Efficient Solution of the Complex Quadratic Tridiagonal System for C2 PH Quintic Splines

The construction of C ² Pythagorean-hodograph (PH) quintic spline curves that interpolate a sequence of points p ₀,...,p _N and satisfy prescribed end conditions incurs a tridiagonal system of N quadratic equations in N complex unknowns. Albrecht and Farouki [1] invoke the homotopy method to compute all 2 ^N+k solutions to this system, among which there is a unique good PH spline that is free of undesired loops and extreme curvature variations (k{–1,0,+1} depends on the adopted end conditions). However, the homotopy method becomes prohibitively expensive when N10, and efficient methods to construct the good spline only are desirable. The use of iterative solution methods is described herein, with starting approximations derived from ordinary C ² cubic splines. The system Jacobian satisfies a global Lipschitz condition in C ^N , yielding a simple closed-form expression of the Kantorovich condition for convergence of Newton–Raphson iterations, that can be evaluated with O(N ²) cost. These methods are also generalized to the case of non-uniform knots.     

On the LASSO and its Dual

Abstract

Proposed by Tibshirani, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) estimates a vector of regression coefficients by minimizing the residual sum of squares subject to a constraint on the l ¹-norm of the coefficient vector. The LASSO estimator typically has one or more zero elements and thus shares characteristics of both shrinkage estimation and variable selection. In this article we treat the LASSO as a convex programming problem and derive its dual. Consideration of the primal and dual problems together leads to important new insights into the characteristics of the LASSO estimator and to an improved method for estimating its covariance matrix. Using these results we also develop an efficient algorithm for computing LASSO estimates which is usable even in cases where the number of regressors exceeds the number of observations. An S-Plus library based on this algorithm is available from StatLib.     

Logspline Density Estimation for Censored Data

Abstract

Logspline density estimation is developed for data that may be right censored, left censored, or interval censored. A fully automatic method, which involves the maximum likelihood method and may involve stepwise knot deletion and either the Akaike information criterion (AIC) or Bayesian information criterion (BIC), is used to determine the estimate. In solving the maximum likelihood equations, the Newton–Raphson method is augmented by occasional searches in the direction of steepest ascent. Also, a user interface based on S is described for obtaining estimates of the density function, distribution function, and quantile function and for generating a random sample from the fitted distribution.     

Estimating Frailty Models via Poisson Hierarchical Generalized Linear Models

Frailty models extend proportional hazards models to multivariate survival data. Hierarchical-likelihood provides a simple unified framework for various random effect models such as hierarchical generalized linear models, frailty models, and mixed linear models with censoring. Wereview the hierarchical-likelihood estimation methods for frailty models. Hierarchical-likelihood for frailty models can be expressed as that for Poisson hierarchical generalized linear models. Frailty models can thus be fitted using Poisson hierarchical generalized linear models. Properties of the new methodology are demonstrated by simulation. The new method reduces the bias of maximum likelihood and penalized likelihood estimates.     

Real-Time Semiparametric Regression

We develop algorithms for performing semiparametric regression analysis in real time, with data processed as it is collected and made immediately available via modern telecommunications technologies. Our definition of semiparametric regression is quite broad and includes, as special cases, generalized linear mixed models, generalized additive models, geostatistical models, wavelet nonparametric regression models and their various combinations. Fast updating of regression fits is achieved by couching semiparametric regression into a Bayesian hierarchical model or, equivalently, graphical model framework and employing online mean field variational ideas. An Internet site attached to this article, realtime-semiparametric-regression.net, illustrates the methodology for continually arriving stock market, real estate, and airline data. Flexible real-time analyses based on increasingly ubiquitous streaming data sources stand to benefit. This article has online supplementary material.     

Quadrature Formulas for Refinable Functions and Wavelets II: Error Analysis

This paper is concerned with the construction and the analysis of Gauss quadrature formulas for computing integrals of (smooth) functions against refinable functions and wavelets. The main goal of this paper is to develop rigorous error estimates for these formulas. For the univariate setting, we derive asymptotic error bounds for a huge class of weight functions including spline functions. We also discuss multivariate quadrature rules and present error estimates for specific nonseparable refinable functions, i.e., for some special box splines.     

Linearly convergent descent methods for the unconstrained minimization of convex quadratic splines

We propose two linearly convergent descent methods for finding a minimizer of a convex quadratic spline and establish global error estimates for the iterates. One application of such descent methods is to solve convex quadratic programs, since they can be reformulated as problems of unconstrained minimization of convex quadratic splines. In particular, we derive several new linearly convergent algorthms for solving convex quadratic programs. These algorithms could be classified as row-action methods, matrix-splitting methods, and Newton-type methods.