Probability matching priors for an extended statistical calibration model

Statistical calibration or inverse prediction involves data collected in two stages. In the first stage, several values of an endogenous variable are observed, each corresponding to a known value of an exogenous variable; in the second stage, one or more values of the endogenous variable are observed which correspond to an unknown value of the exogenous variable. When estimating the value of the latter, it has been suggested that the variability about the regression relationship should not be assumed to be equal for the two stages of data collection. In this paper, the authors present a Bayesian method of analysis based on noninformative priors that takes this heteroscedasticity into account.     

ERROR-FREE MILESTONES IN ERROR PRONE MEASUREMENTS

A predictor variable or dose that is measured with substantial error may possess an error-free milestone, such that it is known with negligible error whether the value of the variable is to the left or right of the milestone. Such a milestone provides a basis for estimating a linear relationship between the true but unknown value of the error-free predictor and an outcome, because the milestone creates a strong and valid instrumental variable. The inferences are nonparametric and robust, and in the simplest cases, they are exact and distribution free. We also consider multiple milestones for a single predictor and milestones for several predictors whose partial slopes are estimated simultaneously. Examples are drawn from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, in which a BA degree acts as a milestone for sixteen years of education, and the binary indicator of military service acts as a milestone for years of service.     

Uniformly most powerful unbiased test in univariate linear calibration

In this paper, we deal with the hypothesis testing problems for the univariate linear calibration, where a normally distributed response variable and an explanatory variable are involved, and the observations of the response variable corresponding to known values of the explanatory variable are used for making inferences concerning a single unknown value of the explanatory variable. The uniformly most powerful unbiased tests for both one-sided and two-sided hypotheses are constructed and verified. The power behaviour of the proposed tests is numerically compared with that of the existing method, and simulations show that the proposed tests make the powers improved.     

Computing Marginal Likelihoods via Posterior Sampling

This article presents a novel and simple approach to the estimation of a marginal likelihood, in a Bayesian context. The estimate is based on a Markov chain output which provides samples from the posterior distribution and an additional latent variable. It is the mean of this latent variable which provides the estimate for the value of the marginal likelihood.     

Optimizing a control plan using a structural equation model with an application to statistical process analysis

In the case where non-experimental data are available from an industrial process and a directed graph for how various factors affect a response variable is known based on a substantive understanding of the process, we consider a problem in which a control plan involving multiple treatment variables is conducted in order to bring a response variable close to a target value with variation reduction. Using statistical causal analysis with linear (recursive and non-recursive) structural equation models, we configure an optimal control plan involving multiple treatment variables through causal parameters. Based on the formulation, we clarify the causal mechanism for how the variance of a response variable changes when the control plan is conducted. The results enable us to evaluate the effect of a control plan on the variance of a response variable from non-experimental data and provide a new application of linear structural equation models to engineering science.     

Economic design of &Xmacron; charts with variable parameters: the Markov chain approach

This paper presents an economic design of &Xmacron; control charts with variable sample sizes, variable sampling intervals, and variable control limits. The sample size n, the sampling interval h, and the control limit coefficient k vary between minimum and maximum values, tightening or relaxing the control. The control is relaxed when an &Xmacron; value falls close to the target and is tightened when an &Xmacron; value falls far from the target. A cost model is constructed that involves the cost of false alarms, the cost of finding and eliminating the assignable cause, the cost associated with production in an out-of-control state, and the cost of sampling and testing. The assumption of an exponential distribution to describe the length of time the process remains in control allows the application of the Markov chain approach for developing the cost function. A comprehensive study is performed to examine the economic advantages of varying the &Xmacron; chart parameters.     

Partitioning Pearson's Chi-squared Statistic for Singly Ordered Two-way Contingency Tables

This paper presents a partition of Pearson's chi-squared statistic for singly ordered two-way contingency tables. The partition involves using orthogonal polynomials for the ordinal variable while generalized basic vectors are used for the non-ordinal variable. The benefit of this partition is that important information about the structure of the ordered variable can be identified in terms of locations, dispersion and higher order components. For the non-ordinal variable, it is shown that the squared singular values from the singular value decomposition of the transformed dataset can be partitioned into location, dispersion and higher order components. The paper also uses the chi-squared partition to present an alternative to the maximum likelihood technique of parameter estimation for the log-linear analysis of the contingency table.     

Object-Oriented Bayesian Networks for Modeling the Respondent Measurement Error

In this article, Object-Oriented Bayesian Networks (OOBN) are proposed as a tool to model measurement errors in a categorical variable due to respondent. A mixed measurement error model is presented and an OOBN implementing such a model is introduced. The insertion of evidence represented by the observed value and its propagation throughout the network yields for each unit the probability distribution of the true value given the observed. Two methods are used to predict the individual true value and their performance is evaluated via simulation.     

Calibration Intervals in Linear Regression Models

Many of the existing methods of finding calibration intervals in simple linear regression rely on the inversion of prediction limits. In this article, we propose an alternative procedure which involves two stages. In the first stage, we find a confidence interval for the value of the explanatory variable which corresponds to the given future value of the response. In the second stage, we enlarge the confidence interval found in the first stage to form a confidence interval called, calibration interval, for the value of the explanatory variable which corresponds to the theoretical mean value of the future observation. In finding the confidence interval in the first stage, we have used the method based on hypothesis testing and percentile bootstrap. When the errors are normally distributed, the coverage probability of resulting calibration interval based on hypothesis testing is comparable to that of the classical calibration interval. In the case of non normal errors, the coverage probability of the calibration interval based on hypothesis testing is much closer to the target value than that of the calibration interval based on percentile bootstrap.     

Modeling Longitudinal Obesity Data with Intermittent Missingness Using a New Latent Variable Model

We propose a latent variable model for informative missingness in longitudinal studies which is an extension of latent dropout class model. In our model, the value of the latent variable is affected by the missingness pattern and it is also used as a covariate in modeling the longitudinal response. So the latent variable links the longitudinal response and the missingness process. In our model, the latent variable is continuous instead of categorical and we assume that it is from a normal distribution. The EM algorithm is used to obtain the estimates of the parameter we are interested in and Gauss–Hermite quadrature is used to approximate the integration of the latent variable. The standard errors of the parameter estimates can be obtained from the bootstrap method or from the inverse of the Fisher information matrix of the final marginal likelihood. Comparisons are made to the mixed model and complete-case analysis in terms of a clinical trial dataset, which is Weight Gain Prevention among Women (WGPW) study. We use the generalized Pearson residuals to assess the fit of the proposed latent variable model.     

The p-values for one-sided hypothesis testing in univariate linear calibration

In this article, we focus on the one-sided hypothesis testing for the univariate linear calibration, where a normally distributed response variable and an explanatory variable are involved. The observations of the response variable corresponding to known values of the explanatory variable are used to make inferences on a single unknown value of the explanatory variable. We apply the generalized inference to the calibration problem, and take the generalized p-value as the test statistic to develop a new p-value for one-sided hypothesis testing, which we refer to as the one-sided posterior predictive p-value. The behavior of the one-sided posterior predictive p-value is numerically compared with that of the generalized p-value, and simulations show that the proposed p-value is quite satisfactory in the frequentist performance.     

On a characteristic property of generalized Pareto distributions, extreme value distributions and their max domains of attraction

Using the independence of an arbitrary random variable Y and the weighted minima of independent, identically distributed random variables with weights depending on Y, we characterize extreme value distributions and generalized Pareto distributions. A discussion is made about an analogous characterization for distributions in the max domains of attraction of extreme value limit laws.     

New simulation results for the calibration and inverse median estimation problems

This paper gives the results of a new simulation study for the familiar calibration problem and the less familiar inverse median estimation problem. The latter arises when one wishes to estimate from a linear regression analysis the value of the independent variable corresponding to a specified value of the median of the dependent variable. For example, from the results of a regression analysis between stress and time to failure, one might wish to estimate the stress at which the median time to failure is 10,000 hours. In the study, the mean square error, Pitman closeness, and probability of overestimation are compared for both the calibration problem and the inverse median estimation problem for (1) the classical estimator, (2) the inverse estimator, and (3) a modified version of an estimator proposed by Naszodi (1978) for both a small sample and a moderately large sample situation.     

A median loss control chart for monitoring quality loss under skewed distributions

The quality and loss of products are crucial factors separating competitive companies in global market. Firms widely employ a loss function to measure the loss caused by a deviation of the quality variable from the target value. Monitoring this deviation from the process target value is important from the view of Taguchi’s philosophy. In reality, there are many situations where the distribution of the quality variable may not be normal but skewed. This paper aims at developing a median loss (ML) control chart for monitoring quality loss under skewed distributions. Both the cases with fixed and variable sampling intervals are considered. Numerical results show that the ML chart with (optimal) variable sampling intervals performs better than the ML chart in detecting small to moderate shifts in the process loss centre or in the difference of mean and target and/or variance of a process variable. The ML chart and the ML chart with variable sampling intervals also illustrate the best performance in detection out-of-control process for a process quality variable with a left-skewed distribution. A numerical example illustrates the application of the proposed control chart.     

Bayesian Model Averaging in Proportional Hazard Models: Assessing the Risk of a Stroke

In the context of the Cardiovascular Health Study, a comprehensive investigation into the risk factors for strokes, we apply Bayesian model averaging to the selection of variables in Cox proportional hazard models. We use an extension of the leaps-and-bounds algorithm for locating the models that are to be averaged over and make available S-PLUS software to implement the methods. Bayesian model averaging provides a posterior probability that each variable belongs in the model, a more directly interpretable measure of variable importance than a P -value. P -values from models preferred by stepwise methods tend to overstate the evidence for the predictive value of a variable and do not account for model uncertainty. We introduce the partial predictive score to evaluate predictive performance. For the Cardiovascular Health Study, Bayesian model averaging predictively outperforms standard model selection and does a better job of assessing who is at high risk for a stroke.     

A semi-parametric cox’s regression model for zero-inflated left-censored time to event data

Abstract

In some clinical, environmental, or economical studies, researchers are interested in a semi-continuous outcome variable which takes the value zero with a discrete probability and has a continuous distribution for the non-zero values. Due to the measuring mechanism, it is not always possible to fully observe some outcomes, and only an upper bound is recorded. We call this left-censored data and observe only the maximum of the outcome and an independent censoring variable, together with an indicator. In this article, we introduce a mixture semi-parametric regression model. We consider a parametric model to investigate the influence of covariates on the discrete probability of the value zero. For the non-zero part of the outcome, a semi-parametric Cox’s regression model is used to study the conditional hazard function. The different parameters in this mixture model are estimated using a likelihood method. Hereby the infinite dimensional baseline hazard function is estimated by a step function. As results, we show the identifiability and the consistency of the estimators for the different parameters in the model. We study the finite sample behaviour of the estimators through a simulation study and illustrate this model on a practical data example.     

Variable selection for mode regression

From the prediction viewpoint, mode regression is more attractive since it pay attention to the most probable value of response variable given regressors. On the other hand, high-dimensional data are very prevalent as the advance of the technology of collecting and storing data. Variable selection is an important strategy to deal with high-dimensional regression problem. This paper aims to propose a variable selection procedure for high-dimensional mode regression via combining nonparametric kernel estimation method with sparsity penalty tactics. We also establish the asymptotic properties under certain technical conditions. The effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed methods are further illustrated by numerical studies and the real data application.     

A new sequential approximation method

A sequential method for estimating the expected value of a random variable is proposed. Using a parametric model, the updating formula is based on the maximum likelihood estimators of the roots of the expected value function. Under certain conditions, it is demonstrated that the estimators of the roots are consistent, when a two-parameter logit model version of the procedure is used for binary data. In addition, the estimators of the logit parameters have an asymptotic normal distribution. A simulation study is performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the new method for small to medium sample sizes. Compared to other sequential approximation methods, the proposed method performed well, especially when estimating several roots simultaneously.     

Likelihood centered asymptotic model exponential and location model versions

For testing a scalar interest parameter in a large sample asymptotic context, methods with third-order accuracy are now available that make a reduction to the simple case having a scalar parameter and scalar variable. For such simple models on the real line, we develop canonical versions that correspond closely to an exponential model and to a location model; these canonical versions are obtained by standardizing and reexpressing the variable and the parameters, the needed steps being given in algorithmic form. The exponential and location approximations have three parameters, two corresponding to the pure-model type and one for departure from that type. We also record the connections among the common test quantities: the signed likelihood departure, the standardized score variable, and the location-scale corrected signed likelihood ratio. These connections are for fixed data point and would bear on the effectiveness of the quantities for inference with the particular data; an earlier paper recorded the connections for fixed parameter value, and would bear on distributional properties.     

Identifiability of income distributions in the context of damage and generating models

In the context of additive or multiplicative damage models, and under mild conditions, it is shown that the functional forms of suitably chosen regressions on a random variable X or/and its recorded part Y are characteristic of the distribution of X. The paper treats the cases where the recorded value is either an understatement or an overstatement of the true observation.