We study hypothesis testing for a multivariate normal mean subject to linear inequality constraints, where the parameter space is a polyhedral cone. Classical procedures for one-sided multivariate testing—most notably the generalized likelihood rati...
We study hypothesis testing for a multivariate normal mean subject to linear inequality constraints, where the parameter space is a polyhedral cone. Classical procedures for one-sided multivariate testing—most notably the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) and O’Brien’s test—are well understood when the cone is the nonnegative orthant, but their behavior can be unstable for general cones and under unknown covariance. Building on an ensemble idea, we propose four new tests—the Single Direction Test (SDT), the Ensemble Direction Test (EDT), the Hartung Direction Test (HDT), and the Maximum Direction Test (MDT)—that aggregate p-values using randomly generated directions in the cone. Across a wide range of alternatives and covariance structures, our simulations indicate that several proposed methods can improve power over existing procedures, with the gains most pronounced when the GLRT is highly conservative in the unknown-covariance setting. The SDT performs comparably to O’Brien’s test when the latter is applicable. The EDT often attains higher power than existing procedures, but this improvement can come with inflated type I error at moderate significance levels. Finally, our real-data analysis and additional simulations suggest that the EDT may be unstable when the induced base p-values are highly dispersed.