This thesis deals with the estimation of functions from tests in three statistical settings. We begin by studying the problem of estimating the intensities of Poisson processes with covariates. We prove a general model selection theorem from which we derive non-asymptotic risk bounds under various assumptions on the target function. We then propose two procedures to estimate the transition density of an homogeneous Markov chain. The first one selects an estimator among a collection of piecewise constant estimators. The selected estimator is shown to satisfy an oracle-type inequality under minimal assumptions on the Markov chain which allows us to deduce uniform rates of convergence over balls of inhomogeneous Besov spaces. Besides, the estimator is adaptive with respect to the smoothness of the transition density. We also evaluate the performance of the estimator in practice by carrying out numerical simulations. The second procedure is only of theoretical interest but yields a general model selection theorem from which we derive rates of convergence under more general assumptions on the transition density. Finally, we propose a new parametric estimator of a density. We upper-bound its risk under assumptions for which the maximum likelihood method may not work. The simulations show that these two estimators are very close when the model is true and regular enough. However, contrary to the maximum likelihood estimator, this estimator is robust.
