On nonparametric variogram estimation

A critical step for geostatistical prediction is estimation of variogram from the data. One of the popular methods estimating variogram is a smoothed version of classical nonparametric variogram estimator. In this paper we investigate its theoretical and empirical properties to provide useful information for using it. The main results are based on asymptotic theories (i.e., risk and central limit theorem) under nearly infill domain sampling. Simulation is also employed to make our points.     

Dependent radius marks of Laguerre tessellations: a case study

We study a particular marked three-dimensional point process sample that represents a Laguerre tessellation. It comes from a polycrystalline sample of aluminium alloy material. The ‘points’ are the cell generators while the ‘marks’ are radius marks that control the size and shape of the tessellation cells. Our statistical mark correlation analyses show that the marks of the sample are in clear and plausible spatial correlation: the marks of generators close together tend to be small and similar and the form of the correlation functions does not justify geostatistical marking. We show that a simplified modelling of tessellations by Laguerre tessellations with independent radius marks may lead to wrong results. When we started from the aluminium alloy data and generated random marks by random permutation we obtained tessellations with characteristics quite different from the original ones. We observed similar behaviour for simulated Laguerre tessellations. This fact, which seems to be natural for the given data type, makes fitting of models to empirical Laguerre tessellations quite difficult: the generator points and radius marks have to be modelled simultaneously. This may imply that the reconstruction methods are more efficient than point-process modelling if only samples of similar Laguerre tessellations are needed. We also found that literature recipes for bandwidth choice for estimating correlation functions should be used with care.     

Estimation of Stratified Mark‐Specific Proportional Hazards Models with Missing Marks

Abstract. An objective of randomized placebo‐controlled preventive HIV vaccine efficacy trials is to assess the relationship between the vaccine effect to prevent infection and the genetic distance of the exposing HIV to the HIV strain represented in the vaccine construct. Motivated by this objective, recently a mark‐specific proportional hazards (PH) model with a continuum of competing risks has been studied, where the genetic distance of the transmitting strain is the continuous ‘mark’ defined and observable only in failures. A high percentage of genetic marks of interest may be missing for a variety of reasons, predominantly because rapid evolution of HIV sequences after transmission before a blood sample is drawn from which HIV sequences are measured. This research investigates the stratified mark‐specific PH model with missing marks where the baseline functions may vary with strata. We develop two consistent estimation approaches, the first based on the inverse probability weighted complete‐case (IPW) technique, and the second based on augmenting the IPW estimator by incorporating auxiliary information predictive of the mark. We investigate the asymptotic properties and finite‐sample performance of the two estimators, and show that the augmented IPW estimator, which satisfies a double robustness property, is more efficient.     

Spatial dependence estimation using FFT of biased covariances

One of the main problems in geostatistics is fitting a valid variogram or covariogram model in order to describe the underlying dependence structure in the data. The dependence between observations can be also modeled in the spectral domain, but the traditional methods based on the periodogram as an estimator of the spectral density may present some problems for the spatial case. In this work, we propose an estimation method for the covariogram parameters based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of biased covariances. The performance of this estimator for finite samples is compared through a simulation study with other classical methods stated in spatial domain, such as weighted least squares and maximum likelihood, as well as with other spectral estimators. Additionally, an example of application to real data is given.     

A new process for modeling heartbeat signals during exhaustive run with an adaptive estimator of its fractal parameters

This paper is devoted to a new study of the fractal behavior of heartbeats during a marathon. Such a case is interesting since it allows the examination of heart behavior during a very long exercise in order to reach reliable conclusions on the long-term properties of heartbeats. Three points of this study can be highlighted. First, the whole race heartbeats of each runner are automatically divided into several stages where the signal is nearly stationary and these stages are detected with an adaptive change points detection method. Secondly, a new process called the locally fractional Gaussian noise (LFGN) is proposed to fit such data. Finally, a wavelet-based method using a specific mother wavelet provides an adaptive procedure for estimating low frequency and high frequency fractal parameters as well as the corresponding frequency bandwidths. Such an estimator is theoretically proved to converge in the case of LFGNs, and simulations confirm this consistency. Moreover, an adaptive chi-squared goodness-of-fit test is also built, using this wavelet-based estimator. The application of this method to marathon heartbeat series indicates that the LFGN fits well data at each stage and that the low frequency fractal parameter increases during the race. A detection of a too large low frequency fractal parameter during the race could help prevent the too frequent heart failures occurring during marathons.     

Estimation of causal continuous‐time autoregressive moving average random fields

We estimate model parameters of Lévy‐driven causal continuous‐time autoregressive moving average random fields by fitting the empirical variogram to the theoretical counterpart using a weighted least squares (WLS) approach. Subsequent to deriving asymptotic results for the variogram estimator, we show strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the parameter estimator. Furthermore, we conduct a simulation study to assess the quality of the WLS estimator for finite samples. For the simulation, we utilize numerical approximation schemes based on truncation and discretization of stochastic integrals and we analyze the associated simulation errors in detail. Finally, we apply our results to real data of the cosmic microwave background.     

A comparative study of confidence intervals for negative binomial proportion

In this paper, we investigate four existing and three new confidence interval estimators for the negative binomial proportion (i.e., proportion under inverse/negative binomial sampling). An extensive and systematic comparative study among these confidence interval estimators through Monte Carlo simulations is presented. The performance of these confidence intervals are evaluated in terms of their coverage probabilities and expected interval widths. Our simulation studies suggest that the confidence interval estimator based on saddlepoint approximation is more appealing for large coverage levels (e.g., nominal level≤1% ) whereas the score confidence interval estimator is more desirable for those commonly used coverage levels (e.g., nominal level>1% ). We illustrate these confidence interval construction methods with a real data set from a maternal congenital heart disease study.     

A Kernel Variogram Estimator for Clustered Data

Abstract.  The variogram provides an important method for measuring the dependence of attribute values between spatial locations. Suppose that the nature of the sampling process leads to the presence of clustered data; it would be advisable to use a variogram estimator that aims to adjust for clustering of samples. In this setting, the use of a non-parametric weighted estimator, obtained by considering an inverse weight to a given neighbourhood density combined with the kernel method, seems to have a satisfactory behaviour in practice. This paper pursues a theoretical study of the cluster robust estimator, by proving that it is asymptotically unbiased as well as consistent and by providing criteria for selection of the bandwidth parameter and the neighbourhood radius. Numerical studies are also included to illustrate the performance of the considered estimator and the suggested approaches.     

NONPARAMETRIC ESTIMATION OF CONDITIONAL CUMULATIVE HAZARDS FOR MISSING POPULATION MARKS

A new function for the competing risks model, the conditional cumulative hazard function, is introduced, from which the conditional distribution of failure times of individuals failing due to cause  j  can be studied. The standard Nelson–Aalen estimator is not appropriate in this setting, as population membership (mark) information may be missing for some individuals owing to random right-censoring. We propose the use of imputed population marks for the censored individuals through fractional risk sets. Some asymptotic properties, including uniform strong consistency, are established. We study the practical performance of this estimator through simulation studies and apply it to a real data set for illustration.     

Asymptotics of cross-validated risk estimation in estimator selection and performance assessment

Risk estimation is an important statistical question for the purposes of selecting a good estimator (i.e., model selection) and assessing its performance (i.e., estimating generalization error). This article introduces a general framework for cross-validation and derives distributional properties of cross-validated risk estimators in the context of estimator selection and performance assessment. Arbitrary classes of estimators are considered, including density estimators and predictors for both continuous and polychotomous outcomes. Results are provided for general full data loss functions (e.g., absolute and squared error, indicator, negative log density). A broad definition of cross-validation is used in order to cover leave-one-out cross-validation, V-fold cross-validation, Monte Carlo cross-validation, and bootstrap procedures. For estimator selection, finite sample risk bounds are derived and applied to establish the asymptotic optimality of cross-validation, in the sense that a selector based on a cross-validated risk estimator performs asymptotically as well as an optimal oracle selector based on the risk under the true, unknown data generating distribution. The asymptotic results are derived under the assumption that the size of the validation sets converges to infinity and hence do not cover leave-one-out cross-validation. For performance assessment, cross-validated risk estimators are shown to be consistent and asymptotically linear for the risk under the true data generating distribution and confidence intervals are derived for this unknown risk. Unlike previously published results, the theorems derived in this and our related articles apply to general data generating distributions, loss functions (i.e., parameters), estimators, and cross-validation procedures.     

L'effet de l'erreur d'arrondi sur l'estimateur d'une densité par la méthode du noyau

In a model for rounded data suppose that the random sample X₁,.,.,X_n,. i.i.d., is transformed into an observed random sample X_1Δ,.,.,X_nΔ, where X_iΔ = 2vΔ if X_i, ∈ (2vΔ - Δ, 2vΔ + Δ), for i = 1,.,.,n. We show that the precision Δ of the observations has an important effect on the shape of the kernel density estimator, and we identify important points for the graphical display of this estimator. We examine the IMSE criteria to find the optimal window under the rounded-data model.     

CURRENT STATUS AND RIGHT-CENSORED DATA STRUCTURES WHEN OBSERVING A MARKER AT THE CENSORING TIME

We study nonparametric estimation with two types of data structures. In the first data structure n i.i.d. copies of (C, N(C)) are observed, where N is a finite state counting process jumping at time-variables of interest and C a random monitoring time. In the second data structure n i.i.d. copies of (C ∧ T, I (T ≤ C), N(C ∧ T)) are observed, where N is a counting process with a final jump at time T (e.g., death). This data structure includes observing right-censored data on T and a marker variable at the censoring time.In these data structures, easy to compute estimators, namely (weighted)-pool-adjacent-violator estimators for the marginal distributions of the unobservable time variables, and the Kaplan-Meier estimator for the time T till the final observable event, are available. These estimators ignore seemingly important information in the data. In this paper we prove that, at many continuous data generating distributions the ad hoc estimators yield asymptotically efficient estimators of [Formula: see text]-estimable parameters.     

Estimating Spatial Autocorrelation With Sampled Network Data

Spatial autocorrelation is a parameter of importance for network data analysis. To estimate spatial autocorrelation, maximum likelihood has been popularly used. However, its rigorous implementation requires the whole network to be observed. This is practically infeasible if network size is huge (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, WeChat, etc.). In that case, one has to rely on sampled network data to infer about spatial autocorrelation. By doing so, network relationships (i.e., edges) involving unsampled nodes are overlooked. This leads to distorted network structure and underestimated spatial autocorrelation. To solve the problem, we propose here a novel solution. By temporarily assuming that the spatial autocorrelation is small, we are able to approximate the likelihood function by its first-order Taylor’s expansion. This leads to the method of approximate maximum likelihood estimator (AMLE), which further inspires the development of paired maximum likelihood estimator (PMLE). Compared with AMLE, PMLE is computationally superior and thus is particularly useful for large-scale network data analysis. Under appropriate regularity conditions (without assuming a small spatial autocorrelation), we show theoretically that PMLE is consistent and asymptotically normal. Numerical studies based on both simulated and real datasets are presented for illustration purpose.     

Strong uniform consistency results of the weighted average of conditional artificial data points

In this paper, we study strong uniform consistency of a weighted average of artificial data points. This is especially useful when information is incomplete (censored data, missing data …). In this case, reconstruction of the information is often achieved nonparametrically by using a local preservation of mean criterion for which the corresponding mean is estimated by a weighted average of new data points. The present approach enlarges the possible scope for applications beyond just the incomplete data context and can also be useful to treat the estimation of the conditional mean of specific functions of complete data points. As a consequence, we establish the strong uniform consistency of the Nadaraya–Watson [Nadaraya, E.A., 1964. On estimating regression. Theory Probab. Appl. 9, 141–142; Watson, G.S., 1964. Smooth regression analysis. Sankhyā Ser. A 26, 359–372] estimator for general transformations of the data points. This result generalizes the one of Härdle et al. [Strong uniform consistency rates for estimators of conditional functionals. Ann. Statist. 16, 1428–1449]. In addition, the strong uniform consistency of a modulus of continuity will be obtained for this estimator. Applications of those two results are detailed for some popular estimators.     

Adaptive Elastic Net GMM Estimation With Many Invalid Moment Conditions: Simultaneous Model and Moment Selection

This article develops the adaptive elastic net generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator in large-dimensional models with potentially (locally) invalid moment conditions, where both the number of structural parameters and the number of moment conditions may increase with the sample size. The basic idea is to conduct the standard GMM estimation combined with two penalty terms: the adaptively weighted lasso shrinkage and the quadratic regularization. It is a one-step procedure of valid moment condition selection, nonzero structural parameter selection (i.e., model selection), and consistent estimation of the nonzero parameters. The procedure achieves the standard GMM efficiency bound as if we know the valid moment conditions ex ante, for which the quadratic regularization is important. We also study the tuning parameter choice, with which we show that selection consistency still holds without assuming Gaussianity. We apply the new estimation procedure to dynamic panel data models, where both the time and cross-section dimensions are large. The new estimator is robust to possible serial correlations in the regression error terms.     

An inverse-probability-weighted approach to estimation of the bivariate survival function under left-truncation and right-censoring

In this note, we consider estimating the bivariate survival function when both survival times are subject to random left truncation and one of the survival times is subject to random right censoring. Motivated by Satten and Datta [2001. The Kaplan–Meier estimator as an inverse-probability-of-censoring weighted average. Amer. Statist. 55, 207–210], we propose an inverse-probability-weighted (IPW) estimator. It involves simultaneous estimation of the bivariate survival function of the truncation variables and that of the censoring variable and the truncation variable of the uncensored components. We prove that (i) when there is no censoring, the IPW estimator reduces to NPMLE of van der Laan [1996a. Nonparametric estimation of the bivariate survival function with truncated data. J. Multivariate Anal. 58, 107–131] and (ii) when there is random left truncation and right censoring on only one of the components and the other component is always observed, the IPW estimator reduces to the estimator of Gijbels and Gürler [1998. Covariance function of a bivariate distribution function estimator for left truncated and right censored data. Statist. Sin. 1219–1232]. Based on Theorem 3.1 of van der Laan [1996a. Nonparametric estimation of the bivariate survival function with truncated data. J. Multivariate Anal. 58, 107–131, 1996b. Efficient estimation of the bivariate censoring model and repairing NPMLE. Ann. Statist. 24, 596–627], we prove that the IPW estimator is consistent under certain conditions. Finally, we examine the finite sample performance of the IPW estimator in some simulation studies. For the special case that censoring time is independent of truncation time, a simulation study is conducted to compare the performances of the IPW estimator against that of the estimator proposed by van der Laan [1996a. Nonparametric estimation of the bivariate survival function with truncated data. J. Multivariate Anal. 58, 107–131, 1996b. Efficient estimation of the bivariate censoring model and repairing NPMLE. Ann. Statist. 24, 596–627]. For the special case (i), a simulation study is conducted to compare the performances of the IPW estimator against that of the estimator proposed by Huang et al. (2001. Nonnparametric estimation of marginal distributions under bivariate truncation with application to testing for age-of-onset application. Statist. Sin. 11, 1047–1068).     

Accounting for Uncertainty in Heteroscedasticity in Nonlinear Regression

Toxicologists and pharmacologists often describe toxicity of a chemical using parameters of a nonlinear regression model. Thus estimation of parameters of a nonlinear regression model is an important problem. The estimates of the parameters and their uncertainty estimates depend upon the underlying error variance structure in the model. Typically, a priori the researcher would not know if the error variances are homoscedastic (i.e., constant across dose) or if they are heteroscedastic (i.e., the variance is a function of dose). Motivated by this concern, in this paper we introduce an estimation procedure based on preliminary test which selects an appropriate estimation procedure accounting for the underlying error variance structure. Since outliers and influential observations are common in toxicological data, the proposed methodology uses M-estimators. The asymptotic properties of the preliminary test estimator are investigated; in particular its asymptotic covariance matrix is derived. The performance of the proposed estimator is compared with several standard estimators using simulation studies. The proposed methodology is also illustrated using a data set obtained from the National Toxicology Program.     

Least squares variogram fitting by spatial subsampling

Summary. Least squares methods are popular for fitting valid variogram models to spatial data. The paper proposes a new least squares method based on spatial subsampling for variogram model fitting. We show that the method proposed is statistically efficient among a class of least squares methods, including the generalized least squares method. Further, it is computationally much simpler than the generalized least squares method. The method produces valid variogram estimators under very mild regularity conditions on the underlying random field and may be applied with different choices of the generic variogram estimator without analytical calculation. An extension of the method proposed to a class of spatial regression models is illustrated with a real data example. Results from a simulation study on finite sample properties of the method are also reported.     

The Additive Nonparametric and Semiparametric Aalen Model as the Rate Function for a Counting Process

We use the additive risk model of Aalen (Aalen, 1980) as a model for the rate of a counting process. Rather than specifying the intensity, that is the instantaneous probability of an event conditional on the entire history of the relevant covariates and counting processes, we present a model for the rate function, i.e., the instantaneous probability of an event conditional on only a selected set of covariates. When the rate function for the counting process is of Aalen form we show that the usual Aalen estimator can be used and gives almost unbiased estimates. The usual martingale based variance estimator is incorrect and an alternative estimator should be used. We also consider the semi-parametric version of the Aalen model as a rate model (McKeague and Sasieni, 1994) and show that the standard errors that are computed based on an assumption of intensities are incorrect and give a different estimator. Finally, we introduce and implement a test-statistic for the hypothesis of a time-constant effect in both the non-parametric and semi-parametric model. A small simulation study was performed to evaluate the performance of the new estimator of the standard error.