Local efficiency of a Cramér-von Mises test of independence

Deheuvels proposed a rank test of independence based on a Cramér-von Mises functional of the empirical copula process. Using a general result on the asymptotic distribution of this process under sequences of contiguous alternatives, the local power curve of Deheuvels’ test is computed in the bivariate case and compared to that of competing procedures based on linear rank statistics. The Gil-Pelaez inversion formula is used to make additional comparisons in terms of a natural extension of Pitman's measure of asymptotic relative efficiency.     

Tests for multiple regression based on simplicial depth

A general approach for developing distribution free tests for general linear models based on simplicial depth is applied to multiple regression. The tests are based on the asymptotic distribution of the simplicial regression depth, which depends only on the distribution law of the vector product of regressor variables. Based on this formula, the spectral decomposition and thus the asymptotic distribution is derived for multiple regression through the origin and multiple regression with Cauchy distributed explanatory variables. The errors may be heteroscedastic and the concrete form of the error distribution does not need to be known. Moreover, the asymptotic distribution for multiple regression with intercept does not depend on the location and scale of the explanatory variables. A simulation study suggests that the tests can be applied also to normal distributed explanatory variables. An application on multiple regression for shape analysis of fishes demonstrates the applicability of the new tests and in particular their outlier robustness.     

Testing independence in nonparametric regression

We propose a new test for independence of error and covariate in a nonparametric regression model. The test statistic is based on a kernel estimator for the L₂-distance between the conditional distribution and the unconditional distribution of the covariates. In contrast to tests so far available in literature, the test can be applied in the important case of multivariate covariates. It can also be adjusted for models with heteroscedastic variance. Asymptotic normality of the test statistic is shown. Simulation results and a real data example are presented.     

Estimating the error distribution in nonparametric multiple regression with applications to model testing

In this paper we consider the estimation of the error distribution in a heteroscedastic nonparametric regression model with multivariate covariates. As estimator we consider the empirical distribution function of residuals, which are obtained from multivariate local polynomial fits of the regression and variance functions, respectively. Weak convergence of the empirical residual process to a Gaussian process is proved. We also consider various applications for testing model assumptions in nonparametric multiple regression. The model tests obtained are able to detect local alternatives that converge to zero at an n^−1/2-rate, independent of the covariate dimension. We consider in detail a test for additivity of the regression function.     

On testing equality of pairwise rank correlations in a multivariate random vector

Spearman’s rank-correlation coefficient (also called Spearman’s rho) represents one of the best-known measures to quantify the degree of dependence between two random variables. As a copula-based dependence measure, it is invariant with respect to the distribution’s univariate marginal distribution functions. In this paper, we consider statistical tests for the hypothesis that all pairwise Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients in a multivariate random vector are equal. The tests are nonparametric and their asymptotic distributions are derived based on the asymptotic behavior of the empirical copula process. Only weak assumptions on the distribution function, such as continuity of the marginal distributions and continuous partial differentiability of the copula, are required for obtaining the results. A nonparametric bootstrap method is suggested for either estimating unknown parameters of the test statistics or for determining the associated critical values. We present a simulation study in order to investigate the power of the proposed tests. The results are compared to a classical parametric test for equal pairwise Pearson’s correlation coefficients in a multivariate random vector. The general setting also allows the derivation of a test for stochastic independence based on Spearman’s rho.     

Affine-invariant aligned rank tests for the multivariate general linear model with VARMA errors

We develop optimal rank-based procedures for testing affine-invariant linear hypotheses on the parameters of a multivariate general linear model with elliptical VARMA errors. We propose a class of optimal procedures that are based either on residual (pseudo-)Mahalanobis signs and ranks, or on absolute interdirections and lift-interdirection ranks, i.e., on hyperplane-based signs and ranks. The Mahalanobis versions of these procedures are strictly affine-invariant, while the hyperplane-based ones are asymptotically affine-invariant. Both versions generalize the univariate signed rank procedures proposed by Hallin and Puri (J. Multivar. Anal. 50 (1994) 175), and are locally asymptotically most stringent under correctly specified radial densities. Their AREs with respect to Gaussian procedures are shown to be convex linear combinations of the AREs obtained in Hallin and Paindaveine (Ann. Statist. 30 (2002) 1103; Bernoulli 8 (2002) 787) for the pure location and purely serial models, respectively. The resulting test statistics are provided under closed form for several important particular cases, including multivariate Durbin-Watson tests, VARMA order identification tests, etc. The key technical result is a multivariate asymptotic linearity result proved in Hallin and Paindaveine (Asymptotic linearity of serial and nonserial multivariate signed rank statistics, submitted).     

Structural test in regression on functional variables

Many papers deal with structural testing procedures in multivariate regression. More recently, various estimators have been proposed for regression models involving functional explanatory variables. Thanks to these new estimators, we propose a theoretical framework for structural testing procedures adapted to functional regression. The procedures introduced in this paper are innovative and make the link between former works on functional regression and others on structural testing procedures in multivariate regression. We prove asymptotic properties of the level and the power of our procedures under general assumptions that cover a large scope of possible applications: tests for no effect, linearity, dimension reduction, …     

A multivariate nonparametric test of independence

A new nonparametric approach to the problem of testing the joint independence of two or more random vectors in arbitrary dimension is developed based on a measure of association determined by interpoint distances. The population independence coefficient takes values between 0 and 1, and equals zero if and only if the vectors are independent. We show that the corresponding statistic has a finite limit distribution if and only if the two random vectors are independent; thus we have a consistent test for independence. The coefficient is an increasing function of the absolute value of product moment correlation in the bivariate normal case, and coincides with the absolute value of correlation in the Bernoulli case. A simple modification of the statistic is affine invariant. The independence coefficient and the proposed statistic both have a natural extension to testing the independence of several random vectors. Empirical performance of the test is illustrated via a comparative Monte Carlo study.     

Nonparametric tests of independence between random vectors

A nonparametric test of the mutual independence between many numerical random vectors is proposed. This test is based on a characterization of mutual independence defined from probabilities of half-spaces in a combinatorial formula of Möbius. As such, it is a natural generalization of tests of independence between univariate random variables using the empirical distribution function. If the number of vectors is p and there are n observations, the test is defined from a collection of processes R_n,A, where A is a subset of {1,…,p} of cardinality |A|>1, which are asymptotically independent and Gaussian. Without the assumption that each vector is one-dimensional with a continuous cumulative distribution function, any test of independence cannot be distribution free. The critical values of the proposed test are thus computed with the bootstrap which is shown to be consistent. Another similar test, with the same asymptotic properties, for the serial independence of a multivariate stationary sequence is also proposed. The proposed test works when some or all of the marginal distributions are singular with respect to Lebesgue measure. Moreover, in singular cases described in Section 4, the test inherits useful invariance properties from the general affine invariance property.     

An asymptotic decomposition for multivariate distribution-free tests of independence

In the multivariate case, the empirical dependence function, defined as the empirical distribution function with reduced uniform margins on the unit interval, can be shown for an i.i.d. sequence to converge weakly in an asymptotic way to a limiting Gaussian process. The main result of this paper is that this limiting process can be canonically separated into a finite set of independent Gaussian processes, enabling one to test the existence of dependence relationships within each subset of coordinates independently (in an asymptotic way) of what occurs in the other subsets. As an application we derive the Karhunen-Loeve expansions of the corresponding processes and give the limiting distribution of the multivariate Cramer-Von Mises test of independence, generalizing results of Blum, Kiefer, Rosenblatt, and Dugué. Other extensions are mentioned, including a generalization of Kendall's τ.     

Bias of the structural quasi-score estimator of a measurement error model under misspecification of the regressor distribution

In a structural measurement error model the structural quasi-score (SQS) estimator is based on the distribution of the latent regressor variable. If this distribution is misspecified, the SQS estimator is (asymptotically) biased. Two types of misspecification are considered. Both assume that the statistician erroneously adopts a normal distribution as his model for the regressor distribution. In the first type of misspecification, the true model consists of a mixture of normal distributions which cluster around a single normal distribution, in the second type, the true distribution is a normal distribution admixed with a second normal distribution of low weight. In both cases of misspecification, the bias, of course, tends to zero when the size of misspecification tends to zero. However, in the first case the bias goes to zero in a flat way so that small deviations from the true model lead to a negligible bias, whereas in the second case the bias is noticeable even for small deviations from the true model.     

Nonparametric tests for conditional independence in two-way contingency tables

Testing for the independence between two categorical variables R and S forming a contingency table is a well-known problem: the classical chi-square and likelihood ratio tests are used. Suppose now that for each individual a set of p characteristics is also observed. Those explanatory variables, likely to be associated with R and S, can play a major role in their possible association, and it can therefore be interesting to test the independence between R and S conditionally on them. In this paper, we propose two nonparametric tests which generalise the chi-square and the likelihood ratio ideas to this case. The procedure is based on a kernel estimator of the conditional probabilities. The asymptotic law of the proposed test statistics under the conditional independence hypothesis is derived; the finite sample behaviour of the procedure is analysed through some Monte Carlo experiments and the approach is illustrated with a real data example.     

Nonparametric methods for unbalanced multivariate data and many factor levels

We propose different nonparametric tests for multivariate data and derive their asymptotic distribution for unbalanced designs in which the number of factor levels tends to infinity (large a, small n_i case). Quasi gratis, some new parametric multivariate tests suitable for the large a asymptotic case are also obtained. Finite sample performances are investigated and compared in a simulation study. The nonparametric tests are based on separate rankings for the different variables. In the presence of outliers, the proposed nonparametric methods have better power than their parametric counterparts. Application of the new tests is demonstrated using data from plant pathology.     

Likelihood ratio tests of correlated multivariate samples

We develop methods to compare multiple multivariate normally distributed samples which may be correlated. The methods are new in the context that no assumption is made about the correlations among the samples. Three types of null hypotheses are considered: equality of mean vectors, homogeneity of covariance matrices, and equality of both mean vectors and covariance matrices. We demonstrate that the likelihood ratio test statistics have finite-sample distributions that are functions of two independent Wishart variables and dependent on the covariance matrix of the combined multiple populations. Asymptotic calculations show that the likelihood ratio test statistics converge in distribution to central Chi-squared distributions under the null hypotheses regardless of how the populations are correlated. Following these theoretical findings, we propose a resampling procedure for the implementation of the likelihood ratio tests in which no restrictive assumption is imposed on the structures of the covariance matrices. The empirical size and power of the test procedure are investigated for various sample sizes via simulations. Two examples are provided for illustration. The results show good performance of the methods in terms of test validity and power.     

Multivariate nonparametric tests in a randomized complete block design

In this paper multivariate extensions of the Friedman and Page tests for the comparison of several treatments are introduced. Related unadjusted and adjusted treatment effect estimates for the multivariate response variable are also found and their properties discussed. The test statistics and estimates are analogous to the traditional univariate methods. In test constructions, the univariate ranks are replaced by multivariate spatial ranks (J. Nonparam. Statist. 5 (1995) 201). Asymptotic theory is developed to provide approximations for the limiting distributions of the test statistics and estimates. Limiting efficiencies of the tests and treatment effect estimates are found in the multivariate normal and t distribution cases. The tests are rotation invariant only, but affine invariant versions can be easily constructed. The theory is illustrated by an example.     

Model checking in errors-in-variables regression

This paper discusses a class of minimum distance tests for fitting a parametric regression model to a class of regression functions in the errors-in-variables model. These tests are based on certain minimized distances between a nonparametric regression function estimator and a deconvolution kernel estimator of the conditional expectation of the parametric model being fitted. The paper establishes the asymptotic normality of the proposed test statistics under the null hypothesis and that of the corresponding minimum distance estimators. We also prove the consistency of the proposed tests against a fixed alternative and obtain the asymptotic distributions for general local alternatives. Simulation studies show that the testing procedures are quite satisfactory in the preservation of the finite sample level and in terms of a power comparison.     

Rank test for heteroscedastic functional data

In this paper, we consider (mid-)rank based inferences for testing hypotheses in a fully nonparametric marginal model for heteroscedastic functional data that contain a large number of within subject measurements from possibly only a limited number of subjects. The effects of several crossed factors and their interactions with time are considered. The results are obtained by establishing asymptotic equivalence between the rank statistics and their asymptotic rank transforms. The inference holds under the assumption ofα-mixing without moment assumptions. As a result, the proposed tests are applicable to data from heavy-tailed or skewed distributions, including both continuous and ordered categorical responses. Simulation results and a real application confirm that the (mid-)rank procedures provide both robustness and increased power over the methods based on original observations for non-normally distributed data.     

Empirical likelihood analysis of the Buckley-James estimator

The censored linear regression model, also referred to as the accelerated failure time (AFT) model when the logarithm of the survival time is used as the response variable, is widely seen as an alternative to the popular Cox model when the assumption of proportional hazards is questionable. Buckley and James [Linear regression with censored data, Biometrika 66 (1979) 429-436] extended the least squares estimator to the semiparametric censored linear regression model in which the error distribution is completely unspecified. The Buckley-James estimator performs well in many simulation studies and examples. The direct interpretation of the AFT model is also more attractive than the Cox model, as Cox has pointed out, in practical situations. However, the application of the Buckley-James estimation was limited in practice mainly due to its illusive variance. In this paper, we use the empirical likelihood method to derive a new test and confidence interval based on the Buckley-James estimator of the regression coefficient. A standard chi-square distribution is used to calculate the P-value and the confidence interval. The proposed empirical likelihood method does not involve variance estimation. It also shows much better small sample performance than some existing methods in our simulation studies.     

Efficient empirical-likelihood-based inferences for the single-index model

This article proposes the efficient empirical-likelihood-based inferences for the single component of the parameter and the link function in the single-index model. Unlike the existing empirical likelihood procedures for the single-index model, the proposed profile empirical likelihood for the parameter is constructed by using some components of the maximum empirical likelihood estimator (MELE) based on a semiparametric efficient score. The empirical-likelihood-based inference for the link function is also considered. The resulting statistics are proved to follow a standard chi-squared limiting distribution. Simulation studies are undertaken to assess the finite sample performance of the proposed confidence intervals. An application to real data set is illustrated.     

Semiparametric inference for transformation models via empirical likelihood

Recent advances in the transformation model have made it possible to use this model for analyzing a variety of censored survival data. For inference on the regression parameters, there are semiparametric procedures based on the normal approximation. However, the accuracy of such procedures can be quite low when the censoring rate is heavy. In this paper, we apply an empirical likelihood ratio method and derive its limiting distribution via U-statistics. We obtain confidence regions for the regression parameters and compare the proposed method with the normal approximation based method in terms of coverage probability. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed empirical likelihood method overcomes the under-coverage problem substantially and outperforms the normal approximation based method. The proposed method is illustrated with a real data example. Finally, our method can be applied to general U-statistic type estimating equations.