Effect on probabilities and quantiles of adding a quantity with small variance

This paper gives simple approximations for the distribution function and quantiles of the sum X + Y when X is a continuous variable and Y is an independent variable with variance small compared to that of X . The approximations are based around the distribution function or quantiles of X and require only the first two or three moments of Y to be known. Example evaluations with X having a normal, Student's t or chi-squared distribution suggest that the approximations are good in unbounded tail regions when the ratio of variances is less than 0.2.     

A general approximation to quantiles

For many continuous distributions, a closed-form expression for their quantiles does not exist. Numerical approximations for their quantiles are developed on a distribution-by-distribution basis. This work develops a general approximation for quantiles using the Taylor expansion. Our method only requires that the distribution has a continuous probability density function and its derivatives can be derived to a certain order (usually 3 or 4). We demonstrate our unified approach by approximating the quantiles of the normal, exponential, and chi-square distributions. The approximation works well for these distributions.     

COMPARISON OF FEATURE SIGNIFICANCE QUANTILE APPROXIMATIONS

Curve estimates and surface estimates often contain features such as inclines, bumps or ridges which may signify an underlying structural mechanism. However, spurious features are also a common occurrence and it is important to identify those features that are statistically significant. A method has been developed recently for recognising feature significance based on the derivatives of the function estimate. It requires simultaneous confidence intervals and tests, which in turn require quantiles for the maximal deviation statistics. This paper reviews and compares various approximations to these quantiles. Applying upcrossing‐probability theory to this problem yields better quantile approximations than the use of an independent blocks method.     

Saddlepoint Approximations for the Difference of Order Statistics and Studentized Sample Quantiles

For a sample from a given distribution the difference of two order statistics and the Studentized quantile are statistics whose distribution is needed to obtain tests and confidence intervals for quantiles and quantile differences. This paper gives saddlepoint approximations for densities and saddlepoint approximations of the Lugannani–Rice form for tail probabilities of these statistics. The relative errors of the approximations are n ⁻¹ uniformly in a neighbourhood of the parameters and this uniformity is global if the densities are log-concave.     

The likelihood ratio test for simple tree order: A useful asymptotic expansion

We derive new approximations for the likelihood ratio statistics that are used in testing hypotheses involving simple tree order. They are based on asymptotics when the number of populations tends to infinity and variances are equal.As an application quantiles are obtained that are much easier to calculate than exact critical values or the gamma-approximation usually proposed in literature. Our quantitles also provide often better approximations than those known in literature.     

Near-exact distributions for the sphericity likelihood ratio test statistic

In this paper three near-exact distributions are developed for the sphericity test statistic. The exact probability density function of this statistic is usually represented through the use of the Meijer G function, which renders the computation of quantiles impossible even for a moderately large number of variables. The main purpose of this paper is to obtain near-exact distributions that lie closer to the exact distribution than the asymptotic distributions while, at the same time, correspond to density and cumulative distribution functions practical to use, allowing for an easy determination of quantiles. In addition to this, two asymptotic distributions that lie closer to the exact distribution than the existing ones were developed. Two measures are considered to evaluate the proximity between the exact and the asymptotic and near-exact distributions developed. As a reference we use the saddlepoint approximations developed by Butler et al. [1993. Saddlepoint approximations for tests of block independence, sphericity and equal variances and covariances. J. Roy. Statist. Soc., Ser. B 55, 171–183] as well as the asymptotic distribution proposed by Box.     

Approximations for the distribution of a maximal pairwise t in some repeated measure designs

A one factor design is considered where each of the experimental units is repeatedly measured under the same set of various factor levels. A simultaneous procedure is con¬sidered based on the maximal Student-t statistic for all pairwise comparisons. The goal of this work is to investigate the possibility of obtaining simple approximations of the quantiles of that statistic without any assumptions on the variance matrix of the estimated effects. Two approximations are considered which are more radical than the Bonferroni method. The results of our simulations clearly indicate that one of these two approximations does not control the family-wise error rate. The other approximation can not be rejected on such grounds. In fact, on extending a conjecture due to Tukey (1953) (and which is known to be true for some special cases) the second approximation will control the required error rate (if the generalized conjecture was true). Finally, the required critical points for the 'extended Tukey' procedure are shown (by simulation) to be nicely approximated by quantiles from the Studentized Maximum Modulus distribution which are well documented.     

Development and comparative study of two near-exact approximations to the distribution of the product of an odd number of independent Beta random variables

Using the concept of near-exact approximation to a distribution we developed two different near-exact approximations to the distribution of the product of an odd number of particular independent Beta random variables (r.v.'s). One of them is a particular generalized near-integer Gamma (GNIG) distribution and the other is a mixture of two GNIG distributions. These near-exact distributions are mostly adequate to be used as a basis for approximations of distributions of several statistics used in multivariate analysis. By factoring the characteristic function (c.f.) of the logarithm of the product of the Beta r.v.'s, and then replacing a suitably chosen factor of that c.f. by an adequate asymptotic result it is possible to obtain what we call a near-exact c.f., which gives rise to the near-exact approximation to the exact distribution. Depending on the asymptotic result used to replace the chosen parts of the c.f., one may obtain different near-exact approximations. Moments from the two near-exact approximations developed are compared with the exact ones. The two approximations are also compared with each other, namely in terms of moments and quantiles.     

Using power transformations when approximating quantiles

Estimators are obtained tor quantiles of survival distributions. This is accomplished by approximating Lritr distribution of the transtorrneri data, where the transformation used is that of Box and Cox (1964). The normal approximation as in Box and Cox and, in addition, the extreme value approximation are considered. More generally, to use the methods given, the approximating distribution must come from a location-scale family. For some commonly used survival random variables T the performance of the above approximations are evaluated in terms of the ratio of the true quantiles of T to the estimated one, in the long run. This performance is also evaluated for lower quantiles using simulated lognormai, Weibull and gamma data. Several examples are given to illustrate the methodology herein, including one with actual data.     

Sample Size Formulas for Normal Theory T Tests

Formulas that yield minimum sample size for standard T tests are presented. Although the results are approximations, they usually yield the exact solution. Involving only standard normal quantiles, they could be used in an elementary course.     

Copulas checker-type approximations: Application to quantiles estimation of sums of dependent random variables

Abstract

Several approximations of copulas have been proposed in the literature. By using empirical versions of checker-type copulas approximations, we propose non parametric estimators of the copula. Under some conditions, the proposed estimators are copulas and their main advantage is that they can be sampled from easily. One possible application is the estimation of quantiles of sums of dependent random variables from a small sample of the multivariate law and a full knowledge of the marginal laws. We show that estimations may be improved by including in an easy way in the approximated copula some additional information on the law of a sub-vector for example. Our approach is illustrated by numerical examples.     

Study of the quality of several asymptotic and near-exact approximations based on moments for the distribution of the Wilks Lambda statistic

In this paper a measure of proximity of distributions, when moments are known, is proposed. Based on cases where the exact distribution is known, evidence is given that the proposed measure is accurate to evaluate the proximity of quantiles (exact vs. approximated). The measure may be applied to compare asymptotic and near-exact approximations to distributions, in situations where although being known the exact moments, the exact distribution is not known or the expression for its probability density function is not known or too complicated to handle. In this paper the measure is applied to compare newly proposed asymptotic and near-exact approximations to the distribution of the Wilks Lambda statistic when both groups of variables have an odd number of variables. This measure is also applied to the study of several cases of telescopic near-exact approximations to the exact distribution of the Wilks Lambda statistic based on mixtures of generalized near-integer gamma distributions.     

Expressions for the distribution and percentiles of the sums and products of chi-squares

Linear combinations of central or non-central chi-squares occur naturally in a variety of contexts. The products of chi-squares occur when a variance has a chi-square prior and in electrical engineering. Here, we give expansions for their distribution and quantiles and also for the products of the powers of chi-squares, including ratios. These provide much more accurate approximations than those based on asymptotic normality. The larger the degrees of freedom or the larger the non-centrality parameters, the better the approximations. We give the first four terms of these expansions. These provide approximations with errors smaller by five magnitudes than those based on asymptotic normality or on Satterthwaite's approximation. His method matched the first two moments of the target and a multiple of a chi-square and is only a first-order approximation like that based on the central limit theorem. We show that it can be made second order by matching the first three moments. The appendices show how to obtain analytical expressions for the distribution of weighted sums of chi-squares.     

Asymptotic behaviour of M‐estimators in AR(p) models under nonstandard conditions

The authors derive the limiting distribution of M‐estimators in AR(p) models under nonstandard conditions, allowing for discontinuities in score and density functions. Unlike usual regularity assumptions, these conditions are satisfied in the context of L₁‐estimation and autoregression quantiles. The asymptotic distributions of the resulting estimators, however, are not generally Gaussian. Moreover, their bootstrap approximations are consistent along very specific sequences of bootstrap sample sizes only.     

An Approximate Normalizing Power Transformation for the FDistribution

A power transformation of the Fdistribution is presented, yielding simple normal approximations for both probabilities and quantiles of the distribution. The transformation proposed is shown to produce the well-known Wilson-Hilferty cube root transformation (Wilson and Hilferty, 1931) for the chi-square distribution as a limiting case, as well as the Fisher logarithmic transformation (Fisher, 1924, 1925) for equal degrees of freedom. A numerical assessment of the accuracy achieved for approximating tail probabilities and a comparison with some of the existing approximate procedures are given.     

Testing linear hypotheses in high-dimensional regressions

For a multivariate linear model, Wilk's likelihood ratio test (LRT) constitutes one of the cornerstone tools. However, the computation of its quantiles under the null or the alternative hypothesis requires complex analytic approximations, and more importantly, these distributional approximations are feasible only for moderate dimension of the dependent variable, say p≤20. On the other hand, assuming that the data dimension p as well as the number q of regression variables are fixed while the sample size n grows, several asymptotic approximations are proposed in the literature for Wilk's Λ including the widely used chi-square approximation. In this paper, we consider necessary modifications to Wilk's test in a high-dimensional context, specifically assuming a high data dimension p and a large sample size n. Based on recent random matrix theory, the correction we propose to Wilk's test is asymptotically Gaussian under the null hypothesis and simulations demonstrate that the corrected LRT has very satisfactory size and power, surely in the large p and large n context, but also for moderately large data dimensions such as p=30 or p=50. As a byproduct, we give a reason explaining why the standard chi-square approximation fails for high-dimensional data. We also introduce a new procedure for the classical multiple sample significance test in multivariate analysis of variance which is valid for high-dimensional data.     

Symmetric regression quantile and its application to robust estimation for the nonlinear regression model

Populational conditional quantiles in terms of percentage α are useful as indices for identifying outliers. We propose a class of symmetric quantiles for estimating unknown nonlinear regression conditional quantiles. In large samples, symmetric quantiles are more efficient than regression quantiles considered by Koenker and Bassett (Econometrica 46 (1978) 33) for small or large values of α, when the underlying distribution is symmetric, in the sense that they have smaller asymptotic variances. Symmetric quantiles play a useful role in identifying outliers. In estimating nonlinear regression parameters by symmetric trimmed means constructed by symmetric quantiles, we show that their asymptotic variances can be very close to (or can even attain) the Cramer–Rao lower bound under symmetric heavy-tailed error distributions, whereas the usual robust and nonrobust estimators cannot.     

Simultaneous Pitman closeness of progressively type-II right-censored order statistics to population quantiles

In this work, we extend prior results concerning the simultaneous Pitman closeness of order statistics (OS) to population quantiles. By considering progressively type-II right-censored samples, we derive expressions for the simultaneous closeness probabilities of the progressively censored OS to population quantiles. Explicit expressions are deduced for the cases when the underlying distribution has bounded and unbounded supports. Illustrations are provided for the cases of exponential, uniform and normal distributions for various progressive type-II right-censoring schemes and different quantiles. Finally, an extension to the case of generalized OS is outlined.     

Quantile plots for mean effects in the presence of variance effects for 2k-p designs

In robust parameter design, variance effects and mean effects in a factorial experiment are modelled simultaneously. If variance effects are present in a model, correlations are induced among the naive estimators of the mean effects. A simple normal quantile plot of the mean effects may be misleading because the mean effects are no longer iid under the null hypothesis that they are zero. Adjusted quantiles are computed for the case when one variance effect is significant and examples of 8-run and 16-run fractional factorial designs are examined in detail. We find that the usual normal quantiles are similar to adjusted quantiles for all but the largest and smallest ordered effects for which they are conservative. Graphically, the qualitative difference between the two sets of quantiles is negligible (even in the presence of large variance effects) and we conclude that normal probability plots are robust in the presence of variance effects.     

On two asymptotic normal distributions for the generalized wilks lambda statistic

In this paper we.present a Normal asymptotic distribution for the logarithm of the generalized Wilks Lambda statistic based on an asymptotic distribution for the determinant of a Wishart matrix. This distribution is obtained through the combined use of Taylor expansions of random variables whose exponentials have chi-square distributions and the Lindeberg-Feller version of the Central Limit Theorem, Another asymptotic Normal distribution for the logarithm of the generalized Wilks Lambda statistic for the case when at most one of the sets has an odd number of variables is derived directly from the exact distribution. Both distributions are non-degenerate and non-singular. The first Normal distribution compares favorably with other known approximations and asymptotic distributions namely for large numbers of variables and small sample sizes, while the second Normal distribution, which has a more restricted application, compares in most cases highly favorably with other known asymptotic distributions and approximations. Finally, a method to compute approximate quantiles which lay very close and converge steadily to the exact ones is presented.