  A mean function in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), or a kernel
mean, is central to kernel methods in that it is used by many classical
algorithms such as kernel principal component analysis, and it also forms the
core inference step of modern kernel methods that rely on embedding probability
distributions in RKHSs. Given a finite sample, an empirical average has been
used commonly as a standard estimator of the true kernel mean. Despite a
widespread use of this estimator, we show that it can be improved thanks to the
well-known Stein phenomenon. We propose a new family of estimators called
kernel mean shrinkage estimators (KMSEs), which benefit from both theoretical
justifications and good empirical performance. The results demonstrate that the
proposed estimators outperform the standard one, especially in a "large d,
small n" paradigm.
