Applications of conditional power function of two-sample permutation test

Permutation or randomization test is a nonparametric test in which the null distribution (distribution under the null hypothesis of no relationship or no effect) of the test statistic is attained by calculating the values of the test statistic overall permutations (or by considering a large number of random permutation) of the observed dataset. The power of permutation test evaluated based on the observed dataset is called conditional power. In this paper, the conditional power of permutation tests is reviewed. The use of the conditional power function for sample size estimation is investigated. Moreover, reproducibility and generalizability probabilities are defined. The use of these probabilities for sample size adjustment is shown. Finally, an illustration example is used.     

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.     

HAC estimation and strong linearity testing in weak ARMA models

In the framework of ARMA models, we consider testing the reliability of the standard asymptotic covariance matrix (ACM) of the least-squares estimator. The standard formula for this ACM is derived under the assumption that the errors are independent and identically distributed, and is in general invalid when the errors are only uncorrelated. The test statistic is based on the difference between a conventional estimator of the ACM of the least-squares estimator of the ARMA coefficients and its robust HAC-type version. The asymptotic distribution of the HAC estimator is established under the null hypothesis of independence, and under a large class of alternatives. The asymptotic distribution of the proposed statistic is shown to be a standard χ² under the null, and a noncentral χ² under the alternatives. The choice of the HAC estimator is discussed through asymptotic power comparisons. The finite sample properties of the test are analyzed via Monte Carlo simulation.     

Test for parameter change based on the estimator minimizing density-based divergence measures

In this paper we consider the problem of testing for a parameter change based on the cusum test proposed by Leeet al. (2003,Scandinavian Journal of Statistics,30, 781–796). The cusum test statistic is constructed via employing the estimator minimizing density-based divergence measures. It is shown that under regularity conditions, the test statistic has the limiting distribution of the sup of standard Brownian bridge. Simulation results demonstrate that the cusum test is robust when outliers exist.     

Local Whittle likelihood estimators and tests for non-Gaussian stationary processes

In this paper, we propose a local Whittle likelihood estimator for spectral densities of non-Gaussian processes and a local Whittle likelihood ratio test statistic for the problem of testing whether the spectral density of a non-Gaussian stationary process belongs to a parametric family or not. Introducing a local Whittle likelihood of a spectral density f _θ (λ) around λ, we propose a local estimator [^(q)] = [^(q)] (l){\hat{\theta } = \hat{\theta } (\lambda ) } of θ which maximizes the local Whittle likelihood around λ, and use f_{[^(q)] (l)} (l){f_{\hat{\theta } (\lambda )} (\lambda )} as an estimator of the true spectral density. For the testing problem, we use a local Whittle likelihood ratio test statistic based on the local Whittle likelihood estimator. The asymptotics of these statistics are elucidated. It is shown that their asymptotic distributions do not depend on non-Gaussianity of the processes. Because our models include nonlinear stationary time series models, we can apply the results to stationary GARCH processes. Advantage of the proposed estimator is demonstrated by a few simulated numerical examples.     

Post-<Emphasis Type="Italic">J</Emphasis> test inference in non-nested linear regression models

This paper considers the post-J test inference in non-nested linear regression models. Post-J test inference means that the inference problem is considered by taking the first stage J test into account. We first propose a post-J test estimator and derive its asymptotic distribution. We then consider the test problem of the unknown parameters, and a Wald statistic based on the post-J test estimator is proposed. A simulation study shows that the proposed Wald statistic works perfectly as well as the two-stage test from the view of the empirical size and power in large-sample cases, and when the sample size is small, it is even better. As a result, the new Wald statistic can be used directly to test the hypotheses on the unknown parameters in non-nested linear regression models.     

A Test for Additivity in Nonparametric Regression

A simple consistent test of additivity in a multiple nonparametric regression model is proposed, where data are observed on a lattice. The new test is based on an estimator of the L ²-distance between the (unknown) nonparametric regression function and its best approximation by an additive nonparametric regression model. The corresponding test-statistic is the difference of a classical ANOVA style statistic in a two-way layout with one observation per cell and a variance estimator in a homoscedastic nonparametric regression model. Under the null hypothesis of additivity asymptotic normality is established with a limiting variance which involves only the variance of the error of measurements. The results are extended to models with an approximate lattice structure, a heteroscedastic error structure and the finite sample behaviour of the proposed procedure is investigated by means of a simulation study.     

Empirical characteristic function approach to goodness-of-fit tests for the Cauchy distribution with parameters estimated by MLE or EISE

We consider goodness-of-fit tests of the Cauchy distribution based on weighted integrals of the squared distance between the empirical characteristic function of the standardized data and the characteristic function of the standard Cauchy distribution. For standardization of data Gürtler and Henze (2000,Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics,52, 267–286) used the median and the interquartile range. In this paper we use the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) and an equivariant integrated squared error estimator (EISE), which minimizes the weighted integral. We derive an explicit form of the asymptotic covariance function of the characteristic function process with parameters estimated by the MLE or the EISE. The eigenvalues of the covariance function are numerically evaluated and the asymptotic distributions of the test statistics are obtained by the residue theorem. A simulation study shows that the proposed tests compare well to tests proposed by Gürtler and Henze and more traditional tests based on the empirical distribution function.     

Un test d'adéquation global pour la fonction de répartition conditionnelle

We propose a global test of goodness-of-fit to assess the validity of an entertained statistical model by testing simultaneously all the assumptions made about it. This test is based on a local polynomial estimator of the conditional distribution function and on the standard paradigm relating the distance between the nonparametric estimator and the theoretical parametric model. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the resulting test statistic under both the null hypothesis and local alternatives. To cite this article: S. Ferrigno, G.R. Ducharme, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 341 (2005).     

Goodness-of-fit tests for a semiparametric model under random double truncation

Doubly truncated data are commonly encountered in areas like medicine, astronomy, economics, among others. A semiparametric estimator of a doubly truncated random variable may be computed based on a parametric specification of the distribution function of the truncation times. This semiparametric estimator outperforms the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator when the parametric information is correct, but might behave badly when the assumed parametric model is far off. In this paper we introduce several goodness-of-fit tests for the parametric model. The proposed tests are investigated through simulations. For illustration purposes, the tests are also applied to data on the induction time to acquired immune deficiency syndrome for blood transfusion patients.     

Statistical inference of risk ratio in a correlated 2 \times 2 table with structural zero

This paper studies a compound interval hypothesis about risk ratio in an incomplete correlated $2\times 2$ table. Asymptotic test statistics of the Wald-type and the logarithmic transformation are proposed, with methods of the sample estimation and the constrained maximum likelihood estimation (CMLE) being considered. Score test statistic is also considered for the interval hypothesis. The approximate sample size formulae required for a specific power for these tests are presented. Simulation results suggest that the logarithmic transformation test based on CMLE method outperforms the other tests in terms of true type I error rate. A real example is used to illustrate the proposed methods.     

On the Cramér–von Mises test with parametric hypothesis for poisson processes

The problem of the goodness of-fit testing for inhomogeneous Poisson process with parametric basic hypothesis is considered. A test statistic of the Cramér–von Mises type with parameter replaced by the maximum likelihood estimator is proposed and its asymptotic behavior is studied. It is shown that in the case of shift parameter, the limit distribution of the test statistics (under hypothesis) does not depend on the true value of this parameter.     

On stochastic orderings of the Wilcoxon Rank Sum test statistic—With applications to reproducibility probability estimation testing

Recently, the possibility of testing statistical hypotheses through the estimate of the reproducibility probability (i.e. the estimate of the power of the statistical test) in a general parametric framework has been introduced. In this paper, we provide some results on the stochastic orderings of the Wilcoxon Rank Sum (WRS) statistic, implying, for example, that the related test is strictly unbiased. Moreover, under some regularity conditions, we show that it is possible to define a continuous and strictly monotone power function of the WRS test. This last result is useful in order to obtain a point estimator and lower bounds for the power of the WRS test. In analogy with the parametric setting, we show that these power estimators, alias reproducibility probability estimators, can be used as test statistic, i.e. it is possible to refer directly to the estimate of the reproducibility probability to perform the WRS test. Some reproducibility probability estimators based on asymptotic approximations of the power are provided. A brief simulation shows a very high agreement between the approximated reproducibility probability based tests and the classical one.     

Two-sample homogeneity tests based on divergence measures

The concept of f-divergences introduced by Ali and Silvey (J R Stat Soc (B) 28:131–142, 1996) provides a rich set of distance like measures between pairs of distributions. Divergences do not focus on certain moments of random variables, but rather consider discrepancies between the corresponding probability density functions. Thus, two-sample tests based on these measures can detect arbitrary alternatives when testing the equality of the distributions. We treat the problem of divergence estimation as well as the subsequent testing for the homogeneity of two-samples. In particular, we propose a nonparametric estimator for f-divergences in the case of continuous distributions, which is based on kernel density estimation and spline smoothing. As we show in extensive simulations, the new method performs stable and quite well in comparison to several existing non- and semiparametric divergence estimators. Furthermore, we tackle the two-sample homogeneity problem using permutation tests based on various divergence estimators. The methods are compared to an asymptotic divergence test as well as to several traditional parametric and nonparametric procedures under different distributional assumptions and alternatives in simulations. It turns out that divergence based methods detect discrepancies between distributions more often than traditional methods if the distributions do not differ in location only. The findings are illustrated on ion mobility spectrometry data.     

Kernel-based goodness-of-fit tests for copulas with fixed smoothing parameters

We study a test statistic based on the integrated squared difference between a kernel estimator of the copula density and a kernel smoothed estimator of the parametric copula density. We show for fixed smoothing parameters that the test is consistent and that the asymptotic properties are driven by a U-statistic of order 4 with degeneracy of order 1. For practical implementation we suggest to compute the critical values through a semiparametric bootstrap. Monte Carlo results show that the bootstrap procedure performs well in small samples. In particular, size and power are less sensitive to smoothing parameter choice than they are under the asymptotic approximation obtained for a vanishing bandwidth.     

Robust <Emphasis Type="Italic">U</Emphasis>-type test for high dimensional regression coefficients using refitted cross-validation variance estimation

This paper aims to develop a new robust U-type test for high dimensional regression coefficients using the estimated U-statistic of order two and refitted cross-validation error variance estimation. It is proved that the limiting null distribution of the proposed new test is normal under two kinds of ordinary models. We further study the local power of the proposed test and compare with other competitive tests for high dimensional data. The idea of refitted cross-validation approach is utilized to reduce the bias of sample variance in the estimation of the test statistic. Our theoretical results indicate that the proposed test can have even more substantial power gain than the test by Zhong and Chen (2011) when testing a hypothesis with outlying observations and heavy tailed distributions. We assess the finite-sample performance of the proposed test by examining its size and power via Monte Carlo studies. We also illustrate the application of the proposed test by an empirical analysis of a real data example.     

Central limit theorem for perturbed empirical distribution functions evaluated at a random point

Let be an estimator obtained by integrating a kernel type density estimator based on a random sample of size n from a (smooth) distribution function F. Sufficient conditions are given for the central limit theorem to hold for the target statistic where {U_n} is a sequence of U-statistics.     

Testing Regression Coefficients in High-Dimensional and Sparse Settings

In the high-dimensional setting, this article considers a canonical testing problem in multivariate analysis, namely testing coefficients in linear regression models. Several tests for highdimensional regression coefficients have been proposed in the recent literature. However, these tests are based on the sum of squares type statistics, that perform well under the dense alternatives and suffer from low power under the sparse alternatives. In order to attack this issue, we introduce a new test statistic which is based on the maximum type statistic and magnifies the sparse signals. The limiting null distribution of the test statistic is shown to be the extreme value distribution of type I and the power of the test is analysed. In particular, it is shown theoretically and numerically that the test is powerful against sparse alternatives. Numerical studies are carried out to examine the numerical performance of the test and to compare it with other tests available in the literature.     

Two tests for heteroscedasticity in nonparametric regression

In this paper, two new tests for heteroscedasticity in nonparametric regression are presented and compared. The first of these tests consists in first estimating nonparametrically the unknown conditional variance function and then using a classical least-squares test for a general linear model to test whether this function is a constant. The second test is based on using an overall distance between a nonparametric estimator of the conditional variance function and a parametric estimator of the variance of the model under the assumption of homoscedasticity. A bootstrap algorithm is used to approximate the distribution of this test statistic. Extended versions of both procedures in two directions, first, in the context of dependent data, and second, in the case of testing if the variance function is a polynomial of a certain degree, are also described. A broad simulation study is carried out to illustrate the finite sample performance of both tests when the observations are independent and when they are dependent.     

Model checking for a general linear model with nonignorable missing covariates

In this paper, we investigate the model checking problem for a general linear model with nonignorable missing covariates. We show that, without any parametric model assumption for the response probability, the least squares method yields consistent estimators for the linear model even if only the complete data are applied. This makes it feasible to propose two testing procedures for the corresponding model checking problem: a score type lack-of-fit test and a test based on the empirical process. The asymptotic properties of the test statistics are investigated. Both tests are shown to have asymptotic power 1 for local alternatives converging to the null at the rate n-r, 0 ≤ r < 1/2 . Simulation results show that both tests perform satisfactorily.