Conditional Logistic Regression With Longitudinal Follow-up and Individual-Level Random Coefficients: A Stable and Efficient Two-Step Estimation Method

The analysis of data generated by animal habitat selection studies, by family studies of genetic diseases, or by longitudinal follow-up of households often involves fitting a mixed conditional logistic regression model to longitudinal data composed of clusters of matched case-control strata. The estimation of model parameters by maximum likelihood is especially difficult when the number of cases per stratum is greater than one. In this case, the denominator of each cluster contribution to the conditional likelihood involves a complex integral in high dimension, which leads to convergence problems in the numerical maximization. In this article we show how these computational complexities can be bypassed using a global two-step analysis for nonlinear mixed effects models. The first step estimates the cluster-specific parameters and can be achieved with standard statistical methods and software based on maximum likelihood for independent data. The second step uses the EM-algorithm in conjunction with conditional restricted maximum likelihood to estimate the population parameters. We use simulations to demonstrate that the method works well when the analysis is based on a large number of strata per cluster, as in many ecological studies. We apply the proposed two-step approach to evaluate habitat selection by pairs of bison roaming freely in their natural environment. This article has supplementary material online.     

Fast and Accurate Approximation of the Full Conditional for Gamma Shape Parameters

The gamma distribution arises frequently in Bayesian models, but there is not an easy-to-use conjugate prior for the shape parameter of a gamma. This inconvenience is usually dealt with by using either Metropolis–Hastings moves, rejection sampling methods, or numerical integration. However, in models with a large number of shape parameters, these existing methods are slower or more complicated than one would like, making them burdensome in practice. It turns out that the full conditional distribution of the gamma shape parameter is well approximated by a gamma distribution, even for small sample sizes, when the prior on the shape parameter is also a gamma distribution. This article introduces a quick and easy algorithm for finding a gamma distribution that approximates the full conditional distribution of the shape parameter. We empirically demonstrate the speed and accuracy of the approximation across a wide range of conditions. If exactness is required, the approximation can be used as a proposal distribution for Metropolis–Hastings. Supplementary material for this article is available online.     

Multiple Imputation by Ordered Monotone Blocks With Application to the Anthrax Vaccine Research Program

Multiple imputation (MI) has become a standard statistical technique for dealing with missing values. The CDC Anthrax Vaccine Research Program (AVRP) dataset created new challenges for MI due to the large number of variables of different types and the limited sample size. A common method for imputing missing data in such complex studies is to specify, for each of J variables with missing values, a univariate conditional distribution given all other variables, and then to draw imputations by iterating over the J conditional distributions. Such fully conditional imputation strategies have the theoretical drawback that the conditional distributions may be incompatible. When the missingness pattern is monotone, a theoretically valid approach is to specify, for each variable with missing values, a conditional distribution given the variables with fewer or the same number of missing values and sequentially draw from these distributions. In this article, we propose the “multiple imputation by ordered monotone blocks” approach, which combines these two basic approaches by decomposing any missingness pattern into a collection of smaller “constructed” monotone missingness patterns, and iterating. We apply this strategy to impute the missing data in the AVRP interim data. Supplemental materials, including all source code and a synthetic example dataset, are available online.     

Estimating Some Characteristics of the Conditional Distribution in Nonparametric Functional Models

This paper deals with a scalar response conditioned by a functional random variable. The main goal is to estimate nonparametrically some characteristics of this conditional distribution. Kernel type estimators for the conditional cumulative distribution function and the successive derivatives of the conditional density are introduced. Asymptotic properties are stated for each of these estimates, and they are applied to the estimations of the conditional mode and conditional quantiles. Our asymptotic results highlightes the importance of the concentration properties on small balls of the probability measure of the underlying functional variable. So, a special section is devoted to show how our results behave in several situations when the functional variable is a continuous time process, with special attention to diffusion processes and Gaussian processes. Even if the main purpose of our paper is theoretical, an application to some chemiometrical data set coming from food industry is presented in a short final section. This example illustrates the easy implementation of our method as well as its good behaviour for finite sample sizes.     

An Estimate of the Odds Ratio That Always Exists

This article proposes an estimate of the odds ratio in a (2 × 2) table obtained from studies in which the row totals are fixed by design, such as a phase II clinical trial. Our estimate, based on the median unbiased estimate of the probabilities of success in the (2× 2) table, will always be in the interval (0, ∞). Another estimate of the odds ratio which has such properties is obtained when adding .5 to each cell of the table. Using simulations, we compared our proposed estimate to that obtained by adding .5 to every cell, and found that our estimate had smaller finite sample bias, and larger mean square error. We also propose the use of the bootstrap to form a confidence interval for the odds ratio based on our proposed estimate. Instead of a Monte Carlo bootstrap, one can easily calculate the “exact” bootstrap distribution of our estimate of the odds ratio, and use this distribution to calculate confidence intervals.     

Sampling per mode for rare event simulation in switching diffusions

A straightforward application of an interacting particle system to estimate a rare event for switching diffusions fails to produce reasonable estimates within a reasonable amount of simulation time. To overcome this, a conditional “sampling per mode” algorithm has been proposed by Krystul in [10]; instead of starting the algorithm with particles randomly distributed, we draw in each mode, a fixed number particles and at each resampling step, the same number of particles is sampled for each visited mode. In this paper, we establish a law of large numbers as well as a central limit theorem for the estimate.     

A simulation-based approach to the study of coefficient of variation of Gompertz distribution under progressive first-failure censoring

In applied statistics, the coefficient of variation is widely used. However, inference concerning the coefficient of variation of non-normal distributions are rarely reported. In this article, a simulation-based Bayesian approach is adopted to estimate the coefficient of variation (CV) under progressive first-failure censored data from Gompertz distribution. The sampling schemes such as, first-failure censoring, progressive type II censoring, type II censoring and complete sample can be obtained as special cases of the progressive first-failure censored scheme. The simulation-based approach will give us a point estimate as well as the empirical sampling distribution of CV. The joint prior density as a product of conditional gamma density and inverted gamma density for the unknown Gompertz parameters are considered. In addition, the results of maximum likelihood and parametric bootstrap techniques are also proposed. An analysis of a real life data set is presented for illustrative purposes. Results from simulation studies assessing the performance of our proposed method are included.     

A bayesian approach to inference for monotone failure rates

In reliability theory, the notion of monotone failure rates plays a central role. When prior information indicates that such monotonicity is meaningful, it must be incorporated into the prior distribution whenever inference about the failure rates needs to be made. In this paper we show how this can be done in a straightforward and intuitively pleasing manner. The time interval is partitioned into subintervals of equal width and the number of failures and censoring in each interval is recorded. By defining a Dirichlet as the joint prior distribution for the forward or the backward differences of the conditional probabilities of survival in each interval, we find that the monotonicity is presenved in the posterior estimate of the failure rates. A posterior estimate of the survival function can also be obtained. We illustrate our method by applying it to some real life medical data.     

艾拉姆咖分布参数变点的Bayes估计

研究了艾拉姆咖分布变点估计的非迭代抽样算法(IBF)和MCMC算法.在贝叶斯框架下,选取无信息先验分布,得到关于变点位置的后验分布和各参数的满条件分布,并且详细介绍了IBF算法和MCMC方法的实施步骤.最后进行随机模拟试验,结果表明两种算法都能够有效的估计变点位置,并且IBF算法的计算速度优于MCMC方法.     

半参数ACD模型及其在中国股票市场中的应用研究

本文提出了半参数ACD模型并基于模拟样本与调整后的中国股票市场的价格时间间隔样本对模型进行实证分析.半参数ACD模型对条件期望的函数形式与随机误差项的分布形式要求都没有参数ACD模型强,因此不会像参数ACD模型那样因模型形式设定错误而得出错误结论.这一点在我们的实证分析中可以得到证实.与非参数ACD模型相比,半参数ACD模型能够估计出参数,这增加了模型的解释能力.半参数ACD模型估计出来的各个可加部分图形的形状对于正确设定参数ACD模型具有一定的指导作用.     

Estimating quantiles in imperfect simulation models using conditional density estimation

In this article, we consider the problem of estimating quantiles related to the outcome of experiments with a technical system given the distribution of the input together with an (imperfect) simulation model of the technical system and (few) data points from the technical system. The distribution of the outcome of the technical system is estimated in a regression model, where the distribution of the residuals is estimated on the basis of a conditional density estimate. It is shown how Monte Carlo can be used to estimate quantiles of the outcome of the technical system on the basis of the above estimates, and the rate of convergence of the quantile estimate is analyzed. Under suitable assumptions, it is shown that this rate of convergence is faster than the rate of convergence of standard estimates which ignore either the (imperfect) simulation model or the data from the technical system; hence, it is crucial to combine both kinds of information. The results are illustrated by applying the estimates to simulated and real data.

     

Pólya分布在气候统计中的应用

Pólya分布在气候统计中常用来拟合雾、雷暴等.本文给出了Pólya分布总体在全样本场合下参数的矩估计和极大似然估计,并研究了估计的存在性,并通过大量的Monte Carlo模拟说明了估计的精度,认为在样本较大的情形下极大似然估计优于矩估计.最后通过具体的雾与雷暴等气候统计数据说明本文方法的可行性.     

Cross-validated bagged learning

Many applications aim to learn a high dimensional parameter of a data generating distribution based on a sample of independent and identically distributed observations. For example, the goal might be to estimate the conditional mean of an outcome given a list of input variables. In this prediction context, bootstrap aggregating (bagging) has been introduced as a method to reduce the variance of a given estimator at little cost to bias. Bagging involves applying an estimator to multiple bootstrap samples and averaging the result across bootstrap samples. In order to address the curse of dimensionality, a common practice has been to apply bagging to estimators which themselves use cross-validation, thereby using cross-validation within a bootstrap sample to select fine-tuning parameters trading off bias and variance of the bootstrap sample-specific candidate estimators. In this article we point out that in order to achieve the correct bias variance trade-off for the parameter of interest, one should apply the cross-validation selector externally to candidate bagged estimators indexed by these fine-tuning parameters. We use three simulations to compare the new cross-validated bagging method with bagging of cross-validated estimators and bagging of non-cross-validated estimators.     

Improving density forecast by modeling asymmetric features: An application to S&P500 returns

A density forecast is an estimate of the probability distribution of the possible future values of a random variable. From the current literature, an economic time series may have three types of asymmetry: asymmetry in unconditional distribution, asymmetry in conditional distribution, volatility asymmetry. In this paper, we propose three density forecasting methods under two-piece normal assumption to capture these asymmetric features. A GARCH model with two-piece normal distribution is developed to capture asymmetries in the conditional distributions. In this approach, we first estimate parameters of a GARCH model by assuming normal innovations, and then fit a two-piece normal distribution to the empirical residuals. Block bootstrap procedure, and moving average method with two-piece normal distribution are presented for volatility asymmetry and asymmetry in the conditional distributions. Application of the developed methods to the weekly S&P500 returns illustrates that forecast quality can be significantly improved by modeling these asymmetric features.     

How to measure the impact of environmental factors in a nonparametric production model

The measurement of technical efficiency allows managers and policy makers to enhance existing differentials and potential improvements across a sample of analyzed units. The next step involves relating the obtained efficiency estimates to some external or environmental factors which may influence the production process, affect the performances and explain the efficiency differentials. Recently introduced conditional efficiency measures (,  and ), including conditional FDH, conditional DEA, conditional order-m and conditional order-α, have rapidly developed into a useful tool to explore the impact of exogenous factors on the performance of Decision Making Units in a nonparametric framework. This paper contributes in a twofold fashion. It first extends previous studies by showing that a careful analysis of both full and partial conditional measures allows the disentangling of the impact of environmental factors on the production process in its two components: impact on the attainable set and/or impact on the distribution of the efficiency scores. The authors investigate these interrelationships, both from an individual and a global perspective. Second, this paper examines the impact of environmental factors on the production process in a new two-stage type approach but using conditional measures to avoid the flaws of the traditional two-stage analysis. This novel approach also provides a measure of inefficiency whitened from the main effect of the environmental factors allowing a ranking of units according to their managerial efficiency, even when facing heterogeneous environmental conditions. The paper includes an illustration on simulated samples and a real data set from the banking industry.     

Optimizing random scan Gibbs samplers

The Gibbs sampler is a popular Markov chain Monte Carlo routine for generating random variates from distributions otherwise difficult to sample. A number of implementations are available for running a Gibbs sampler varying in the order through which the full conditional distributions used by the Gibbs sampler are cycled or visited. A common, and in fact the original, implementation is the random scan strategy, whereby the full conditional distributions are updated in a randomly selected order each iteration. In this paper, we introduce a random scan Gibbs sampler which adaptively updates the selection probabilities or “learns” from all previous random variates generated during the Gibbs sampling. In the process, we outline a number of variations on the random scan Gibbs sampler which allows the practitioner many choices for setting the selection probabilities and prove convergence of the induced (Markov) chain to the stationary distribution of interest. Though we emphasize flexibility in user choice and specification of these random scan algorithms, we present a minimax random scan which determines the selection probabilities through decision theoretic considerations on the precision of estimators of interest. We illustrate and apply the results presented by using the adaptive random scan Gibbs sampler developed to sample from multivariate Gaussian target distributions, to automate samplers for posterior simulation under Dirichlet process mixture models, and to fit mixtures of distributions.     

指数分布2/3(G)表决系统产品的统计分析

针对指数分布2/3(G)表决系统产品,本文给出了系统的寿命分布及数字特征,并在全样本场合下给出了参数的矩估计、极大似然估计和逆矩估计,通过大量Monte-Carlo模拟比较了三种点估计的精度。此外,还给出了求参数区间估计的两种方法,并通过大量Monte-Carlo模拟考察了区间估计的精度,得到参数的精确区间估计优于近似区间估计。     

A preferential attachment model with Poisson growth for scale-free networks

We propose a scale-free network model with a tunable power-law exponent. The Poisson growth model, as we call it, is an offshoot of the celebrated model of Barabási and Albert where a network is generated iteratively from a small seed network; at each step a node is added together with a number of incident edges preferentially attached to nodes already in the network. A key feature of our model is that the number of edges added at each step is a random variable with Poisson distribution, and, unlike the Barabási–Albert model where this quantity is fixed, it can generate any network. Our model is motivated by an application in Bayesian inference implemented as Markov chain Monte Carlo to estimate a network; for this purpose, we also give a formula for the probability of a network under our model.     

Asymptotic confidence intervals for Poisson regression

Let (X,Y) be a R^d×N₀-valued random vector where the conditional distribution of Y given X=x is a Poisson distribution with mean m(x). We estimate m by a local polynomial kernel estimate defined by maximizing a localized log-likelihood function. We use this estimate of m(x) to estimate the conditional distribution of Y given X=x by a corresponding Poisson distribution and to construct confidence intervals of level α of Y given X=x. Under mild regularity conditions on m(x) and on the distribution of X we show strong convergence of the integrated L₁ distance between Poisson distribution and its estimate. We also demonstrate that the corresponding confidence interval has asymptotically (i.e., for sample size tending to infinity) level α, and that the probability that the length of this confidence interval deviates from the optimal length by more than one converges to zero with the number of samples tending to infinity.     

A Predictive Approach to Tail Probability Estimation

One of the issues contributing to the success of any extreme value modeling is the choice of the number of upper order statistics used for inference, or equivalently, the selection of an appropriate threshold. In this paper we propose a Bayesian predictive approach to the peaks over threshold method with the purpose of estimating extreme quantiles beyond the range of the data. In the peaks over threshold (POT) method, we assume that the threshold identifies a model with a specified prior probability, from a set of possible models. For each model, the predictive distribution of a future excess over the corresponding threshold is computed, as well as a conditional estimate for the corresponding tail probability. The unconditional tail probability for a given future extreme observation from the unknown distribution is then obtained as an average of the conditional tail estimates with weights given by the posterior probability of each model.