Some rememarks on locally most powerful unbiased tests for the detection of mixtures of poisson or binomial distributions

In t h i s note mixture models are used to represent overdispersion relative to Poisson or binomial distributions. We flnd a sufflclent condition on the mixing distribution underich the detection of mixture departures from the Poisson or binomial adrnits a locally most powerful unbiased test. The conditions specify plynoria: relations between the variance and mean of Le glxing distribution.     

Improved auxiliary mixture sampling for hierarchical models of non-Gaussian data

The article considers Bayesian analysis of hierarchical models for count, binomial and multinomial data using efficient MCMC sampling procedures. To this end, an improved method of auxiliary mixture sampling is proposed. In contrast to previously proposed samplers the method uses a bounded number of latent variables per observation, independent of the intensity of the underlying Poisson process in the case of count data, or of the number of experiments in the case of binomial and multinomial data. The bounded number of latent variables results in a more general error distribution, which is a negative log-Gamma distribution with arbitrary integer shape parameter. The required approximations of these distributions by Gaussian mixtures have been computed. Overall, the improvement leads to a substantial increase in efficiency of auxiliary mixture sampling for highly structured models. The method is illustrated for finite mixtures of generalized linear models and an epidemiological case study.     

ESTIMATION OF A PROPORTION USING SEVERAL INDEPENDENT SAMPLES OF BINOMIAL MIXTURES

This paper considers a sequence of independent counts, with each count arising from a mixture of binomial distributions; the mixing distribution is fixed but the number of trials varies from count to count. In this common situation, an estimate of the underlying mean binomial proportion is needed. Two estimators are in general use: the arithmetic average and a weighted average of the observed proportions. Variances of the two estimators are compared and used to decide which estimator is preferred in a given context. The relative merits depend on the distribution of the proportions and the numbers of trials used.     

Ordering Comparison of Logarithmic Series Random Variables with their Mixtures

The problem of comparing some known distributions in various types of stochastic orderings has been of interest to many authors. In particular, several authors have been recently concerned with the comparison of Poisson, binomial, and negative binomial distributions with their respective mixtures. Incidentally, these distributions are among the four well-known distributions of the family of generalized power series distributions (GPSD's). The remaining distribution is the logarithmic series distribution. In this paper, we shall be concerned with comparing this remaining distribution of the class GPSD with its mixture in terms of various types of stochastic orderings such as the simple stochastic, likelihood ratio, uniformly more variable, convex, hazard rate and expectation orderings. Derivation of the results in this case prove to be computationally trickier than the other three. The special case when the means of the two distributions are the same is also discussed. Finally, an illustrative explicit example is provided.     

Nonparametric hierarchical Bayes analysis of binomial data via Bernstein polynomial priors

For binomial data analysis, many methods based on empirical Bayes interpretations have been developed, in which a variance‐stabilizing transformation and a normality assumption are usually required. To achieve the greatest model flexibility, we conduct nonparametric Bayesian inference for binomial data and employ a special nonparametric Bayesian prior—the Bernstein–Dirichlet process (BDP)—in the hierarchical Bayes model for the data. The BDP is a special Dirichlet process (DP) mixture based on beta distributions, and the posterior distribution resulting from it has a smooth density defined on [0, 1]. We examine two Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures for simulating from the resulting posterior distribution, and compare their convergence rates and computational efficiency. In contrast to existing results for posterior consistency based on direct observations, the posterior consistency of the BDP, given indirect binomial data, is established. We study shrinkage effects and the robustness of the BDP‐based posterior estimators in comparison with several other empirical and hierarchical Bayes estimators, and we illustrate through examples that the BDP‐based nonparametric Bayesian estimate is more robust to the sample variation and tends to have a smaller estimation error than those based on the DP prior. In certain settings, the new estimator can also beat Stein's estimator, Efron and Morris's limited‐translation estimator, and many other existing empirical Bayes estimators. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 40: 328–344; 2012 © 2012 Statistical Society of Canada     

A note on the EM algorithm for estimation in the destructive negative binomial cure rate model

In this note we present a modification in the EM algorithm for the destructive negative binomial cure rate model. This alteration enables us to obtain the estimates of the whole parameter vector from the complete log-likelihood function, avoiding the corresponding observed log-likelihood function, which is more involved. To achieve this goal, we resort to the mixture representation of the negative binomial distribution in terms of the Poisson and gamma distributions.     

The two-sided power-binomial distribution for modeling binary count data

The two-sided power (TSP) distribution is a flexible two-parameter distribution having uniform, power function and triangular as sub-distributions, and it is a reasonable alternative to beta distribution in some cases. In this work, we introduce the TSP-binomial model which is defined as a mixture of binomial distributions, with the binomial parameter p having a TSP distribution. We study its distributional properties and demonstrate its use on some data. It is shown that the newly defined model is a useful candidate for overdispersed binomial data.     

Forecasting future values of changing sequences

Sequences of independent random variables are observed and on the basis of these observations future values of the process are forecast. The Bayesian predictive density of k future observations for normal, exponential, and binomial sequences which change exactly once are analyzed for several cases. It is seen that the Bayesian predictive densities are mixtures of standard probability distributions. For example, with normal sequences the Bayesian predictive density is a mixture of either normal or t-distributions, depending on whether or not the common variance is known. The mixing probabilities are the same as those occurring in the corresponding posterior distribution of the mean(s) of the sequence. The predictive mass function of the number of future successes that will occur in a changing Bernoulli sequence is computed and point and interval predictors are illustrated.     

Uniqueness of estimation and identifiability in mixture models

Further properties of the nonparametric maximum-likelihood estimator of a mixing distribution are obtained by exploiting the properties of totally positive kernels. Sufficient conditions for uniqueness of the estimator are given. This result is more general, and the proof is substantially simpler, than given previously. When the component density has support on N points, it is shown that all identifiable mixing distributions have support on no more than N/2 points. Identifiable mixtures are shown to lie on the boundary of the mixture model space. The maximum-likelihood estimate is shown to be unique if the vector of observations lies outside this space.     

Forms for the distribution of ss ilkptxcxtt statistic for bivariate sphericity

This paper examines the nonnuU distribution of the ellipticity statistic used for testing sphericity in a bivariate normal population. The distribution function is expressed as mixtures of F distribution functions, where the mixing probabilities are binomial and mgatiire binomial. A simple approximation to the distribution is suggested and examined     

A family of bivariate binomial distributions generated by extreme bernoulli distributions

In this paper, bivariate binomial distributions generated by extreme bivariate Bernoulli distributions are obtained and studied. Representation of the bivariate binomial distribution generated by a convex combination of extreme bivariate Bernoulli distributions as a mixture of distributions in the class of bivariate binomial distribution generated by extreme bivariate Bernoulli distribution is obtained. A subfamily of bivariate binomial distributions exhibiting the property of positive and negative dependence is constructed. Some results on positive dependence notions as it relates to the bivariate binomial distribution generated by extreme bivariate Bernoulli distribution and a linear combination of such distributions are obtained.     

Asymptotic Normality in Mixtures of Power Series Distributions

Abstract.  The problem of estimating the individual probabilities of a discrete distribution is considered. The true distribution of the independent observations is a mixture of a family of power series distributions. First, we ensure identifiability of the mixing distribution assuming mild conditions. Next, the mixing distribution is estimated by non-parametric maximum likelihood and an estimator for individual probabilities is obtained from the corresponding marginal mixture density. We establish asymptotic normality for the estimator of individual probabilities by showing that, under certain conditions, the difference between this estimator and the empirical proportions is asymptotically negligible. Our framework includes Poisson, negative binomial and logarithmic series as well as binomial mixture models. Simulations highlight the benefit in achieving normality when using the proposed marginal mixture density approach instead of the empirical one, especially for small sample sizes and/or when interest is in the tail areas. A real data example is given to illustrate the use of the methodology.     

A bivariate mixture of negative binomial distributions and its applications

Abstract

We construct a new bivariate mixture of negative binomial distributions which represents over-dispersed data more efficiently. This is an extension of a univariate mixture of beta and negative binomial distributions. Characteristics of this joint distribution are studied including conditional distributions. Some properties of the correlation coefficient are explored. We demonstrate the applicability of our proposed model by fitting to three real data sets with correlated count data. A comparison is made with some previously used models to show the effectiveness of the new model.     

Confidence regions for two proportions from independent negative binomial distributions

The negative binomial distribution offers an alternative view to the binomial distribution for modeling count data. This alternative view is particularly useful when the probability of success is very small, because, unlike the fixed sampling scheme of the binomial distribution, the inverse sampling approach allows one to collect enough data in order to adequately estimate the proportion of success. However, despite work that has been done on the joint estimation of two binomial proportions from independent samples, there is little, if any, similar work for negative binomial proportions. In this paper, we construct and investigate three confidence regions for two negative binomial proportions based on three statistics: the Wald (W), score (S) and likelihood ratio (LR) statistics. For large-to-moderate sample sizes, this paper finds that all three regions have good coverage properties, with comparable average areas for large sample sizes but with the S method producing the smaller regions for moderate sample sizes. In the small sample case, the LR method has good coverage properties, but often at the expense of comparatively larger areas. Finally, we apply these three regions to some real data for the joint estimation of liver damage rates in patients taking one of two drugs.     

Flexible mixture modelling using the multivariate skew-t-normal distribution

This paper presents a robust probabilistic mixture model based on the multivariate skew-t-normal distribution, a skew extension of the multivariate Student’s t distribution with more powerful abilities in modelling data whose distribution seriously deviates from normality. The proposed model includes mixtures of normal, t and skew-normal distributions as special cases and provides a flexible alternative to recently proposed skew t mixtures. We develop two analytically tractable EM-type algorithms for computing maximum likelihood estimates of model parameters in which the skewness parameters and degrees of freedom are asymptotically uncorrelated. Standard errors for the parameter estimates can be obtained via a general information-based method. We also present a procedure of merging mixture components to automatically identify the number of clusters by fitting piecewise linear regression to the rescaled entropy plot. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed methodology are illustrated by two real-life examples.     

A generalization of the beta–binomial distribution

Summary.  The paper describes a distribution generated by the Gaussian hypergeometric function that may be seen as a generalization of the beta–binomial distribution. It is expressed as a generalized beta mixture of a binomial distribution. This new mixing distribution allows the existence of a mode and an antimode, which is very useful for fitting some data sets. Two examples illustrate the greater versatility of the new distribution compared with the beta–binomial distribution.     

Binomial Mixture Modeling of University Credits

The paper reviews finite mixture models for binomial counts with concomitant variables. These models are well known in theory, but they are rarely applied. We use a binomial finite mixture to model the number of credits gained by freshmen during the first year at the School of Economics of the University of Florence. The finite mixture approach allows us to appropriately account for the large number of zeroes and the multimodality of the observed distribution. Moreover, we rely on a concomitant variable specification to investigate the role of student background characteristics and of a compulsory pre-enrollment test in predicting gained credits. In the paper, we deal with model selection, including the choice of the number of components, and we devise numerical and graphical summaries of the model results in order to exploit the information content of the concomitant variable specification. The main finding is that the introduction of the pre-enrollment test gives additional information for student tutoring, even if the predictive power is modest.     

A diagnostic tool for mixture models

Mixture models are used in a large number of applications yet there remain difficulties with maximum likelihood estimation. For instance, the likelihood surface for finite normal mixtures often has a large number of local maximizers, some of which do not give a good representation of the underlying features of the data. In this paper we present diagnostics that can be used to check the quality of an estimated mixture distribution. Particular attention is given to normal mixture models since they frequently arise in practice. We use the diagnostic tools for finite normal mixture problems and in the nonparametric setting where the difficult problem of determining a scale parameter for a normal mixture density estimate is considered. A large sample justification for the proposed methodology will be provided and we illustrate its implementation through several examples     

A full likelihood procedure of exchangeable negative binomials for modelling correlated and overdispersed count data

This paper introduces an exchangeable negative binomial distribution resulting from relaxing the independence of the Bernoulli sequence associated with a negative binomial distribution to exchangeability. It is demonstrated that the introduced distribution is a mixture of negative binomial distributions and can be characterized by infinitely many parameters that form a completely monotone sequence. The moments of the distribution are derived and a small simulation is conducted to illustrate the distribution. For data analytic purposes, two methods, truncation and completely-monotone links, are given for converting the saturated distribution of infinitely many parameters to parsimonious distributions of finitely many parameters. A full likelihood procedure is described which can be used to investigate correlated and overdispersed count data common in biomedical sciences and teratology. In the end, the introduced distribution is applied to analyze a real clinical data of burn wounds on patients.     

Mixture formulations of a bivariate negative binomial distribution with applications

This paper considers further mixture formulations of the bivariate negative binomial (BNB) distribution of Edwards and Gurland (1961) and Subrahmaniam (1966). These formulations and some known ones are applied (1) to obtain a bivariate generalized negative binomial (BGNB) distribution of Bhattacharya (1966), (2) to establish a connection between the accident-proneness models given by the BNB, BGNB and Bhattacharya's bivariate distributions, and (3) to compute the grade correlation and distribution function of the Wicksell-Kibble bivariate gamma distribution.