \varepsilon \epsilon _n O(\max (\sqrt{K_n(L_n+1)\log K_n}, \\&\quad \sqrt{K_n(L_n+2)\log C_n}, \sqrt{-\log \epsilon _n}))\\&\quad \le \varepsilon \epsilon _n \max (o(\epsilon _n\sqrt{n^b \log n}),\\&\quad O(\epsilon _n\sqrt{n^b \log n} ),O(\sqrt{\log n}))\le \varepsilon ^2 \epsilon _n^2 \sqrt{n} \end{aligned}$$

where $H_{[]}(u,\widetilde{\mathcal {F}}_n,||.||_2)$ is as in Definition 3. The first inequality in the third step follows because $L_n\sim \log n$, $K_n\log n=o(n^b\epsilon _n^2)$ and $K_n\log C_n =n^b \epsilon _n^2$, $-\log \epsilon _n^2\le \log n$. The second inequality in the third step is by $(n^b \log n)/n=o(1)$

By theorem 1 in Wing Hung and **aotong (1995), for some constant $C>0$, we have

$$\begin{aligned}&P_0^n\left( \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}\in \mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c \cap \mathcal {F}_n } \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0 }p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}> e^{-\varepsilon ^2n\epsilon _n^2}\right) \nonumber \\&\quad \le P_0^n\left( \sup _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}\in \mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c \cap \mathcal {F}_n } \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}> e^{-\varepsilon ^2n\epsilon _n^2}\right) \nonumber \\&\quad \le 4\exp (-C\varepsilon ^2 n\epsilon _n^2)=o(n\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

(B8)

Using proposition 14 with $\varepsilon =2\varepsilon$, we have

$$\int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {F}_n^c} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le e^{-2 n \varepsilon ^2 {\epsilon _n}^2}$$

Therefore, using Lemma 6 with $\varepsilon =2\varepsilon ^2\epsilon _n^2$ and $\tilde{\varepsilon }={\varepsilon }^2 \epsilon _n^2$, we have

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \int _{\mathcal {F}_n^c} \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}> e^{-\varepsilon ^2 n\epsilon _n^2}\right) \le e^{-\varepsilon ^2 n\epsilon _n^2} \rightarrow 0.\nonumber \\ \end{aligned}$$

(B9)

Combining (B8) and (B9), (B7) follows. $\square$

Proposition 14

Let $n\epsilon _n^2\rightarrow \infty$. Let $p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\mu }_n,\text {diag}(\varvec{\zeta }_n^2))$ where $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n)$ and $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$. Suppose for some $0<b<1$, $K_n\log n=o(n^b\epsilon _n^2)$, then for $C_n=e^{n^b \epsilon _n^2/K_n}$ and $\mathcal {F}_n$ as in (33), for any $\varepsilon >0$,

$$\int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {F}_n^c}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\le e^{- n \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}, n \rightarrow \infty $$

Proof

Let $\mathcal {F}_{jn}=\{\theta _{jn}: |\theta _{jn}|\le C_n\}$, then $\mathcal {F}_n=\cap _{j=1}^{K_n} \mathcal {F}_{jn}\implies \mathcal {F}_n^c= \cap _{j=1}^{K_n}\mathcal {F}_{jn}^c$. This implies $\int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {F}_n^c}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\le \sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\int _{\mathcal {F}_{jn}^c}(e^{-\frac{(\theta _{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}}/\sqrt{2\pi \zeta _{jn}^2})d\theta _{jn}$. Thus,

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {F}_n^c}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le \sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\int _{-\infty }^{-C_n}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi \zeta _{jn}^2}}e^{-\frac{(\theta _{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}}d\theta _{jn}\\&\qquad +\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\int _{C_n}^{\infty }\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi \zeta _{jn}^2}}e^{-\frac{(\theta _{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}}d\theta _{jn}\\&\quad =\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\left( 1-\Phi \left( \frac{C_n-\mu _{jn}}{\zeta _{jn}}\right) \right) \\&\qquad +\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\left( 1-\Phi \left( \frac{C_n+\mu _{jn}}{\zeta _{jn}}\right) \right) \end{aligned}$$

Since $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2) \implies ||\varvec{\mu }_n||_\infty =o(\sqrt{n}\epsilon _n)$. Since $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n)$ which implies for some $M>0$, $d\ge 1$,

$$\begin{aligned} \min \left( \frac{|C_n-\mu _{jn}|}{\zeta _{jn}},\frac{|C_n+\mu _{jn}|}{\zeta _{jn}}\right)&\ge \frac{(C_n-\sqrt{n})}{n^dM}\nonumber \\&\ge e^{\log C_n-(d+1)\log n}\nonumber \\&\quad -\frac{1}{n^{d-1/2}M}\nonumber \\&\sim e^{R_n\log n} \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

(B10)

where the last convergence holds since $K_n\log n=o(n^b \epsilon _n^2)$. This further implies $R_n=(n^b \epsilon _n^2)/(K_n\log n)-(d+1) \rightarrow \infty$. Thus, using Mill’s ratio, we get:

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {F}_n^c}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}&=O\left( \sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{\zeta _{jn}}{C_n-\mu _{jn}}e^{-\frac{(C_n-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}}\right. \\&\quad \left. +\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{\zeta _{jn}}{C_n+\mu _{jn}}e^{-\frac{(C_n+\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}}\right) \\&\le 2K_ne^{-\frac{(C_n-\sqrt{n})^2}{2n^2M^2}}\le e^{-\varepsilon n\epsilon _n^2} \end{aligned}$$

where the last asymptotic inequality holds because

$$\begin{aligned}&\frac{(C_n-\sqrt{n})^2}{2n^d M^2}-\log 2K_n\sim \frac{1}{2}e^{2R_n\log n} -2\log K_n \\&\quad \ge n\left( \frac{e^{2R_n}}{2}-\frac{2\log n}{n}\right) \ge \varepsilon n\epsilon _n^2 \end{aligned}$$

In the above step, the first asymptotic equivalence is by (B10), the second inequality holds since $K_n\le n$. The last inequality is by $R_n \rightarrow \infty$ and $\log /n\rightarrow 0$. $\square$

Proposition 15

Let $p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\mu }_n,\text {diag}(\varvec{\zeta }_n^2))$ with $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n)$, $||\varvec{\zeta }^*_n||_\infty =O(1)$. Let $||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/4$, $n\epsilon _n^2 \rightarrow \infty$. Define,

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}})= & {} \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} \left( \sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))(\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))\right. \nonumber \\{} & {} \quad \left. + \log \frac{1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))}{1-\sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))}\right) d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\ \mathcal {N}_\varepsilon= & {} \left\{ \varvec{\theta }_{n}:d_{\textrm{KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}})<\varepsilon \right\} \end{aligned}$$

(B11)

If $K_n\log n =o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} k_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})=O(\log n)$, $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$,

$$ \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}\in N_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \ge e^{-n\epsilon _n^2\nu } \hspace{3mm}\forall \,\, \nu >0$$

Proof

Let $\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}(\varvec{x})=\varvec{b}_L^*+\varvec{A}_L^* \psi (\varvec{b}_{L-1}^*+\varvec{A}_{L-1}^* \psi ( \cdots \psi (\varvec{b}_1^*+\varvec{A}_1^*\psi (\varvec{b}_0^*+\varvec{A}_0^* \varvec{x})))$ be the neural network such that

$$\begin{aligned} ||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}-\eta _0||_1\le \frac{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}{4} \end{aligned}$$

(B12)

Such a neural network exists since $||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/4$. Next define $\mathcal {M}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}$ as:

$$\begin{aligned} \mathcal {M}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}&=\Big \{\varvec{\theta }_{n}:|{\theta }_{jn}-{\theta }^*_{jn}|<\frac{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}{2\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n}}, \\&\quad j=1,\ldots , K_n\Big \} \end{aligned}$$

where $\tilde{k}_{vn}=k_{vn}+1$. For every $\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {M}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}$, by Lemma 8, we have

$$\begin{aligned} ||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1 \le \frac{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}{2} \end{aligned}$$

(B13)

Combining (B12) and (B13), we get for $\varvec{\theta }_{n}\in \mathcal {M}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}$, $||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}-\eta _{0}||_1 \le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/2$.

This, in view of Lemma 10, $d_{\textrm{KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}) \le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2$. Let $\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {N}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}$ for every $\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {M}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}$. Therefore,

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {N}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\ge \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {M}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \end{aligned}$$

Let $\delta _n=\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/(2\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})$, then

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n} \in \mathcal {M}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}=\prod _{j=1}^{K_n}\int _{\theta _{jn}^*-\delta _{n}}^{\theta _{jn}^*+\delta _{n}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi \zeta _{jn}^2}}e^{-\frac{(\theta _{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}}d\theta _{jn}\nonumber \\&\quad = \prod _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{2\delta _{n}}{\sqrt{2\pi \zeta _{jn}^2}}e^{-\frac{(\widehat{\theta }_{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}},\,\, \widehat{\theta }_{jn}\in [\theta _{jn}^*-\delta _{n},\theta _{jn}^*+\delta _{n}]\nonumber \\&\quad =\prod _{j=1}^{K_n}e^{-\left( -\frac{1}{2}\log \frac{2}{\pi }-\log \delta _n+\log \zeta _{jn}+\frac{(\widehat{\theta }_{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}\right) } \end{aligned}$$

(B14)

where the second last equality holds by mean value theorem.

Note that $\widehat{\theta }_{jn} \in [\theta _{jn}^*-1,\theta _{jn}^*+1]$ since $\delta _n \rightarrow 0$, therefore

$$\begin{aligned}&\frac{(\widehat{\theta }_{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2} \le \frac{\max ( (\theta _{jn}^*-\mu _{jn}-1)^2,(\theta _{jn}^*-\mu _{jn}+1)^2)}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}\\&\quad \le \frac{(\theta _{jn}^*-\mu _{jn})^2}{\zeta _{jn}^2}+\frac{1 }{\zeta _{jn}^2} \end{aligned}$$

where the last inequality follows since $(a+b)^2\le 2(a^2+b^2)$. Also,

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{(\widehat{\theta }_{jn}-\mu _{jn})^2}{2\zeta _{jn}^2}&\le 2\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{{\theta _{jn}^*}^2}{\zeta _{jn}^2}+ 2\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{\mu _{jn}^2}{\zeta _{jn}^2}+\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{1}{\zeta _{jn}^2}\nonumber \\&\le 2 (||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2+||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2+1) ||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty \le n\nu \epsilon _n^2 \end{aligned}$$

(B15)

since $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$ and $||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty =O(1)$ and $n\epsilon _n^2 \rightarrow \infty$. Also,

$$\begin{aligned} -\log \delta _n +\log \zeta _{jn}&=\log 2 +\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})\\&\quad -\log \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2\\&\le \log 2 +\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})\\&\quad +\log \zeta _{jn}-\log \varepsilon \\&\quad -2\log \epsilon _n\\&\le \log 2 +O(\log n)+O(\log n)\\&\quad -\log \varepsilon +O(\log n) \end{aligned}$$

where the last follows since $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n)$, $\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} k_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})=O(\log n)$ and $1/n\epsilon _n^2=o(1)$ which implies $-2\log \epsilon _n=o(\log n)$.

$$\begin{aligned} \sum _{j=1}^{K_n}-\frac{1}{2}\log \frac{2}{\pi }-\log \delta _n +\log \zeta _{jn}=O(K_n\log n)=o(n\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

(B16)

where the last inequality follows since $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$,

Combining (B15) and (B16) and replacing (B14), the proof follows.

Proposition 16 establishes that under a suitable choice of the variational family q and the prior p, the KL distance between p and q is suitably bounded. Proposition 17 shows that the integral of the logistic loss between the neural network model and the true model with respect to the variational family q is small. Propositions 15, 16 and 17 taken together will be used to establish that the KL-distance between the true posterior and the variational posterior is suitably bounded. $\square$

Proposition 16

For $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n)$ and $||\varvec{\zeta }^*_n||_\infty =O(1)$, let $q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\theta }^*_n,I_{K_n}/n^{2+2d})$ and $p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\mu }_n,\text {diag}(\varvec{\zeta }_n^2))$. Let $K_n\log n$ $=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$ and $n\epsilon _n^2 \rightarrow \infty$, then for any $\nu >0$,

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)\le n\epsilon _n^2\nu \end{aligned}$$

Proof

$$\begin{aligned}&d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)=\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\left( \log \sqrt{n^{1+d}}\zeta _{jn}+\frac{1}{n^{1+d}\zeta _{jn}^2}\right. \\&\qquad \left. +\frac{(\theta _{jn}^*-\mu _{jn})^2}{\zeta _{jn}^2}-\frac{1}{2}\right) \\&\quad \le \frac{K_n}{2}((d+1)\log n-1)+\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\log \zeta _{jn}\\&\qquad +\frac{1}{n^{1+d}}\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{1}{\zeta _{jn}^2}+2\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{{\theta _{jn}^*}^2}{\zeta _{jn}^2}+2\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\frac{\mu _{jn}^2}{\zeta _{jn}^2}\\&\quad \le K_n\Big ((d+1)\frac{\log n}{2}+\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty \Big ) \\&\qquad +2\Big (\frac{K_n}{n}+||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2+||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2\Big )||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty \\&\quad =o(n\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

where the second last inequality uses $\varvec{\zeta }^*_n=1/\varvec{\zeta }_n$. The last equality follows since $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_{\infty }=O(\log n)$, $||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty =O(1)$, $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$ and $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$. $\square$

Proposition 17

Let $q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) \sim MVN(\varvec{\theta }^*_n,I_{K_n}/n^{2+2d})$ where $d>d^*>0$ and $\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} k_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n}=O(n^{d^*})$. Define

$$\begin{aligned} h(\varvec{\theta }_{n})= & {} \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} \left( \sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))(\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))\right. \\{} & {} \left. + \log \frac{1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))}{1-\sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))}\right) d\varvec{x}\end{aligned}$$

Let $||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/4$ where $n\epsilon _n^2 \rightarrow \infty$. If $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$,

$$\begin{aligned} \int h(\varvec{\theta }_{n})q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2. \end{aligned}$$

Proof

Since $h(\varvec{\theta }_{n})$ is a KL-distance, $h(\varvec{\theta }_{n})>0$. We establish an upper bound:

$$\begin{aligned} \int h(\varvec{\theta }_{n})q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}&\le \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} |\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})-\eta _0(\varvec{x})|d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\&\le \int \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} |\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})-\eta _{\theta _n^*}(\varvec{x})|d\varvec{x}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\qquad +||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*}-\eta _0||_1\nonumber \\&\le \int ||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*}||_1 q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}+\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2 \end{aligned}$$

(B17)

where the first inequality is a consequence of Lemma 10 and the last inequality follows since $||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*}-\eta _0||_1=o(\epsilon _n^2)$.

Let $S=\{\varvec{\theta }_{n}:\cap _{j=1}^{K_n}|\theta _{jn}-\theta _{jn}^*|\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/(\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n}) \}$, then

$$\begin{aligned}&\int ||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*}||_1 q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \nonumber \\&\quad =\int _S ||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*}||_1 q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}+\int _{S^c} ||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*}||_1 q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\quad \le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2+\int _{S^c} |\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\qquad +\int _{S^c}\sum _{s'=1}^{k_{L_n}}|\varvec{A}_L[s][s']-\varvec{A}_L^*[s][s']| q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\qquad + \sum _{s=1}^{k_{L_n}}|\varvec{A}_L^*[1][s]| \int _{S^c} q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \end{aligned}$$

(B18)

Let $S^c=\cup _{j=1}^{K_n}S_j^c$, $S_j=\{|\theta _{jn}-\theta _{jn}^*|\le u_n\}$, $u_n=\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/(\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})$. We first compute $Q(S^c)$ as follows:

$$\begin{aligned} Q(S^c)&=Q(\cup _{j=1}^{K_n}S_j^c)\le \sum _{j=1}^{K_n}Q(S_j^c)\nonumber \\&=\sum _{j=1}^{K_n}\int _{|\theta _{jn}-\theta _{jn}^*|>u_n}q(\theta _{jn})d\theta _{jn}\nonumber \\&=2K_n\left( 1-\Phi \left( n^{1+d}u_n\right) \right) \end{aligned}$$

(B19)

Using (B19) in the last term of (B18), we get

$$\begin{aligned}&\sum _{s=1}^{k_{L_n}}|\varvec{A}_L^*[1][s]| \int _{S^c} q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \nonumber \\&\quad = Q(S^c)\sum _{s=1}^{k_{L_n}}|\varvec{A}_L^*[1][s]| = a^*_{L_n n}K_n(1-\Phi (n^{1+d}u_n))\nonumber \\&\quad =o(n\epsilon _n^2)O\left( n^d\frac{1}{n^{1+d}u_n}e^{-n^{2(1+d)}u_n^2}\right) =o(\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

(B20)

where second step follows by Mill’s ratio, $K_n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} k_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n}=O(n^d)$ which implies $n^{1+d}u_n \rightarrow \infty$. The third step holds because

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} \frac{n^{1+d}}{n^{1+d}u_n}e^{-n^{2(1+d)}u_n^2}\le e^{-n^{2(1+d)}u_n^2}\nonumber \\{} & {} \quad =e^{-\left( \frac{n^{2(1+d)}\varepsilon ^2 \epsilon _n^4}{\log n(\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})^2}-(d+1)\right) }=o(1) \end{aligned}$$

(B21)

since $(\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n} )^2 \log n=O(n^{2d^*} \log n)=o(n^{2d})$.

For the second term in (B18), let ${S'}=\{|\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|>u_n\}$

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{S^c}\left( |\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|\right) q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\quad =\int _{S^c\cap {S'}} |\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\qquad +\int _{S^c \cap {S'}^c}|\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\quad \le \int _{{S'}} |\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|q(\varvec{b}_L[s])d\varvec{b}_L[s]\nonumber \\&\qquad +E_{q(\varvec{b}_L[s])}|\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|Q(\tilde{S}^c), \end{aligned}$$

(B22)

$\tilde{S}^c$ is the union of all $S_j^c$, $j=1, \ldots , K_n$ except the one corresponding to $\varvec{b}_{L}[s]$.

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{{S'}} |\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|q(\varvec{b}_L[s])d\varvec{b}_L[s]\nonumber \\&\quad =\int _{|\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|>n^{1+d}u_n}\sqrt{\frac{n^{2+2d}}{2\pi }}(\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s])\nonumber \\&\quad e^{-\frac{n^{2+2d}}{2}(\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s])^2}d\varvec{b}_L[s]\nonumber \\&\quad =\frac{2}{\sqrt{n^{2+2d}}}\int _{n^{1+d}u_n}^{\infty } \frac{u}{\sqrt{2\pi }}e^{-\frac{1}{2}u^2}du\le e^{-n^{1+d}u_n} \end{aligned}$$

(B23)

Also, $E_{q(\varvec{b}_L[s])}|\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|=\sqrt{2/\pi }(1/n^{1+d})$. Thus

$$\begin{aligned}&E_{q(\varvec{b}_L[s])}|\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|Q(\tilde{S}^c)\nonumber \\&\quad = O\left( \frac{K_n}{n^{1+d}}\left( 1-\Phi \left( n^{1+d}u_n\right) \right) \right) \sim \frac{K_n}{n^{2(1+d)}u_n}e^{- n^{2(1+d)}u_n}\nonumber \\&\quad \le e^{-n^{2(1+v)}u_n^2 } \end{aligned}$$

(B24)

where the first equality in the above step follows by observing that $Q(\tilde{S}^c)$ behaves analogous to $Q(S^c)$ which was computed in (B19) and the second equality in the above step follows due to Mill’s ratio and $\sum _{v=0}^L \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n}=O(n^v)$ which implies $n^{1+d} u_n \rightarrow \infty$. The third inequality in the above step is a consequence of the fact that $K_n\le n^{1+d}$.

Combining (B20), (B23) and (B24), we get

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{S^c}\left( |\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|\right) q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le e^{-n^{1+d}u_n} \end{aligned}$$

(B25)

Note the third term in (B18) can be handled similar to third term and it can be shown

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{S^c} |\varvec{b}_L[s]-\varvec{b}_L^*[s]|q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}+\nonumber \\&\quad \int _{S^c}\sum _{s'=1}^{k_{L_n}}|\varvec{A}_L[s][s']-\varvec{A}_L^*[s][s']| q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\quad \le k_{L_n+1}K_ne^{-n^{1+d}u_n}\le =o((n\epsilon _n^2)^2)e^{-n^{1+d}u_n}\nonumber \\&\quad \le o(\epsilon _n^2)e^{-(n^{1+d}u_n-2\log n)}=o(\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

(B26)

where the last equality in the second step follows by $K_n=o(n \epsilon _n^2)$ and the argument in (B21) by which $e^{-(n^{1+d}u_n-2\log n)}=o(1)$.

Combining (B20) and (B26) with (B18) the proof follows.

Using Propositions 15, 16 and 17, the following Proposition 18 establishes that the KL-distance between the true posterior and the variational posterior is suitably bounded. $\square$

Proposition 18

Let $p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\mu }_n,\text {diag}(\varvec{\zeta }_n^2))$, $||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(n)$ and $||\varvec{\zeta }^*_n||_\infty =O(1)$.

• 1. Let $L_n=L$, $p_n=p$ independent of n. If $K_n\log n=o(n)$ and $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n)$, then

  $$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{KL}}(\pi ^*,\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))=o_{P_0^n}(n) \end{aligned}$$

  (B27)

• 2. Let $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $L_n \sim \log n$ and $||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$. If there exists a neural network such that $||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$ and $\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})=O(\log n)$, then

  $$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{KL}}(\pi ^*,\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))=o_{P_0^n}(n\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

  (B28)

Proof

For any $q \in \mathcal {Q}_n$.

$$\begin{aligned}&d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))\nonumber \\&\quad =\int q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})\log q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\qquad -\int q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) \log \pi (\varvec{\theta }_{n}|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\quad =\int q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})\log q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\qquad - \int q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{\int L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}} d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\quad =d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)-\int \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\qquad +\log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\nonumber \\&\quad \le d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)+\left| \int \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| \nonumber \\&\qquad +\left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| \end{aligned}$$

(B29)

Since $\pi ^*$ satisfies minimizes the KL-distance to $\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})$ in the family $\mathcal {Q}_n$, therefore for any $\kappa >0$

$$\begin{aligned}&P_0^n\left( d_{\textrm{KL}}(\pi ^*,\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))>\kappa \right) \nonumber \\&\quad \le P_0^n\left( d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))>\kappa \right) \end{aligned}$$

(B30)

$\square$

Proof of part 1

Note, $K_n\log n=o(n)$, $||\mu _n||_2^2 =o(n)$, $||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(n)$ and $||\varvec{\zeta }^*_n||_\infty =O(1)$. Let $q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\theta }^*_n, \varvec{I}_{K_n}/\sqrt{n})$ where $\varvec{\theta }^*_n$ is defined next. For $N\ge 1$, let $\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_N}$ be a finite neural network approximation satisfying $||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}-\eta _0||_1 \le \varepsilon /4$. Since $\eta _0$ is a continuous function defined on the compact set $[0,1]^p$, thus the existence of such a neural network is guaranteed by Theorem 2.1 in Hornik et al. (1989). Let $\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*$ be $\varvec{\theta }_N^*$ for all non zero coefficients and zeros for all non existent coefficients.

Step 1 (a): Using proposition 16, with $\epsilon _n=1$, we get for any $\nu >0$,

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n(d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)>n\nu )=0 \end{aligned}$$

(B31)

where the above step follows $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=||\varvec{\theta }^*_N||_2^2=||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n)$.

Step 1 (b): Next, note that

$$\begin{aligned}&d_{\textrm{KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}})\nonumber \\&\quad = \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} \left( \sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))\log \frac{\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))}{\sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))}\right. \nonumber \\&\quad \left. +(1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x})))\log \frac{1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))}{1-\sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))}\right) d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\&\quad =\int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} \left( \sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))(\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})-\eta _0(\varvec{x}))\right. \nonumber \\&\qquad \left. +\log \frac{1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))}{1-\sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x}))}\right) d\varvec{x}\end{aligned}$$

(B32)

Since $||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1 \le \varepsilon /4$, using proposition 17 with $\epsilon _n=1$ and $\varepsilon =\varepsilon$, $\int d_{\textrm{KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}})q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le \varepsilon$ which follows by noting that $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=||\varvec{\theta }^*_N||_2^2=o(n)$ and $\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L} \tilde{k}_{vN}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L} a^*_{v'N})=O(\log n)$.

Therefore, by Lemma 9,

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \left| \int \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > n\nu \right) \le \frac{\varepsilon }{\nu }. \end{aligned}$$

(B33)

Step 1 (c): Since $||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1\le \varepsilon /4$, using proposition 15 with $\epsilon _n=1$ and $\nu =\varepsilon$,

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}\in \mathcal {N}_\varepsilon } p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}&\ge \exp (-n\varepsilon ) \end{aligned}$$

which follows by $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=||\varvec{\theta }^*_N||_2^2=o(n)$ and $\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L} a^*_{v'n})=O(\log n)$. Therefore, using Lemma 7, we get

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > n\nu \right) \le \frac{2\varepsilon }{\nu } \end{aligned}$$

(B34)

Step 1 (d): From (B30) and (B29) we get

$$\begin{aligned}&P_0^n(d_{\textrm{KL}}(\pi ^*,\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))>3n\nu )\le P_0^n \left( d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)>n\nu \right) \nonumber \\&\qquad +P_0^n\left( \left| \int \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right|> n\nu \right) \nonumber \\&\qquad +P_0^n\left( \left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > n\nu \right) \nonumber \\&\quad \le \frac{3\varepsilon }{\nu } \end{aligned}$$

(B35)

where the last inequality is a consequence of (B31), (B33) and (B34).

Since $\varepsilon$ is arbitrary, taking $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$ completes the proof. $\square$

Proof of part 2

Note, $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $||\mu _n||_2^2 =o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, $\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n)$ and $||\varvec{\zeta }^*_n||_\infty =O(1)$. Let $q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})=MVN(\varvec{\theta }^*_n, \varvec{I}_{K_n}/n^{2+2d}), d>d^*$ where $\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n}=O(n^{d^*})$, $d^*>0$. We next define $\varvec{\theta }_{n}^*$ as follows:

Let $\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}$ be the neural satisfying

$$\begin{aligned} ||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}-\eta _0||_1\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/4 \hspace{5mm} ||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

The existence of such a neural network is guaranteed since $||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}-\eta _0||_1=o(\epsilon _n^2)$.

Step 2 (a): Since $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, by proposition 16,

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n(d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)>\nu n\epsilon _n^2)=0 \end{aligned}$$

(B36)

Step 2 (b): By proposition 17, since $||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}-\eta _0||_1\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/4$, $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$ and $(\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$, we have

$$\begin{aligned}\int d_{\textrm{KL}}(\ell _0,\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}})q(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2 \end{aligned}$$

Therefore, by Lemma 9,

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \left| \int \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > \nu n \epsilon _n^2\right) \le \frac{\varepsilon }{\nu }. \end{aligned}$$

(B37)

Step 2 (c): By proposition 15, since $||\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}-\eta _0||_1\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^2/4$, $||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$and $\log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})=O(\log n)$, we have

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}\in \mathcal {N}{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^2}} p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}&\ge \exp (-\varepsilon n\epsilon _n^2) \end{aligned}$$

Therefore, using Lemma 7, we get

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > \nu n \epsilon _n^2\right) \le \frac{2\varepsilon }{\nu } \end{aligned}$$

(B38)

Step 2 (d): From (B30) and (B29) we get

$$\begin{aligned}&P_0^n(d_{\textrm{KL}}(\pi ^*,\pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))>3\nu n\epsilon _n^2)\le P_0^n \left( d_{\textrm{KL}}(q,p)>\nu n\epsilon _n^2\right) \nonumber \\&\quad +P_0^n\left( \left| \int \log \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}q(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right|> \nu n\epsilon _n^2\right) \nonumber \\&\quad +P_0^n\left( \left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > \nu n\epsilon _n^2\right) \le \frac{3\varepsilon }{\nu } \end{aligned}$$

(B39)

where the last inequality is a consequence of (B36), (B37) and (B38).

Since $\varepsilon$ is arbitrary, taking $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$ completes the proof. $\square$

Appendix C Consistency of the variational posterior

Proof of Theorem 1

We assume Relation (32) holds with $A_n$ and $B_n$ are same as in (31).

By assumptions (A1) and (A2), the prior parameters satisfy

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} ||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n), \,\,\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n),\\{} & {} ||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty =O(1), \,\, \varvec{\zeta }^*_n=1/\varvec{\zeta }_n. \end{aligned}$$

Note $K_n \sim n^a$, $0<a<1$ which implies $K_n\log n=o(n)$. By proposition 18 part 1.,

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{KL}} (\pi ^*, \pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))= o_{P_0^n}(n). \end{aligned}$$

(C40)

By step 1 (c) in the proof of proposition 18

$$\begin{aligned} B_n= o_{P_0^n}(n) \end{aligned}$$

(C41)

Since, $K_n \sim n^a$, $K_n\log n=o(n^b)$, $a<b<1$. Using proposition 13 with $\epsilon _n=1$,

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} -\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c)A_n \ge n\varepsilon ^2\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c)-\log 2+o_{P_0^n}(1)\nonumber \\{} & {} \quad =n\varepsilon ^2\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c)+O_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

(C42)

Thus, using (C40), (C41) and (C42) in (32), we get

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} n\varepsilon ^2\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c)+O_{P_0^n}(1)\le o_{P_0^n}(n)+o_{P_0^n}(n) \\{} & {} \quad \implies \pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c)=o_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

$\square$

Proof of Theorem 2

We assume Relation (32) holds with $A_n$ and $B_n$ are same as in (31).

Let $K_n\sim n^a$ and $\epsilon _n^2\sim n^{-\delta }$, $0<\delta <1-a$. This implies $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$.

By assumptions (A1) and (A4), the prior parameters satisfy

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} ||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n \epsilon _n^2), \,\,\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n),\\{} & {} ||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty =O(1), \,\, \varvec{\zeta }^*_n=1/\varvec{\zeta }_n. \end{aligned}$$

Also by assumption (A3),

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} ||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1=o(\epsilon _n^2), \,\, ||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2),\\{} & {} \log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})=O(\log n) \end{aligned}$$

By proposition 18 part 2.,

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{KL}} (\pi ^*, \pi (.|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n}))= o_{P_0^n}(n\epsilon _n^2). \end{aligned}$$

(C43)

By step 2 (c) in the proof of proposition 18

$$\begin{aligned} B_n= o_{P_0^n}(n \epsilon _n^2 ) \end{aligned}$$

(C44)

Since $K_n \sim n^a$, $K_n\log n=o(n^b \epsilon _n^2)$, $a+\delta<b<1$. Using proposition 13, it follows that

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} -\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c )A_n \ge \varepsilon ^2 n \epsilon _n^2 \pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c)-\log 2+o_{P_0^n}(1)\nonumber \\{} & {} \quad =\varepsilon ^2 n \epsilon _n^2 \pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c)+O_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

(C45)

Thus, using (C43), (C44) and (C45) in (32), we get

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} n\varepsilon ^2 \epsilon _n^2\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c)+O_{P_0^n}(1)\le o_{P_0^n}(n\epsilon _n^2)+o_{P_0^n}(n\epsilon _n^2) \\{} & {} \quad \implies \pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c)=o_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

$\square$

Proof of Corollary 1

Let $\hat{\ell }_n(y,\varvec{x})=\int \ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(y,\varvec{x}) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}$.

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)&=d_{\textrm{H}}\left( \int \ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}} \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n},\ell _0\right) \\&\le \int d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \hspace{5mm} \text {Jensen's inequality}\\&=\int _{\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon } d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\quad +\int _{\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c} d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\le \varepsilon +o_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

Taking $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$, we get $d_{\text {H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)=o_{P_0^n}(1)$. Let

$$\begin{aligned} \hat{\eta }(\varvec{x})=\sigma ^{-1}\left( \int \sigma (\eta _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(\varvec{x})) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \right) \end{aligned}$$

(C46)

then, note that $\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x})=\log ( \hat{\ell }_n(1,\varvec{x})/\hat{\ell }_n(0,\varvec{x}))$. Further,

$$\begin{aligned} 2d^2_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0) =2-2 \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^p} \sum _{y \in \{0,1\}} \sqrt{\hat{\ell }_n(y,\varvec{x})\ell _0(y,\varvec{x})} d\varvec{x}\end{aligned}$$

This implies

$$\begin{aligned}&2d^2_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)\nonumber \\&\quad =2-2\int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^p} \nonumber \\&\quad \sum _{y \in \{0,1\}} e^{\left\{ \frac{1}{2}\left( y\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x})-\log (1+e^{\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x})})+y\eta _0(\varvec{x})-\log (1+e^{\eta _0(\varvec{x})}\right) \right\} } d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\&\quad =2-2\int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^p} \left( \sqrt{\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x}))}\right. \nonumber \\&\quad \left. +\sqrt{(1-\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x})))(1-\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x})))}\right) d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\&\quad \ge 2-2 \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^p} \sqrt{1- (\sqrt{\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))}-\sqrt{\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x}))})^2}d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\&\quad \ge \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^p} (\sqrt{\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))}-\sqrt{\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x}))})^2d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\&\quad \ge \frac{1}{4}\int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^p} (\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))-\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x})))^2d\varvec{x}\end{aligned}$$

(C47)

In the above equation, the sixth and the seventh step hold because $\sqrt{1-x}\le 1-x/2$ and $|p_1-p_2|\le |\sqrt{p_1}+\sqrt{p_2}||\sqrt{p_1}-\sqrt{p_2}|\le 2|\sqrt{p_1}-\sqrt{p_2}|$ respectively. The fifth step holds because

$$\begin{aligned}&\left( \sqrt{p_1p_2}+\sqrt{(1-p_1)(1-p_2)}\right) ^2\\&\quad =p_1p_2+1-p_1-p_2+\sqrt{p_1p_2(1-p_1)(1-p_2)}\\&\quad \le \sqrt{p_1p_2}+1-p_1-p_2+\sqrt{p_1p_2}=1-(\sqrt{p1}-\sqrt{p_2})^2 \end{aligned}$$

By (C47) and Cauchy Schwartz inequality,

$$\begin{aligned}&\int _{\varvec{x}\in U[0,1]^p} |\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))-\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x}))| d\varvec{x}\nonumber \\&\quad \le \left( \int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^p} (\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))-\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x})))^2d\varvec{x}\right) ^{1/2}\nonumber \\&\quad \le 2\sqrt{2} d_{\text {H}}(\hat{\ell }_n, \ell _0)=o_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

(C48)

The proof follows in lieu (35). $\square$

Proof of Corollary 2

We assume Relation (32) holds with $A_n$ and $B_n$ are same as in (31).

Let $K_n\sim n^a$ and $\epsilon _n^2\sim n^{-\delta }$, $0<\delta <1-a$. This implies $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$.

Also, $K_n\log n=o(n^b \epsilon _n^2)$, $a+\delta<b<1$. This implies $K_n\log n =o(n^b (\epsilon _n^2)^\kappa )$, $0\le \kappa \le 1$. Thus, using proposition 13 with $\epsilon _n=\epsilon _n^{k}$, we get

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} -\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^{\kappa }}^c )A_n \ge \varepsilon ^2 n \epsilon _n^{2\kappa } \pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^{\kappa }}^c)-\log 2+o_{P_0^n}(1)\nonumber \\{} & {} \quad =\varepsilon ^2 n \epsilon _n^{2\kappa } \pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^k}^c)+O_{P_0^n}(1) \end{aligned}$$

(C49)

This together with (C43), (C44) and (32) implies $\pi ^*(\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^\kappa }^c)=o_{P_0^n}(\epsilon _n^{2-2\kappa })$.

Let $\hat{\ell }_n(y,\varvec{x})=\int \ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}}(y,\varvec{x}) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}$, then

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)&\le \int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^\kappa }} d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\quad +\int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n^\kappa }^c} d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi ^*(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n^\kappa +o_{P_0^n}(\epsilon _n^{2-2\kappa }) \end{aligned}$$

Dividing by $\epsilon _n^\kappa$ on both sides we get

$$\begin{aligned} \frac{1}{\epsilon _n^\kappa }d_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)&=o_{P_0^n}(\epsilon _n^{2-3\kappa })+o_{P_0^n}(1)=o_{P_0^n}(1),\\&\quad 0\le \kappa \le 2/3. \end{aligned}$$

By (C48), for every $0\le \kappa \le 2/3$,

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} \frac{1}{\epsilon _n^\kappa }\int _{\varvec{x}\in [0,1]^{p_n}} |\sigma (\eta _0(\varvec{x}))-\sigma (\hat{\eta }(\varvec{x}))| d\varvec{x}\\{} & {} \quad \le \frac{1}{\epsilon _n^\kappa }2\sqrt{2}d_{\text {H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)=o_{P_0^n}(1). \end{aligned}$$

The proof follows in lieu of (35). $\square$

Appendix D Consistency of the true posterior

From (11), note that

$$\begin{aligned} \pi (\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon }^c|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})&=\frac{\int _{\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c}L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}}{\int L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}}\nonumber \\&=\frac{\int _{\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c}(L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})/L_0)p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}}{\int (L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})/L_0)p(\varvec{\theta }_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}} \end{aligned}$$

(D50)

Theorem 19

Suppose conditions of Theorem 1 hold. Then,

• 1.
  $$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \pi (\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon }^c|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})\le 2e^{-n\varepsilon ^2/2}\right) \rightarrow 1, n \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$
• 2.
  $$\begin{aligned} P_0^n(|R(\hat{C})-R(C^\textrm{Bayes})|\le 8\sqrt{2}\varepsilon )\rightarrow 1,n \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

Proof

By assumptions (A1) and (A2), the prior parameters satisfy

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} ||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n), \,\,\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n),\\{} & {} ||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty =O(1), \,\, \varvec{\zeta }^*_n=1/\varvec{\zeta }_n. \end{aligned}$$

Note $K_n \sim n^a$, $0<a<1$ which implies $K_n\log n=o(n)$. Thus, the conditions of proposition 15 hold with $\epsilon _n=1$.

$$\begin{aligned}&P_0^n\left( \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le e^{-n\nu }\right) \nonumber \\&\quad \le P_0^n\left( \left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > n\nu \right) \rightarrow 0, \end{aligned}$$

(D51)

$n \rightarrow \infty$ which follows from (B34) (see step 1 (c) in proof of proposition 18). Since $K_n\log n=o(n^b)$, $a<b<1$, the proposition 13 holds with $\epsilon _n=1$.

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \int _{\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c} \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \ge 2 e^{-n\varepsilon ^2 }\right) \rightarrow 0, n \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

(D52)

where the last equality follows from (B7) with $\epsilon _n=1$ in the proof of proposition 13. Using (D51) and (D52) with (D50), we get

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \pi (\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon }^c|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})\ge 2e^{-n(\varepsilon ^2-\nu )}\right) \rightarrow 0, n \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

Take $\nu =\varepsilon ^2/2$ to complete the proof. Mimicking the steps in the proof of corollary 1,

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)&\le \int d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi (\varvec{\theta }_{n}|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \\&\quad \text {Jensen's inequality}\\&=\int _{\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon } d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi (\varvec{\theta }_{n}|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\quad +\int _{\mathcal {U}_\varepsilon ^c} d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi (\varvec{\theta }_{n}|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\le \varepsilon +2e^{-n\varepsilon ^2/2}\le 2\varepsilon ,\\&\quad \text {with probability tending to 1 as }n\rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

where the second last inequality is a consequence of part 1. in Theorem 19. The remaining part of the proof follows by (C48) and (35). $\square$

Table 6 Clinical Features and Cognitive Assessment Score. Values are shown as mean ± standard deviation or percentage. Test statistics and P-values for differences between MCI-S and MCI-C are based on (a) t-test or (b) chi- square test. MCI-S = non-progressive MCI; MCI-P = progressive MCI; APOE = apolipoprotein E; MMSE = Mini-Mental State Examination. RAVLT = The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (immediate: sum of 5 trails; learning: trial 5-trial 1; Forgetting: trial 5-delayed; perc.forgetting: Precent forgetting); DIGT = The Digit- Symbol Coding test; TRAB = Trail Making tests; CDRSB = Clinical Dementia Rating Scaled Response; FAQ = Activities of Daily living Score; ADAS = Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale Cognitive sub-scale; mPACCdigit = the Digit Symbol Substitution Test from the Preclinical Alzheimer Cognitive Composite

Table 7 Significant MRI Features. Values are shown as mean ± standard deviation or percentage. Test statistics and P-values for differences between MCI-C and MCI-S are based on t-test. MCI-S = non-progressive MCI; MCI-C = progressive MCI. HippoR = Right Hippocampus; HippoL = Left Hippocampus; flWMR = frontal lobe WM right; flWML = frontal lobe WM left; plWMR = parietal lobe WM right; plWML = parietal lobe WM left; tlWMR = temporal lobe WM right; tlWML = temporal lobe WM left; ACgCR=Right ACgG anterior cingulate gyrus; ACgCL=Left ACgG anterior cingulate gyrus; EntR = Right Ent entorhinal area; EntL = Left Ent entorhinal area; MCgCR = Right MCgG middle cingulate gyrus;MCgCL = Left MCgG middle cingulate gyrus; MFCR = Right MFC medial frontal cortex; MFCL = Left MFC medial frontal cortex; OpIFGR = Right OpIFG opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus; OpIFGL = Left OpIFG opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus; OrIFGR = Right OrIFG orbital part of the inferior frontal gyrus; OrIFGL = Left OrIFG orbital part of the inferior frontal gyrus; PCgCR = Right PCgG posterior cingulate gyrus; PCgCL = Left PCgG posterior cingulate gyrus; PCuR = Right PCu precuneus; PCuL = Left PCu precuneus; SPLR = Right SPL superior parietal lobule; SPLL = Left SPL superior parietal lobule

Theorem 20

Suppose conditions of Theorem 2 hold. Then,

• 1.
  $$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \pi (\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})\le 2e^{-n\epsilon _n^2\varepsilon ^2/2}\right) \rightarrow 1, n \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$
• 2.
  $$\begin{aligned} P_0^n(|R(\hat{C})-R(C^\textrm{Bayes})|\le 8\sqrt{2}\varepsilon \epsilon _n)\rightarrow 1,n \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

Proof

By assumptions (A1) and (A4), the prior parameters satisfy

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} ||\varvec{\mu }_n||_2^2=o(n \epsilon _n^2), \,\,\log ||\varvec{\zeta }_n||_\infty =O(\log n),\\{} & {} ||\varvec{\zeta }_n^*||_\infty =O(1), \,\, \varvec{\zeta }^*_n=1/\varvec{\zeta }_n. \end{aligned}$$

Also by assumption (A3),

$$\begin{aligned}{} & {} ||\eta _0-\eta _{\varvec{\theta }^*_n}||_1=o(\epsilon _n^2), \,\, ||\varvec{\theta }^*_n||_2^2=o(n\epsilon _n^2),\\{} & {} \log (\sum _{v=0}^{L_n} \tilde{k}_{vn}\prod _{v'=v+1}^{L_n} a^*_{v'n})=O(\log n) \end{aligned}$$

Note $K_n \sim n^a$, $0<a<1$ and $\epsilon _n\sim n^{-\delta }$, $0<\delta <1-a$, thus $K_n\log n=o(n\epsilon _n^2)$. Thus, the conditions of proposition 15 hold.

$$\begin{aligned}&P_0^n\left( \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \le e^{-n\epsilon _n^2 \nu }\right) \nonumber \\&\quad \le P_0^n\left( \left| \log \int \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\right| > n\epsilon _n^2\nu \right) \nonumber \\&\quad \rightarrow 0 \end{aligned}$$

(D53)

for $n \rightarrow \infty$ where the above convergence follows from (B38) in step 2 (c) in the proof of proposition 18. Also, since $K_n\log n=o(n^b \epsilon _n^2)$, $a+\delta<b<1$. Thus conditions of proposition 13 hold.

$$\begin{aligned} P_0^n\left( \int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c} \frac{L(\varvec{\theta }_{n})}{L_0}p(\varvec{\theta }_{n}) d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \ge 2 e^{-n \epsilon _n^2\varepsilon ^2 }\right) \rightarrow 0, n \rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

(D54)

where the last equality follows from (B7) in the proof of proposition 13.

Using (D53) and (D54) with (D50), we get $P_0^n\left( \pi (\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})\ge 2e^{-n\epsilon _n^2(\varepsilon ^2-\nu )}\right) \rightarrow 0, n \rightarrow \infty$. Take $\nu =\varepsilon ^2/2$ to complete the proof. Mimicking the steps in the proof of corollary 2,

$$\begin{aligned} d_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0)&\le \int d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi (\varvec{\theta }_{n}|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n} \\&\quad \text {Jensen's inequality}\\&=\int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}} d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi (\varvec{\theta }_{n}|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\quad +\int _{\mathcal {U}_{\varepsilon \epsilon _n}^c} d_{\text {H}}(\ell _{\varvec{\theta }_{n}},\ell _0) \pi (\varvec{\theta }_{n}|\varvec{y}_{n},\varvec{X}_{n})d\varvec{\theta }_{n}\\&\le \varepsilon \epsilon _n+2e^{-2n\epsilon _n^2\varepsilon ^2}\le 2\varepsilon \epsilon _n, \\&\quad \text {with probability tending to 1 as }n\rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

where the second last inequality is a consequence of part 1. in Theorem 20 and the last inequality last equality follows since $\epsilon _n \sim n^{-\delta }$. Dividing by $\epsilon _n$ on both sides we get

$$\begin{aligned} \epsilon _n^{-1}d_{\textrm{H}}(\hat{\ell }_n,\ell _0) \le 2\varepsilon ,\,\,\text {with probability tending to 1 as }n\rightarrow \infty \end{aligned}$$

The remaining part of the proof follows by (C48) and (35). $\square$

Appendix E Tables for real data