Negative exponential disparity based family of goodness-of-fit tests for multinomial models

This paper investigates a new family of goodness-of-fit tests based on the negative exponential disparities. This family includes the popular Pearson's chi-square as a member and is a subclass of the general class of disparity tests (Basu and Sarkar, 1994) which also contains the family of power divergence statistics. Pitman efficiency and finite sample power comparisons between different members of this new family are made. Three asymptotic approximations of the exact null distributions of the negative exponential disparity famiiy of tests are discussed. Some numerical results on the small sample perfomance of this family of tests are presented for the symmetric null hypothesis. It is shown that the negative exponential disparity famiiy, Like the power divergence family, produces a new goodness-of-fit test statistic that can be a very attractive alternative to the Pearson's chi-square. Some numerical results suggest that, application of this test statistic, as an alternative to Pearson's chi-square, could be preferable to the I ^2/3 statistic of Cressie and Read (1984) under the use of chi-square critical values.     

A goodness-of-fit test for overdispersed binomial (or multinomial) models

Overdispersion or extra variation is a common phenomenon that occurs when binomial (multinomial) data exhibit larger variances than that permitted by the binomial (multinomial) model. This arises when the data are clustered or when the assumption of independence is violated. Goodness-of-fit (GOF) tests available in the overdispersion literature have focused on testing for the presence of overdispersion in the data and hence they are not applicable for choosing between the several competing overdispersion models. In this paper, we consider a GOF test proposed by Neerchal and Morel [1998. Large cluster results for two parametric multinomial extra variation models. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 93(443), 1078–1087], and study its distributional properties and performance characteristics. This statistic is a direct analogue of the usual Pearson chi-squared statistic, but is also applicable when the clusters are not necessarily of the same size. As this test statistic is for testing model adequacy against the alternative that the model is not adequate, it is applicable in testing two competing overdispersion models.     

A Laguerre polynomial approximation for a goodness-of-fit test for exponential distribution based on progressively censored data

This paper proposes an approximation to the distribution of a goodness-of-fit statistic proposed recently by Balakrishnan et al. [Balakrishnan, N., Ng, H.K.T. and Kannan, N., 2002, A test of exponentiality based on spacings for progressively Type-II censored data. In: C. Huber-Carol et al. (Eds.), Goodness-of-Fit Tests and Model Validity (Boston: Birkhäuser), pp. 89–111.] for testing exponentiality based on progressively Type-II right censored data. The moments of this statistic can be easily calculated, but its distribution is not known in an explicit form. We first obtain the exact moments of the statistic using Basu's theorem and then the density approximants based on these exact moments of the statistic, expressed in terms of Laguerre polynomials, are proposed. A comparative study of the proposed approximation to the exact critical values, computed by Balakrishnan and Lin [Balakrishnan, N. and Lin, C.T., 2003, On the distribution of a test for exponentiality based on progressively Type-II right censored spacings. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 73 (4), 277–283.], is carried out. This reveals that the proposed approximation is very accurate.     

On tests of linearity for dose response data: asymptotic, exact conditional and exact unconditional tests

The approximate chi-square statistic, X 2 Q , which is calculated as the difference between the usual chi-square statistic for heterogeneity and the Cochran-Armitage trend test statistic, has been widely applied to test the linearity assumption for dose-response data. This statistic can be shown to be asymptotically distributed as chi-square with K - 2 degrees of freedom. However, this asymptotic property could be quite questionable if the sample size is small, or if there is a high degree of sparseness or imbalance in the data. In this article, we consider how exact tests based on this X 2 Q statistic can be performed. Both the exact conditional and unconditional versions will be studied. Interesting findings include: (i) the exact conditional test is extremely sensitive to a small change in dosages, which may eventually produce a degenerate exact conditional distribution; and (ii) the exact unconditional test avoids the problem of degenerate distribution and is shown to be less sensitive to the change in dosages. A real example involving an animal carcinogenesis experiment as well as a fictitious data set will be used for illustration purposes.     

A comparison of several adaptive tests for paired data

In the last few years, two adaptive tests for paired data have been proposed. One test proposed by Freidlin et al. [On the use of the Shapiro–Wilk test in two-stage adaptive inference for paired data from moderate to very heavy tailed distributions, Biom. J. 45 (2003), pp. 887–900] is a two-stage procedure that uses a selection statistic to determine which of three rank scores to use in the computation of the test statistic. Another statistic, proposed by O'Gorman [Applied Adaptive Statistical Methods: Tests of Significance and Confidence Intervals, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia, 2004], uses a weighted t-test with the weights determined by the data. These two methods, and an earlier rank-based adaptive test proposed by Randles and Hogg [Adaptive Distribution-free Tests, Commun. Stat. 2 (1973), pp. 337–356], are compared with the t-test and to Wilcoxon's signed-rank test. For sample sizes between 15 and 50, the results show that the adaptive test proposed by Freidlin et al. and the adaptive test proposed by O'Gorman have higher power than the other tests over a range of moderate to long-tailed symmetric distributions. The results also show that the test proposed by O'Gorman has greater power than the other tests for short-tailed distributions. For sample sizes greater than 50 and for small sample sizes the adaptive test proposed by O'Gorman has the highest power for most distributions.     

Markov chain Monte Carlo exact inference for binomial and multinomial logistic regression models

We develop Metropolis-Hastings algorithms for exact conditional inference, including goodness-of-fit tests, confidence intervals and residual analysis, for binomial and multinomial logistic regression models. We present examples where the exact results, obtained by enumeration, are available for comparison. We also present examples where Monte Carlo methods provide the only feasible approach for exact inference.     

A comparison of some conditional and unconditional exact tests for 2x2 contingency tables

In 1935, R.A. Fisher published his well-known “exact” test for 2x2 contingency tables. This test is based on the conditional distribution of a cell entry when the rows and columns marginal totals are held fixed. Tocher (1950) and Lehmann (1959) showed that Fisher s test, when supplemented by randomization, is uniformly most powerful among all the unbiased tests UMPU). However, since all the practical tests for 2x2 tables are nonrandomized - and therefore biased the UMPU test is not necessarily more powerful than other tests of the same or lower size. Inthis work, the two-sided Fisher exact test and the UMPU test are compared with six nonrandomized unconditional exact tests with respect to their power. In both the two-binomial and double dichotomy models, the UMPU test is often less powerful than some of the unconditional tests of the same (or even lower) size. Thus, the assertion that the Tocher-Lehmann modification of Fisher's conditional test is the optimal test for 2x2 tables is unjustified.     

A comparison of artificial neural network and multinomial logit models in predicting mergers

A merger proposal discloses a bidder firm's desire to purchase the control rights in a target firm. Predicting who will propose (bidder candidacy) and who will receive (target candidacy) merger bids is important to investigate why firms merge and to measure the price impact of mergers. This study investigates the performance of artificial neural networks and multinomial logit models in predicting bidder and target candidacy. We use a comprehensive data set that covers the years 1979–2004 and includes all deals with publicly listed bidders and targets. We find that both models perform similarly while predicting target and non-merger firms. The multinomial logit model performs slightly better in predicting bidder firms.     

Prequential omnibus goodness-of-fit tests for stochastic processes: A numerical study

This article is a contribution to the study of an omnibus goodness-of-fit (Gof) test based on Rosenblatt Probability Integral Transform (RPIT) within Dawid's prequential framework. This Gof test is easy to use since it has a common test statistic (with apparently the same asymptotic distribution) for a wide range of stochastic models. Intensive Monte-Carlo simulations are presented to investigate the behavior of this test for several stochastic models: renewal, autoregressive (AR, ARMA, ARCH, GARCH) and Poisson processes, generalized linear models... These simulations suggest that the RPIT test could be used to test the fit of a wide range of stochastic models but it may be not powerful when compared to Gof tests specifically designed for the tested processes. It is also conjectured that this test is still appropriate for testing the Gof of any discrete-time stochastic process provided that efficient estimators are used.     

Bayesian comparison of diagnostic tests with largely non-informative missing data

This work was motivated by a real problem of comparing binary diagnostic tests based upon a gold standard, where the collected data showed that the large majority of classifications were incomplete and the feedback received from the medical doctors allowed us to consider the missingness as non-informative. Taking into account the degree of data incompleteness, we used a Bayesian approach via MCMC methods for drawing inferences of interest on accuracy measures. Its direct implementation by well-known software demonstrated serious problems of chain convergence. The difficulties were overcome by the proposal of a simple, efficient and easily adaptable data augmentation algorithm, performed through an ad hoc computer program.     

A power study of goodness-of-fit tests for multivariate normality implemented in R

Multivariate statistical analysis procedures often require data to be multivariate normally distributed. Many tests have been developed to verify if a sample could indeed have come from a normally distributed population. These tests do not all share the same sensitivity for detecting departures from normality, and thus a choice of test is of central importance. This study investigates through simulated data the power of those tests for multivariate normality implemented in the statistic software R and pits them against the variant of testing each marginal distribution for normality. The results of testing two-dimensional data at a level of significance α=5% showed that almost one-third of those tests implemented in R do not have a type I error below this. Other tests outperformed the naive variant in terms of power even when the marginals were not normally distributed. Even though no test was consistently better than all alternatives with every alternative distribution, the energy-statistic test always showed relatively good power across all tested sample sizes.     

A Bayesian model for multinomial sampling with misclassified data

In this paper the issue of making inferences with misclassified data from a noisy multinomial process is addressed. A Bayesian model for making inferences about the proportions and the noise parameters is developed. The problem is reformulated in a more tractable form by introducing auxiliary or latent random vectors. This allows for an easy-to-implement Gibbs sampling-based algorithm to generate samples from the distributions of interest. An illustrative example related to elections is also presented.     

On goodness-of-fit tests for Aalen's additive model based on left-truncated right-censored or doubly censored data

ABSTRACT

Gandy and Jensen (2005 Gandy, A., Jensen, U. (2005). On goodness-of-fit tests for Aalen's additive risk model. Scan. J. Stat. 32:425–445.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) proposed goodness-of-fit tests for Aalen's additive risk model. In this article, we demonstrate that the approach of Gandy and Jensen (2005 Gandy, A., Jensen, U. (2005). On goodness-of-fit tests for Aalen's additive risk model. Scan. J. Stat. 32:425–445.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) can be applied to left-truncated right-censored (LTRC) data and doubly censored data. A simulation study is conducted to investigate the performance of the proposed tests. The proposed tests are illustrated using heart transplant data.     

A unified approach to proving parametric bootstrap consistency for some goodness-of-fit tests

Because model misspecification can lead to inconsistent and inefficient estimators and invalid tests of hypotheses, testing for misspecification is critically important. We focus here on several general purpose goodness-of-fit tests which can be applied to assess the adequacy of a wide variety of parametric models without specifying an alternative model. Parametric bootstrap is the method of choice for computing the p-values of these tests however the proof of its consistency has never been rigourously shown in this setting. Using properties of locally asymptotically normal parametric models, we prove that under quite general conditions, the parametric bootstrap provides a consistent estimate of the null distribution of the statistics under investigation.     

Graphical comparison of normality tests for unimodal distribution data

A methodology is proposed to compare the power of normality tests with a wide variety of alternative unimodal distributions. It is based on the representation of a distribution mosaic in which kurtosis varies vertically and skewness horizontally. The mosaic includes distributions such as exponential, Laplace or uniform, with normal occupying the centre. Simulation is used to determine the probability of a sample from each distribution in the mosaic being accepted as normal. We demonstrate our proposal by applying it to the analysis and comparison of some of the most well-known tests.