Slope modified confidence bands for a simple linear regression model

Considerable attention has been directed in the statistical literature towards the construction of confidence bands for a simple linear regression model. These confidence bands allow the experimenter to make inferences about the model over a particular region of interest. However, in practice an experimenter will usually first check the significance of the regression line before proceeding with any further inferences such as those provided by the confidence bands. From a theoretical point of view, this raises the question of what the conditional confidence level of the confidence bands might be, and from a practical point of view it is unsatisfactory if the confidence bands contain lines that are inconsistent with the directional decision on the slope. In this paper it is shown how confidence bands can be modified to alleviate these two problems.     

Exact simultaneous confidence segments for all contrast comparisons

This paper provides an exact method to construct simultaneous confidence bands for all contrasts of several regression lines over a restricted explanatory variable. Due to the lack of exact methods in the literature, currently existing approaches consist mainly of simulation based approaches. Using confidence bands for regression analysis occurs ubiquitously in practice, for example, inference on the shelf-life or stability of a drug, on the reliability of an engineering system over time, on the environmental impact of a fertilizer in a field over time, to list just a few. The new method enhances currently existing approaches that are based on simulations.     

A ray method of confidence band construction for multiple linear regression models

This paper addresses the problem of confidence band construction for a standard multiple linear regression model. A “ray” method of construction is developed which generalizes the method of Graybill and Bowden [1967. Linear segment confidence bands for simple linear regression models. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 62, 403–408] for a simple linear regression model to a multiple linear regression model. By choosing suitable directions for the rays this method requires only critical points from t-distributions so that the confidence bands are easy to construct. Both one-sided and two-sided confidence bands can be constructed using this method. An illustration of the new method is provided.     

Constant width simultaneous confidence bands in multiple linear regression with predictor variables constrained in intervals

In the last fifty years, a great deal of research effort has been made on the construction of simultaneous confidence bands for a linear regression function. Two most frequently quoted confidence bands in the statistics literature are the Scheffé type and constant width bands over a given rectangular region of the predictor variables. For the constant width bands, a method is given by Gafarian [Gafarian, A.V., 1964, Confidence bands in straight line regression. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 59, 182–213.] for the calculation of critical constants only for the special case of one predictor variable. In this article, a method is proposed to construct constant width bands when there are any number of predictor variables. A new criterion for assessing a confidence band is also proposed; it is the probability that a confidence band excludes a false regression function and can be viewed as the power function of a test associated, naturally, with a confidence band. Under this criterion, a numerical comparison between the Scheffé type and constant width bands is then carried out. It emerges from this comparison that the constant width bands can be better than the Scheffé type bands for certain designs.     

Confidence Bands for the Difference of Two Survival Curves Under Proportional Hazards Model

A common approach to testing for differences between the survival rates of two therapies is to use a proportional hazards regression model which allows for an adjustment of the two survival functions for any imbalance in prognostic factors in the comparison. When the relative risk of one treatment to the other is not constant over time the question of which therapy has a survival advantage is difficult to determine from the Cox model. An alternative approach to this problem is to plot the difference between the two predicted survival functions with a confidence band that provides information about when these two treatments differ. Such a band will depend on the covariate values of a given patient. In this paper we show how to construct a confidence band for the difference of two survival functions based on the proportional hazards model. A simulation approach is used to generate the bands. This approach is used to compare the survival probabilities of chemotherapy and allogeneic bone marrow transplants for chronic leukemia.     

Optimal simultaneous confidence bands in simple linear regression

A simultaneous confidence band provides useful information on the plausible range of an unknown regression model. For simple linear regression models, the most frequently quoted bands in the statistical literature include the hyperbolic band and the three-segment bands. One interesting question is whether one can construct confidence bands better than the hyperbolic and three-segment bands. The optimality criteria for confidence bands include the average width criterion considered by Gafarian (1964) and Naiman (1984) among others, and the minimum area confidence set (MACS) criterion of Liu and Hayter (2007). In this paper, two families of exact 1−α$1-\alpha$ confidence bands, the inner-hyperbolic bands and the outer-hyperbolic bands, which include the hyperbolic and three-segment bands as special cases, are introduced in simple linear regression. Under the MACS criterion, the best confidence band within each family is found by numerical search and compared with the hyperbolic band, the best three-segment band and with each other. The methodologies are illustrated with a numerical example and the Matlab programs used are available upon request.     

Adjusted Confidence Bands in Nonparametric Regression

Suppose we have {(x _i , y _i )} i = 1, 2,…, n, a sequence of independent observations. We wish to find approximate 1 ? α simultaneous confidence bands for the regression curve. Many previous confidence bands in the literature have practical difficulties. In this article, the local linear smoother is used to estimate the regression curve. The bias of the estimator is considered. Different methods of constructing confidence bands are discussed. Finally, a possible method incorporating logistic regression in an innovative way is proposed to construct the bands for random designs. Simulations are used to study the performance or properties of the methods. The procedure for constructing confidence bands is entirely data-driven. The advantage of the proposed method is that it is simple to use and can be applied to random designs. It can be considered as a practically useful and efficient method.     

Bias-corrected confidence bands in nonparametric regression

Bias-corrected confidence bands for general nonparametric regression models are considered. We use local polynomial fitting to construct the confidence bands and combine the cross-validation method and the plug-in method to select the bandwidths. Related asymptotic results are obtained. Our simulations show that confidence bands constructed by local polynomial fitting have much better coverage than those constructed by using the Nadaraya–Watson estimator. The results are also applicable to nonparametric autoregressive time series models.     

SADDLEPOINT METHODS FOR BOOTSTRAP CONFIDENCE BANDS IN NONPARAMETRIC REGRESSION

Bootstrap techniques have been used to construct confidence bands in nonparametric regression problems (Härdle & Bowman, 1988). Yet the required simulation is generally computationally intensive and therefore makes it difficult to conduct further investigations. In this paper, two saddlepoint methods are considered as alternatives to the naive simulation procedure. Some improvements to Härdle & Bowman's bootstrap method are suggested. The improvements are numerically verified using these efficient and accurate analytic methods.     

Homogeneity of Two Straight Lines: Equivalence Approach Using Fitted Regressions

The paper examines the homogeneity of a pair of straight lines, regarded as the expected values of two different linear regressions, from an equivalence point of view. This seems more appropriate than the usual testing of the null hypothesis of homogeneity when the aim is to establish that the lines are close to homogeneous. Upper confidence bounds on the maximum difference between the lines are based on the usual least squares regression estimators, assuming normal distributions. These bounds are constructed for fixed points, or over a fixed interval, and it is concluded that the lines are 1-homogeneous if the bounds are not greater than 1: Also, intervals are constructed over which the lines are concluded to be 1-homogeneous.     

On the use of general positive quadratic forms in simultaneous inference

Some aspects of using general positive definite quadratic forms to project simultaneous confidence intervals for scalar linear functions of a parameter vector are explored. Firstly, a criterion is introduced according to which Scheffe’s S-method (using the inverse of the dispersion matrix of the allied estimators) is optimal. Secondly, it is shown how to construct simultaneous confidence bands (for regression surfaces) with minimal confidence interval length at a given arbitrary point.     

Simultaneous Confidence Bands for Linear Regression with Covariates Constrained in Intervals

Abstract. The focus of this article is on simultaneous confidence bands over a rectangular covariate region for a linear regression model with k>1 covariates, for which only conservative or approximate confidence bands are available in the statistical literature stretching back to Working & Hotelling (J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 24 , 1929; 73–85). Formulas of simultaneous confidence levels of the hyperbolic and constant width bands are provided. These involve only a k‐dimensional integral; it is unlikely that the simultaneous confidence levels can be expressed as an integral of less than k‐dimension. These formulas allow the construction for the first time of exact hyperbolic and constant width confidence bands for at least a small k(>1) by using numerical quadrature. Comparison between the hyperbolic and constant width bands is then addressed under both the average width and minimum volume confidence set criteria. It is observed that the constant width band can be drastically less efficient than the hyperbolic band when k>1. Finally it is pointed out how the methods given in this article can be applied to more general regression models such as fixed‐effect or random‐effect generalized linear regression models.     

Statistical Inference in Orthogonal Regression for Three-Part Compositional Data Using a Linear Model with Type-II Constraints

Orthogonal regression is a proper tool to analyze relations between two variables when three-part compositional data, i.e., three-part observations carrying relative information (like proportions or percentages), are under examination. When linear statistical models with type-II constraints (constraints involving other parameters besides the ones of the unknown model) are employed for estimating the parameters of the regression line, approximate variances and covariances of the estimated line coefficients can be determined. Moreover, the additional assumption of normality enables to construct confidence domains and perform hypotheses testing. The theoretical results are applied to a real-world example.     

Empirical Likelihood Local Polynomial Regression Analysis of Clustered Data

Abstract. In this article, a naive empirical likelihood ratio is constructed for a non‐parametric regression model with clustered data, by combining the empirical likelihood method and local polynomial fitting. The maximum empirical likelihood estimates for the regression functions and their derivatives are obtained. The asymptotic distributions for the proposed ratio and estimators are established. A bias‐corrected empirical likelihood approach to inference for the parameters of interest is developed, and the residual‐adjusted empirical log‐likelihood ratio is shown to be asymptotically chi‐squared. These results can be used to construct a class of approximate pointwise confidence intervals and simultaneous bands for the regression functions and their derivatives. Owing to our bias correction for the empirical likelihood ratio, the accuracy of the obtained confidence region is not only improved, but also a data‐driven algorithm can be used for selecting an optimal bandwidth to estimate the regression functions and their derivatives. A simulation study is conducted to compare the empirical likelihood method with the normal approximation‐based method in terms of coverage accuracies and average widths of the confidence intervals/bands. An application of this method is illustrated using a real data set.     

Exact Uniform Confidence Bands for Periodic Regression

Exact uniform confidence bands are presented for a sinusoidal regression model with known period. A table of probability points is presented for an important special case. A comparsion is made with the Working - Hotelling - Scheffé confidence bands.     

Using difference-based methods for inference in nonparametric regression with time series errors

Summary. We show that difference-based methods can be used to construct simple and explicit estimators of error covariance and autoregressive parameters in nonparametric regression with time series errors. When the error process is Gaussian our estimators are efficient, but they are available well beyond the Gaussian case. As an illustration of their usefulness we show that difference-based estimators can be used to produce a simplified version of time series cross-validation. This new approach produces a bandwidth selector that is equivalent, to both first and second orders, to that given by the full time series cross-validation algorithm. Other applications of difference-based methods are to variance estimation and construction of confidence bands in nonparametric regression.     

Confidence Corridors for Multivariate Generalized Quantile Regression

We focus on the construction of confidence corridors for multivariate nonparametric generalized quantile regression functions. This construction is based on asymptotic results for the maximal deviation between a suitable nonparametric estimator and the true function of interest, which follow after a series of approximation steps including a Bahadur representation, a new strong approximation theorem, and exponential tail inequalities for Gaussian random fields. As a byproduct we also obtain multivariate confidence corridors for the regression function in the classical mean regression. To deal with the problem of slowly decreasing error in coverage probability of the asymptotic confidence corridors, which results in meager coverage for small sample sizes, a simple bootstrap procedure is designed based on the leading term of the Bahadur representation. The finite-sample properties of both procedures are investigated by means of a simulation study and it is demonstrated that the bootstrap procedure considerably outperforms the asymptotic bands in terms of coverage accuracy. Finally, the bootstrap confidence corridors are used to study the efficacy of the National Supported Work Demonstration, which is a randomized employment enhancement program launched in the 1970s. This article has supplementary materials online.     

Smoothed empirical likelihood confidence intervals for quantile regression parameters with auxiliary information

This paper develops a smoothed empirical likelihood (SEL)-based method to construct confidence intervals for quantile regression parameters with auxiliary information. First, we define the SEL ratio and show that it follows a Chi-square distribution. We then construct confidence intervals according to this ratio. Finally, Monte Carlo experiments are employed to evaluate the proposed method.     

Confidence bands for the logistic and probit regression models over intervals

This article presents methods for the construction of two-sided and one-sided simultaneous hyperbolic bands for the logistic and probit regression models when the predictor variable is restricted to a given interval. The bands are constructed based on the asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimators. Past articles have considered building two-sided asymptotic confidence bands for the logistic model, such as Piegorsch and Casella (1988 Piegorsch, W.W., Casella, G. (1988). Confidence bands for logistic regression with restricted predictor variables. Biometrics 44:739–750.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, the confidence bands given by Piegorsch and Casella are conservative under a single interval restriction, and it is shown in this article that their bands can be sharpened using the methods proposed here. Furthermore, no method has yet appeared in the literature for constructing one-sided confidence bands for the logistic model, and no work has been done for building confidence bands for the probit model, over a limited range of the predictor variable. This article provides methods for computing critical points in these areas.