Exponentiated Weibull regression for time-to-event data

The Weibull, log-logistic and log-normal distributions are extensively used to model time-to-event data. The Weibull family accommodates only monotone hazard rates, whereas the log-logistic and log-normal are widely used to model unimodal hazard functions. The increasing availability of lifetime data with a wide range of characteristics motivate us to develop more flexible models that accommodate both monotone and nonmonotone hazard functions. One such model is the exponentiated Weibull distribution which not only accommodates monotone hazard functions but also allows for unimodal and bathtub shape hazard rates. This distribution has demonstrated considerable potential in univariate analysis of time-to-event data. However, the primary focus of many studies is rather on understanding the relationship between the time to the occurrence of an event and one or more covariates. This leads to a consideration of regression models that can be formulated in different ways in survival analysis. One such strategy involves formulating models for the accelerated failure time family of distributions. The most commonly used distributions serving this purpose are the Weibull, log-logistic and log-normal distributions. In this study, we show that the exponentiated Weibull distribution is closed under the accelerated failure time family. We then formulate a regression model based on the exponentiated Weibull distribution, and develop large sample theory for statistical inference. We also describe a Bayesian approach for inference. Two comparative studies based on real and simulated data sets reveal that the exponentiated Weibull regression can be valuable in adequately describing different types of time-to-event data.     

Modeling with a large class of unimodal multivariate distributions

In this paper we introduce a new class of multivariate unimodal distributions, motivated by Khintchine's representation for unimodal densities on the real line. We start by introducing a new class of unimodal distributions which can then be naturally extended to higher dimensions, using the multivariate Gaussian copula. Under both univariate and multivariate settings, we provide MCMC algorithms to perform inference about the model parameters and predictive densities. The methodology is illustrated with univariate and bivariate examples, and with variables taken from a real data set.     

On a bounded bimodal two-sided distribution fitted to the Old-Faithful geyser data

In this paper, we shall develop a novel family of bimodal univariate distributions (also allowing for unimodal shapes) and demonstrate its use utilizing the well-known and almost classical data set involving durations and waiting times of eruptions of the Old-Faithful geyser in Yellowstone park. Specifically, we shall analyze the Old-Faithful data set with 272 data points provided in Dekking et al. [3]. In the process, we develop a bivariate distribution using a copula technique and compare its fit to a mixture of bivariate normal distributions also fitted to the same bivariate data set. We believe the fit-analysis and comparison is primarily illustrative from an educational perspective for distribution theory modelers, since in the process a variety of statistical techniques are demonstrated. We do not claim one model as preferred over the other.     

Bimodal Birnbaum–Saunders distribution with applications to non negative measurements

In this article, we introduce a new extension of the Birnbaum–Saunders (BS) distribution as a follow-up to the family of skew-flexible-normal distributions. This extension produces a family of BS distributions including densities that can be unimodal as well as bimodal. This flexibility is important in dealing with positive bimodal data, given the difficulties experienced by the use of mixtures of distributions. Some basic properties of the new distribution are studied including moments. Parameter estimation is approached by the method of moments and also by maximum likelihood, including a derivation of the Fisher information matrix. Three real data illustrations indicate satisfactory performance of the proposed model.     

An asymmetric multivariate weibull distribution

Abstract

A class of multivariate laws as an extension of univariate Weibull distribution is presented. A well known representation of the asymmetric univariate Laplace distribution is used as the starting point. This new family of distributions exhibits some similarities to the multivariate normal distribution. Properties of this class of distributions are explored including moments, correlations, densities and simulation algorithms. The distribution is applied to model bivariate exchange rate data. The fit of the proposed model seems remarkably good. Parameters are estimated and a bootstrap study performed to assess the accuracy of the estimators.     

Two multivariate generalized beta families

A multivariate generalized beta distribution is introduced that extends the univariate generalized beta distribution and includes many multivariate distributions, such as the multivariate beta of the first and second kind, the generalized gamma, and the Burr and Dirichlet distributions as special and limiting cases. These interrelationships can be illustrated using a distributional family tree. The corresponding marginal distributions are univariate generalized beta distributions and their special cases. Selected expressions for the moments are reported, and an application to the joint distribution of income and wealth is presented. A simple transformation of the multivariate generalized beta distribution leads to what will be referred to as a multivariate exponential generalized beta distribution, which includes a multivariate form of the logistics and Burr distributions as special cases.     

Multivariate Birnbaum–Saunders distribution: properties and associated inference

The univariate fatigue life distribution proposed by Birnbaum and Saunders [A new family of life distributions. J Appl Probab. 1969;6:319–327] has been used quite effectively to model times to failure for materials subject to fatigue and for modelling lifetime data and reliability problems. In this article, we introduce a Birnbaum–Saunders (BS) distribution in the multivariate setting. The new multivariate model arises in the context of conditionally specified distributions. The proposed multivariate model is an absolutely continuous distribution whose marginals are univariate BS distributions. General properties of the multivariate BS distribution are derived and the estimation of the unknown parameters by maximum likelihood is discussed. Further, the Fisher's information matrix is determined. Applications to real data of the proposed multivariate distribution are provided for illustrative purposes.     

Block unimodality for multivariate Bayesian robustness

Summary The development of Bayesian robustness has been growing in the last decade. The theory has extensively dealt with the univariate parameter case. Among the vast amount of proposals in the literature, only a few of them have a straightforward extension to the multivariate case. In this paper we consider the multidimensional version of the class of ε-contaminated prior distributions, with unimodal contaminations. In the multivariate case there is not a unique definition of unimodality and one's choice must be based on statistical ground. Here we propose the use of the block unimodal distributions, which proved to be very suitable for modelling situations where the coordinates of the parameter ϑ are deemed, a priori, weakly correlated.     

Eliciting Dirichlet and Gaussian copula prior distributions for multinomial models

In this paper, we propose novel methods of quantifying expert opinion about prior distributions for multinomial models. Two different multivariate priors are elicited using median and quartile assessments of the multinomial probabilities. First, we start by eliciting a univariate beta distribution for the probability of each category. Then we elicit the hyperparameters of the Dirichlet distribution, as a tractable conjugate prior, from those of the univariate betas through various forms of reconciliation using least-squares techniques. However, a multivariate copula function will give a more flexible correlation structure between multinomial parameters if it is used as their multivariate prior distribution. So, second, we use beta marginal distributions to construct a Gaussian copula as a multivariate normal distribution function that binds these marginals and expresses the dependence structure between them. The proposed method elicits a positive-definite correlation matrix of this Gaussian copula. The two proposed methods are designed to be used through interactive graphical software written in Java.     

The uniform power distribution

This paper introduces a generalization of the normal distribution: the uniform power distribution. It is a symmetric and unimodal family of distributions, defined on the real line, and is closely related to the exponential power family. The exponential power family was introduced to allow the modelling of kurtosis. The uniform power family matches the exponential power family with respect to the range of kurtosis. However, whereas the exponential is somewhat difficult to work with, the contrary is true for the uniform power family.     

The log-odd log-logistic Weibull regression model: modelling,estimation, influence diagnostics and residual analysis

In applications of survival analysis, the failure rate function may frequently present a unimodal shape. In such cases, the log-normal and log-logistic distributions are used. In this paper, we shall be concerned only with parametric forms, so a location-scale regression model based on the odd log-logistic Weibull distribution is proposed for modelling data with a decreasing, increasing, unimodal and bathtub failure rate function as an alternative to the log-Weibull regression model. For censored data, we consider a classic method to estimate the parameters of the proposed model. We derive the appropriate matrices for assessing local influences on the parameter estimates under different perturbation schemes and present some ways to assess global influences. Further, for different parameter settings, sample sizes and censoring percentages, various simulations are performed. In addition, the empirical distribution of some modified residuals is determined and compared with the standard normal distribution. These studies suggest that the residual analysis usually performed in normal linear regression models can be extended to a modified deviance residual in the new regression model applied to censored data. We analyse a real data set using the log-odd log-logistic Weibull regression model.     

THE WRAPPED t FAMILY OF CIRCULAR DISTRIBUTIONS

This paper considers the three‐parameter family of symmetric unimodal distributions obtained by wrapping the location‐scale extension of Student's t distribution onto the unit circle. The family contains the wrapped normal and wrapped Cauchy distributions as special cases, and can be used to closely approximate the von Mises distribution. In general, the density of the family can only be represented in terms of an infinite summation, but its trigonometric moments are relatively simple expressions involving modified Bessel functions. Point estimation of the parameters is considered, and likelihood‐based methods are used to fit the family of distributions in an illustrative analysis of cross‐bed measurements. The use of the family as a means of approximating the von Mises distribution is investigated in detail, and new efficient algorithms are proposed for the generation of approximate pseudo‐random von Mises variates.     

Inverse Lindley power series distributions: a new compounding family and regression model with censored data

This paper introduces a new class of distributions by compounding the inverse Lindley distribution and power series distributions which is called compound inverse Lindley power series (CILPS) distributions. An important feature of this distribution is that the lifetime of the component associated with a particular risk is not observable, rather only the minimum lifetime value among all risks is observable. Further, these distributions exhibit an unimodal failure rate. Various properties of the distribution are derived. Besides, two special models of the new family are investigated. The model parameters of the two sub-models of the new family are obtained by the methods of maximum likelihood, least square, weighted least square and maximum product of spacing and compared them using the Monte Carlo simulation study. Besides, the log compound inverse Lindley regression model for censored data is proposed. Three real data sets are analyzed to illustrate the flexibility and importance of the proposed models.     

Consistency of Generalized Maximum Spacing Estimates

General methods for the estimation of distributions can be derived from approximations of certain information measures. For example, both the maximum likelihood (ML) method and the maximum spacing (MSP) method can be obtained from approximations of the Kullback–Leibler information. The ideas behind the MSP method, whereby an estimation method for continuous univariate distributions is obtained from an approximation based on spacings of an information measure, were used by Ranneby & Ekstrom (1997) (using simple spacings) and Ekstrom (1997b) (using high order spacings) to obtain a class of methods, called generalized maximum spacing (GMSP) methods. In the present paper, GMSP methods will be shown to give consistent estimates under general conditions, comparable to those of Bahadur (1971) for the ML method, and those of Shao & Hahn (1999) for the MSP method. In particular, it will be proved that GMSP methods give consistent estimates in any family of distributions with unimodal densities, without any further conditions on the distributions.     

An extension of the generalized exponential distribution

The two-parameter generalized exponential distribution has been used recently quite extensively to analyze lifetime data. In this paper the two-parameter generalized exponential distribution has been embedded in a larger class of distributions obtained by introducing another shape parameter. Because of the additional shape parameter, more flexibility has been introduced in the family. It is observed that the new family is positively skewed, and has increasing, decreasing, unimodal and bathtub shaped hazard functions. It can be observed as a proportional reversed hazard family of distributions. This new family of distributions is analytically quite tractable and it can be used quite effectively to analyze censored data also. Analyses of two data sets are performed and the results are quite satisfactory.     

Families of Multivariate Distributions Involving “Triangular” Transformations

Attention is initially focused on certain pseudo-normal distributions. These are multivariate distributions in which one coordinate variable has a normal distribution and the distribution of the remaining variables is determined by a specific triangular transformation model involving normally distributed components. A remarkably flexible family of models is obtainable in this fashion. Some examples are described. In addition, models involving non-normal component distributions are discussed together with their relationship with those models obtainable by means of the beta-generalized-Rosenblatt construction. Inferential questions regarding these models will be the subject of a separate report.     

A gamma-minimax result for the class of symmetric and unimodal priors

Olman and Shmundak (1985) show that in estimating the bounded mean of a normal distribution under squared error loss the Bayes estimator with respect to the uniform prior is gammaminimax when the parameter interval is sufficiently small and the class of priors consists of all probability measures with a symmetric and unimodal density. In the present paper it is proved that this result is valid not only for the normal family but also for more general families of distributions.     

Multivariate log-Birnbaum–Saunders regression models

In this paper, we present a multivariate version of the skewed log-Birnbaum–Saunders regression model. This new family of distributions holds good properties such as marginal variables following univariate skewed log-Birnbaum–Saunders distributions, besides presenting the usual log-Birnbaum–Saunders distribution as a particular case. Furthermore, the model parameters are estimated through maximum-likelihood methods, a closed-form expression for the Fisher’s information matrix is presented, and testing hypothesis for model parameters is performed. Two real datasets are analyzed and results are discussed.     

A method to estimate power parameter in exponential power distribution via polynomial regression

The exponential power distribution (EPD), also known as generalized error distribution, is a flexible symmetrical unimodal family that belongs to the exponential one. The EPD becomes the density function of a range of symmetric distributions with different values of its power parameter β. A closed-form estimator for β does not exist, so the power parameter is usually estimated numerically. Unfortunately, the optimization algorithms do not always converge, especially when the true value of β is close to its parametric space frontier. In this paper, we present an alternative method to estimate β. Our proposal is based on the normal standardized Q–Q plot, and it exploits the relationship between β and the kurtosis. Furthermore, it is a direct method which does not require computational efforts nor the use of optimization algorithms.     

Generalized exponential distribution: Existing results and some recent developments

Mudholkar and Srivastava [1993. Exponentiated Weibull family for analyzing bathtub failure data. IEEE Trans. Reliability 42, 299–302] introduced three-parameter exponentiated Weibull distribution. Two-parameter exponentiated exponential or generalized exponential distribution is a particular member of the exponentiated Weibull distribution. Generalized exponential distribution has a right skewed unimodal density function and monotone hazard function similar to the density functions and hazard functions of the gamma and Weibull distributions. It is observed that it can be used quite effectively to analyze lifetime data in place of gamma, Weibull and log-normal distributions. The genesis of this model, several properties, different estimation procedures and their properties, estimation of the stress-strength parameter, closeness of this distribution to some of the well-known distribution functions are discussed in this article.