Statistical inference of 2-type critical Galton–Watson processes with immigration

In this paper the asymptotic behavior of the conditional least squares estimators of the offspring mean matrix for a 2-type critical positively regular Galton–Watson branching process with immigration is described. We also study this question for a natural estimator of the spectral radius of the offspring mean matrix, which we call criticality parameter. We discuss the subcritical case as well.     

Estimation of the mean in partially observed branching processes with general immigration

In the paper we investigate asymptotic properties of the branching process with non-stationary immigration which are sufficient for a natural estimator of the offspring mean based on partial observations to be strongly consistent and asymptotically normal. The estimator uses only a binomially distributed subset of the population of each generation. This approach allows us to obtain results without conditions on the criticality of the process which makes possible to develop a unified estimation procedure without knowledge of the range of the offspring mean. These results are to be contrasted with the existing literature related to i.i.d. immigration case where the asymptotic normality depends on the criticality of the process and are new for the fully observed processes as well. Examples of applications in the process with immigration with regularly varying mean and variance and subcritical processes with i.i.d. immigration are also considered.

     

Kernel density estimation for linear processes: Asymptotic normality and optimal bandwidth derivation

The problem of estimating the marginal density of a linear process by kernel methods is considered. Under general conditions, kernel density estimators are shown to be asymptotically normal. Their limiting covariance matrix is computed. We also find the optimal bandwidth in the sense that it asymptotically minimizes the mean square error of the estimators. The assumptions involved are easily verifiable.Supported in part by NSF grant DMS-9403718.     

A generalized partially linear framework for variance functions

When model the heteroscedasticity in a broad class of partially linear models, we allow the variance function to be a partial linear model as well and the parameters in the variance function to be different from those in the mean function. We develop a two-step estimation procedure, where in the first step some initial estimates of the parameters in both the mean and variance functions are obtained and then in the second step the estimates are updated using the weights calculated based on the initial estimates. The resulting weighted estimators of the linear coefficients in both the mean and variance functions are shown to be asymptotically normal, more efficient than the initial un-weighted estimators, and most efficient in the sense of semiparametric efficiency for some special cases. Simulation experiments are conducted to examine the numerical performance of the proposed procedure, which is also applied to data from an air pollution study in Mexico City.     

Probability density estimation with surrogate data and validation sample

The probability density estimation problem with surrogate data and validation sample is considered. A regression calibration kernel density estimator is defined to incorporate the information contained in both surrogate variates and validation sample. Also, we define two weighted estimators which have less asymptotic variances but have bigger biases than the regression calibration kernel density estimator. All the proposed estimators are proved to be asymptotically normal. And the asymptotic representations for the mean squared error and mean integrated square error of the proposed estimators are established, respectively. A simulation study is conducted to compare the finite sample behaviors of the proposed estimators.     

Probability density estimation for survival data with censoring indicators missing at random

In this paper, some nonparametric approaches of density function estimation are developed when censoring indicators are missing at random. A conditional mean score based estimator and a mean score estimator are suggested, respectively. The two estimators are proved to be asymptotically normal and uniformly strongly consistent. The bandwidth selection problem is also discussed. A simulation study is conducted to compare finite-sample behaviors of the proposed estimators.     

Optimal variance estimation based on lagged second-order difference in nonparametric regression

Differenced estimators of variance bypass the estimation of regression function and thus are simple to calculate. However, there exist two problems: most differenced estimators do not achieve the asymptotic optimal rate for the mean square error; for finite samples the estimation bias is also important and not further considered. In this paper, we estimate the variance as the intercept in a linear regression with the lagged Gasser-type variance estimator as dependent variable. For the equidistant design, our estimator is not only \(n^{1/2}\)-consistent and asymptotically normal, but also achieves the optimal bound in terms of estimation variance with less asymptotic bias. Simulation studies show that our estimator has less mean square error than some existing differenced estimators, especially in the cases of immense oscillation of regression function and small-sized sample.     

Stepwise BAN estimators for exponential families with multivariate normal applications

Consistent, asymptotically efficient and asymptotically normal stepwise estimators are given for a subclass of the uniparametric and multiparametric exponential families. The estimators are derived by using the Robbins-Monro stochastic approximation procedure with certain families of random variables arising from the normalized log-likelihood. Considered in detail are three multivariate normal examples where the maximum likelihood estimators are not tractable.     

Asymptotic Normality of Kernel Type Density Estimators for Random Fields

Kernel type density estimators are studied for random fields. It is proved that the estimators are asymptotically normal if the set of locations of observations become more and more dense in an increasing sequence of domains. It turns out that in our setting the covariance structure of the limiting normal distribution can be a combination of those of the continuous parameter and the discrete parameter cases. The proof is based on a new central limit theorem for α-mixing random fields. Simulation results support our theorems. Final version 29 October 2004     

Hazard function estimation with cause-of-death data missing at random

Hazard function estimation is an important part of survival analysis. Interest often centers on estimating the hazard function associated with a particular cause of death. We propose three nonparametric kernel estimators for the hazard function, all of which are appropriate when death times are subject to random censorship and censoring indicators can be missing at random. Specifically, we present a regression surrogate estimator, an imputation estimator, and an inverse probability weighted estimator. All three estimators are uniformly strongly consistent and asymptotically normal. We derive asymptotic representations of the mean squared error and the mean integrated squared error for these estimators and we discuss a data-driven bandwidth selection method. A simulation study, conducted to assess finite sample behavior, demonstrates that the proposed hazard estimators perform relatively well. We illustrate our methods with an analysis of some vascular disease data.