Conditionally Specified Space-Time Models for Multivariate Processes

This article proposes a class of conditionally specified models for the analysis of multivariate space-time processes. Such models are useful in situations where there is sparse spatial coverage of one of the processes and much more dense coverage of the other process(es). The dependence structure across processes and over space, and time is completely specified through a neighborhood structure. These models are applicable to both point and block sources; for example, multiple pollutant monitors (point sources) or several county-level exposures (block sources). We introduce several computational tricks that are integral for model fitting, give some simple sufficient and necessary conditions for the space-time covariance matrix to be positive definite, and implement a Gibbs sampler, using Hybrid MC steps, to sample from the posterior distribution of the parameters. Model fit is assessed via the DIC. Predictive accuracy, over both time and space, is assessed both relatively and absolutely via mean squared prediction error and coverage probabilities. As an illustration of these models, we fit them to particulate matter and ozone data collected in the Los Angeles, CA, area in 1995 over a three-month period. In these data, the spatial coverage of particulate matter was sparse relative to that of ozone.     

Bayesian Semiparametric Regression Analysis of Multicategorical Time-Space Data

We present a unified semiparametric Bayesian approach based on Markov random field priors for analyzing the dependence of multicategorical response variables on time, space and further covariates. The general model extends dynamic, or state space, models for categorical time series and longitudinal data by including spatial effects as well as nonlinear effects of metrical covariates in flexible semiparametric form. Trend and seasonal components, different types of covariates and spatial effects are all treated within the same general framework by assigning appropriate priors with different forms and degrees of smoothness. Inference is fully Bayesian and uses MCMC techniques for posterior analysis. The approach in this paper is based on latent semiparametric utility models and is particularly useful for probit models. The methods are illustrated by applications to unemployment data and a forest damage survey.     

Efficient Data Augmentation for Fitting Stochastic Epidemic Models to Prevalence Data

Stochastic epidemic models describe the dynamics of an epidemic as a disease spreads through a population. Typically, only a fraction of cases are observed at a set of discrete times. The absence of complete information about the time evolution of an epidemic gives rise to a complicated latent variable problem in which the state space size of the epidemic grows large as the population size increases. This makes analytically integrating over the missing data infeasible for populations of even moderate size. We present a data augmentation Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) framework for Bayesian estimation of stochastic epidemic model parameters, in which measurements are augmented with subject-level disease histories. In our MCMC algorithm, we propose each new subject-level path, conditional on the data, using a time-inhomogenous continuous-time Markov process with rates determined by the infection histories of other individuals. The method is general, and may be applied to a broad class of epidemic models with only minimal modifications to the model dynamics and/or emission distribution. We present our algorithm in the context of multiple stochastic epidemic models in which the data are binomially sampled prevalence counts, and apply our method to data from an outbreak of influenza in a British boarding school. Supplementary material for this article is available online.     

Computational Bayesian Analysis of Hidden Markov Models

Abstract

Versions of the Gibbs Sampler are derived for the analysis of data from hidden Markov chains and hidden Markov random fields. The principal new development is to use the pseudolikelihood function associated with the underlying Markov process in place of the likelihood, which is intractable in the case of a Markov random field, in the simulation step for the parameters in the Markov process. Theoretical aspects are discussed and a numerical study is reported.     

Noisy Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for Doubly Intractable Distributions

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has been progressively incorporated within the statistician’s toolbox as an alternative sampling method in settings when standard Metropolis–Hastings is inefficient. HMC generates a Markov chain on an augmented state space with transitions based on a deterministic differential flow derived from Hamiltonian mechanics. In practice, the evolution of Hamiltonian systems cannot be solved analytically, requiring numerical integration schemes. Under numerical integration, the resulting approximate solution no longer preserves the measure of the target distribution, therefore an accept–reject step is used to correct the bias. For doubly intractable distributions—such as posterior distributions based on Gibbs random fields—HMC suffers from some computational difficulties: computation of gradients in the differential flow and computation of the accept–reject proposals poses difficulty. In this article, we study the behavior of HMC when these quantities are replaced by Monte Carlo estimates. Supplemental codes for implementing methods used in the article are available online.     

Fully Bayesian Analysis of Switching Gaussian State Space Models

In the present paper we study switching state space models from a Bayesian point of view. We discuss various MCMC methods for Bayesian estimation, among them unconstrained Gibbs sampling, constrained sampling and permutation sampling. We address in detail the problem of unidentifiability, and discuss potential information available from an unidentified model. Furthermore the paper discusses issues in model selection such as selecting the number of states or testing for the presence of Markov switching heterogeneity. The model likelihoods of all possible hypotheses are estimated by using the method of bridge sampling. We conclude the paper with applications to simulated data as well as to modelling the U.S./U.K. real exchange rate.     

copCAR: A Flexible Regression Model for Areal Data

Non-Gaussian spatial data are common in many fields. When fitting regressions for such data, one needs to account for spatial dependence to ensure reliable inference for the regression coefficients. The two most commonly used regression models for spatially aggregated data are the automodel and the areal generalized linear mixed model (GLMM). These models induce spatial dependence in different ways but share the smoothing approach, which is intuitive but problematic. This article develops a new regression model for areal data. The new model is called copCAR because it is copula-based and employs the areal GLMM’s conditional autoregression (CAR). copCAR overcomes many of the drawbacks of the automodel and the areal GLMM. Specifically, copCAR (1) is flexible and intuitive, (2) permits positive spatial dependence for all types of data, (3) permits efficient computation, and (4) provides reliable spatial regression inference and information about dependence strength. An implementation is provided by R package copCAR, which is available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network, and supplementary materials are available online.     

Approximation of maximum of Gaussian random fields

This contribution is concerned with Gumbel limiting results for supremum ${\mathbb{M}}_{\mathit{n}}={\sup }_{\mathit{t}\in [\mathbf{0},{\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{n}}]}?|X_{\mathit{n}}(\mathit{t})|$ with $X_{\mathit{n}},\mathit{n}\in {\mathbb{N}}^2$ centered Gaussian random fields with continuous trajectories. We show first the convergence of a related point process to a Poisson point process thereby extending previous results obtained in [8] for Gaussian processes. Furthermore, we derive Gumbel limit results for ${\mathbb{M}}_{\mathit{n}}$ as $\mathit{n}\to \infty$ and show a second-order approximation for $\mathbb{E}{\{{\mathbb{M}}_{\mathit{n}}^p\}}^{1/p}$ for any $p\ge 1$.     

Asymptotic Expansions for the Distribution of the Maximum of Gaussian Random Fields

Some asymptotic results are proved for the distribution of the maximum of a centered Gaussian random field with unit variance on a compact subset S of ^N . They are obtained by a Rice method and the evaluation of some moments of the number of local maxima of the Gaussian field above an high level inside S and on the border S. Depending on the geometry of the border we give up to N+1 terms of the expansion sometimes with exponentially small remainder. Application to waves maximum is shown.     

Reparameterized and Marginalized Posterior and Predictive Sampling for Complex Bayesian Geostatistical Models

This article proposes a four-pronged approach to efficient Bayesian estimation and prediction for complex Bayesian hierarchical Gaussian models for spatial and spatiotemporal data. The method involves reparameterizing the covariance structure of the model, reformulating the means structure, marginalizing the joint posterior distribution, and applying a simplex-based slice sampling algorithm. The approach permits fusion of point-source data and areal data measured at different resolutions and accommodates nonspatial correlation and variance heterogeneity as well as spatial and/or temporal correlation. The method produces Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers with low autocorrelation in the output, so that fewer iterations are needed for Bayesian inference than would be the case with other sampling algorithms. Supplemental materials are available online.     

Uniform dimension results for Gaussian random fields

Let X = {X(t), t ∈ ℝ ^N } be a Gaussian random field with values in ℝ ^d defined by

Bayesian Analysis of Geostatistical Models With an Auxiliary Lattice

The Gaussian geostatistical model has been widely used for modeling spatial data. However, this model suffers from a severe difficulty in computation: it requires users to invert a large covariance matrix. This is infeasible when the number of observations is large. In this article, we propose an auxiliary lattice-based approach for tackling this difficulty. By introducing an auxiliary lattice to the space of observations and defining a Gaussian Markov random field on the auxiliary lattice, our model completely avoids the requirement of matrix inversion. It is remarkable that the computational complexity of our method is only O(n), where n is the number of observations. Hence, our method can be applied to very large datasets with reasonable computational (CPU) times. The numerical results indicate that our model can approximate Gaussian random fields very well in terms of predictions, even for those with long correlation lengths. For real data examples, our model can generally outperform conventional Gaussian random field models in both prediction errors and CPU times. Supplemental materials for the article are available online.     

Almost Sure Asymptotics for Extremes of Non-stationary Gaussian Random Fields

In this paper, the authors prove an almost sure limit theorem for the maxima of non-stationary Caussian random fields under some mild conditions related to the covariance functions of the Gaussian fields. As the by-products, the authors also obtain several weak convergence results which extended the existing results.     

Small Deviations for Gaussian Markov Processes Under the Sup-Norm

Let {X(t); 0t1} be a real-valued continuous Gaussian Markov process with mean zero and covariance (s, t) = EX(s) X(t) 0 for 0<s, t<1. It is known that we can write (s, t) = G(min(s, t)) H(max(s, t)) with G>0, H>0 and G/H nondecreasing on the interval (0, 1). We show that

Exploratory Data Analysis for Complex Models

“Exploratory” and “confirmatory” data analysis can both be viewed as methods for comparing observed data to what would be obtained under an implicit or explicit statistical model. For example, many of Tukey's methods can be interpreted as checks against hypothetical linear models and Poisson distributions. In more complex situations, Bayesian methods can be useful for constructing reference distributions for various plots that are useful in exploratory data analysis. This article proposes an approach to unify exploratory data analysis with more formal statistical methods based on probability models. These ideas are developed in the context of examples from fields including psychology, medicine, and social science.     

基于Gibbs抽样算法的贝叶斯动态面板数据模型分析

针对现有动态面板数据分析中存在偶发参数和没有考虑模型参数的不确定性风险问题,提出了基于Gibbs抽样算法的贝叶斯随机系数动态面板数据模型.假设初始值服从平稳分布,自回归系数服从Logit正态分布的条件下,设计了Markov链Monte Carlo数值计算程序,得到了模型参数的贝叶斯估计值.实证研究结果表明:基于Gibb...     

纵向数据非参数模型的惩罚修正二次推断函数估计

基于纵向数据研究非参数模型y=f(t)+ε,其中f(·)为未知平滑函数,ε为零均值随机误差项.利用截断幂函数基对f(·)进行基函数展开近似,并且结合惩罚样条的方法构造关于基函数系数的惩罚修正二次推断函数.然后利用割线法迭代得到基函数系数估计的数值解,从而得到未知平滑函数的估计.理论证明,应用此方法所得到的基函数系数估计具有相合性和渐近正态性.最后通过数值方法得到了较好的拟合结果.     

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In this paper, the semiparametric generalized partially linear models (GPLMs) for longitudinal data is studied. We approximate the nonparametric function in the GPLMs by a regression spline, and use quadratic inference functions (QIF) to take the within-cluster correlation into account without involving direct estimation of nuisance parameters in the correlation matrix. We establish the asymptotic normality of the resulting estimators. The finite sample performance of the proposed methods is evaluated through simulation studies and a real data analysis.