Stochastic Comparison on General Inactivity Time and General Residual Life of k-Out-of-n Systems

This paper conducts stochastic comparison on general residual life and general inactivity time of (n ? k + 1)-out-of-n systems and investigates the stochastic behavior of the general inactivity time of a system with units having decreasing reversed hazard rate. These results strengthen some conclusions in both Khaledi and Shaked (2006 Khaledi , B. , Shaked , M. ( 2006 ). Ordering conditional residual lifetimes of coherent systems . Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 137 : 1173 – 1184 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Hu et al. (2007 Hu , T. , Jin , W. , Khaledi , M. ( 2007 ). Ordering conditional distributions of generalized order statistics . Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences 21 : 401 – 417 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

Convergence rate of wavelet density estimator with data missing randomly when covariables are present

In this article, we study global L₂ error of non linear wavelet estimator of density in the Besov space B^s_pq for missing data model when covariables are present and prove that the estimator can achieve the optimal rate of convergence, which is similar to the result studied by Donoho et al. (1996) Donoho, D.L., Johnstone, I.M., Kerkyacharian, G., Picard, D. (1996). Density estimation by wavelet thresholding. Ann. Stat. 24:508–539.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] in complete independent data case with term-by-term thresholding of the empirical wavelet coefficients. Finite-sample behavior of the proposed estimator is explored via simulations.     

A study of uniformity pattern for extended designs

The objective of this paper is to investigate the issue of projection discrepancy for extended U-type or nearly U-type extended designs along the line of Fang and Qin (2005 Fang, K. T., and H. Qin. 2005. Uniformity pattern and related criteria for two-level factorials. Science China Series A 48:1–11.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) based on the centered L₂-discrepancy proposed in Hickernell (1998 Hickernell, F. J. 1998. A generalized discrepancy and quadrature error bound. Mathematics of Computation 67:299–322.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Extended designs are obtained through augmenting optimally few runs (or points) to an optimal U-type design. Lower bounds to projection discrepancy with reference to the centered L₂-discrepancy of extended designs have been obtained. Some illustrative examples are also provided.     

Dimension reduction boosting

L₂Boosting is an effective method for constructing model. In the case of high-dimensional setting, Bühlmann and Yu (2003 Bühlmann, P., Yu, B. (2003). Boosting with the L₂-loss: regression and classification. J. Amer. Stat. Assoc. 98:324–339.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) proposed the componentwise L₂Boosting, but componentwise L₂Boosting can only fit a special limited model. In this paper, by combining a boosting and sufficient dimension reduction method, e.g., sliced inverse regression (SIR), we propose a new method for regression, called dimension reduction boosting (DRBoosting). Compared with L₂Boosting, the computation of DRBoosting is less intensive and its prediction is better, especially for high-dimensional data. Simulations confirm the advantage of the new method.     

Is Each NPMLE of a Continuous Bivariate Distribution Function with Singly Right-Censored Data Really Inconsistent?

We consider non-parametric estimation of a continuous cdf of a random vector (X ₁, X ₂). With bivariate RC data, it is stated in van der Laan (1996 Van der Laan , M. J. ( 1996 ) Efficient estimation in the bivariate censoring model and repairing NPMLE . Ann. Statist. 24 : 596 – 627 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 598¹⁰, Ann. Statist.), Quale et al. (2006 Quale , C. M. , van der Laan , M. J. , Robins , J. R. ( 2006 ). Locally efficient estimation with bivariate right-censored data . JASA. 101 : 1076 – 1084 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], JASA) etc. that “it is well known that the NPMLE for continuous data is inconsistent (Tsai et al. (1986 Tsai , W. Y. , Leurgans , S. , Crowley , J. ( 1986 ). Nonparametric estimation of a bivariate survival function in the presence of censoring . Ann. Statist. 14 : 1351 – 1365 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar])).” The claim is based on a result in Tsai et al. (1986 Tsai , W. Y. , Leurgans , S. , Crowley , J. ( 1986 ). Nonparametric estimation of a bivariate survival function in the presence of censoring . Ann. Statist. 14 : 1351 – 1365 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p.1352, Ann. Statist.) that if X ₁ is right censored but not X ₂, then common ways for defining one NPMLE lead to inconsistency. If X ₁ is right censored and X ₂ is type I right-censored (which includes the case in Tsai et al.), we present a consistent NPMLE. The result corrects a common misinterpretation of Tsai's example (Tsai et al., 1986 Tsai , W. Y. , Leurgans , S. , Crowley , J. ( 1986 ). Nonparametric estimation of a bivariate survival function in the presence of censoring . Ann. Statist. 14 : 1351 – 1365 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Ann. Statist.).     

Likelihood Ratio Order of m-Spacings in Multiple-Outlier Models

This article deals with the multiple-outlier exponential model. The likelihood ratio order between m-spacings of the combined sample is developed, some results extend the conclusions on simple spacings in Wen et al. (2007 Wen , S. , Lu , Q. , Hu , T. ( 2007 ). Likelihood ratio order of spacings of heterogeneous exponential random variables . J. Multivariate Anal. 98 : 743 – 756 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

Asymptotics of the Lp-Norms of Density Estimators in the Nonlinear Autoregressive Models

This article investigates the asymptotic behavior of the error density function in nonlinear autoregressive stationary time series regression models. For any 1 ? p < ∞, the kernel density estimator of residuals is shown to be consistent for the error estimator concerning the L_p-distance, which extends the result developed by Cheng and Sun (2008 Cheng, F. X. (2005). Asymptotic distributions of error density estimators in first-order autoregression models. Sankhy Ind. J. Statist. 67:553–567. [Google Scholar]) in L₂-norm. Moreover, the result developed in this article is extended the results of Horváth and Zitikis (2003 Horváth, L., Zitikis, R. (2003). Asymptotics of the L_p-norms of density estimators in the first-order autoregressive models. Statist. Probab. Lett. 65:331342.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to nonlinear autoregressive models.     

Robust Bayesian inference via γ-divergence

Abstract

This paper presents the robust Bayesian inference based on the γ-divergence which is the same divergence as “type 0 divergence” in Jones et al. (2001 Jones, M. C., N. L. Hjort, I. R. Harris, and A. Basu. 2001. A comparison of related density-based minimum divergence estimators. Biometrika 88(3):865–73.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) on the basis of Windham (1995 Windham, M. P. 1995. Robustifying model fitting. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B57:599–609. [Google Scholar]). It is known that the minimum γ-divergence estimator works well to estimate the probability density for heavily contaminated data, and to estimate the variance parameters. In this paper, we propose a robust posterior distribution against outliers based on the γ-divergence and show the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator. We also discuss some robustness properties of the proposed estimator and illustrate its performances in some simulation studies.     

Circular First- and Second-Order Balanced Repeated Measurements Designs

Sharma (1977 Sharma , V. K. ( 1977 ). Change-over designs with complete balance for first and second order residual effect . Canad. J. Statist. 5 : 121 – 132 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Aggarwal et al. (2006 Aggarwal , M. L. , Deng , L.-Y. , Jha , M. K. ( 2006 ). Balanced residual treatment effects designs of first and second order . Statist. Probab. Lett. 76 : 597 – 600 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) considered non circular construction of first- and second-order balanced repeated measurements designs. Sharma et al. (2002 Sharma , V. K. , Varghese , C. , Jaggi , S. ( 2002 ). On optimality of change-over designs balanced for first and second order residual effects . Metron 60 : 153 – 162 . [Google Scholar]) constructed circular first- and second-order balanced repeated measurements designs only for a class with parameters (v, p = 3n, n = v ²) and also showed its universal optimality. In this article, we consider circular construction of first- and second-order balanced repeated measurements designs and strongly balanced repeated measurements designs by using the method of cyclic shifts. Some new circular designs with parameters (v, p, n) for cases p = v, p < v and p > v are given.     

Lower Bounds on the Symmetric L 2-Discrepancy and Their Application

The role of uniformity measured by the symmetric L ₂-discrepancy given in Hickernell (1998 Hickernell , F. J. (1998). A generalized discrepancy and quadrature error bound. Math. Computat. 67:299–322.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has been studied in fractional factorial designs. The issue of lower bounds on the symmetric L ₂-discrepancy is crucial in the construction of uniform designs. This article reports some new lower bounds on the symmetric L ₂-discrepancy for symmetric fractional factorials and for a set of asymmetric fractional factorials. It is valuable to use these lower bounds to measure uniformity of given designs.     

New Generalizations of Cauchy Distribution

The generalized skew-normal distribution introduced by Balakrishnan (2002 Balakrishnan , N. ( 2002 ). Discussion on ‘Skew multivariate models related to hidden truncation and/or selective reporting’ by B. C. Arnold and R. J. Beaver . Test 11 : 37 – 39 .[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is used to obtain new generalizations of univariate Cauchy distribution with two parameters, denoted by GC _{m, n} (a, b) with m and n non-negative integer numbers and a, b ∈ R. For cases (m, n) = (1, 2), (m, n) = (2, 1), (m, n) = (0, 3) and (m, n) = (3, 0) explicit forms of the density functions are derived and compared to previous generalizations of Cauchy and skew-Cauchy distributions.     

On generalized exponential chain ratio estimators under stratified two-phase random sampling

Sanaullah et al. (2014 Sanaullah, A., Ali, H.M., Noor ul Amin, M., Hanif, M. (2014). Generalized exponential chain ratio estimators under stratified two-phase random sampling. Appl. Math. Comput. 226:541–547.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have suggested generalized exponential chain ratio estimators under stratified two-phase sampling scheme for estimating the finite population mean. However, the bias and mean square error (MSE) expressions presented in that work need some corrections, and consequently the study based on efficiency comparison also requires corrections. In this article, we revisit Sanaullah et al. (2014 Sanaullah, A., Ali, H.M., Noor ul Amin, M., Hanif, M. (2014). Generalized exponential chain ratio estimators under stratified two-phase random sampling. Appl. Math. Comput. 226:541–547.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) estimator and provide the correct bias and MSE expressions of their estimator. We also propose an estimator which is more efficient than several competing estimators including the classes of estimators in Sanaullah et al. (2014 Sanaullah, A., Ali, H.M., Noor ul Amin, M., Hanif, M. (2014). Generalized exponential chain ratio estimators under stratified two-phase random sampling. Appl. Math. Comput. 226:541–547.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Three real datasets are used for efficiency comparisons.     

A Generalized Correlation Coefficient for the General Two-Treatment Crossover Design

This article extends the correlation methodology developed by Chinchilli et al. (2005 Chinchilli , V. M. , Phillips , B. R. , Mauger , D. T. , Szefler , S. J. ( 2005 ). A general class of correlation coefficients for the 2 × 2 crossover design . Biometr. J. 47 : 1 – 10 . [Google Scholar]) for the 2 × 2 crossover design to more complex crossover designs for clinical trials. We describe how the methodology can be adapted to a general type of two-treatment crossover design which includes either at least two sequences or at least two treatment periods or both. We then derive the asymptotic theory for the corresponding correlation statistics, investigate the statistical accuracy of the estimators via bootstrap analyses, and demonstrate their use with two real data examples.     

Linear Combinations,Products and Ratios of Simplicial or Spherical Variates

The density level sets of the two types of measures under consideration are l _{2, p} -circles with p = 1 and p = 2, respectively. The intersection-percentage function (ipf) of such a measure reflects the percentages which the level set corresponding to the p-radius r shares for each r > 0 with a set to be measured. The geometric measure representation formulae in Richter (2009 Richter , W.-D. (2009). Continuous l _{n, p} -symmetric distributions. Lithuanian Mathemat. J. 49:93–108.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is based upon these ipf's and will be used here for evaluating exact cdf's and pdf's for the linear combination, the product, and the ratio of the components of two-dimensional simplicial or spherically distributed random vectors.     

Random Effects,Fixed Effects and Hausman's Test for the Generalized Mixed Regressive Spatial Autoregressive Panel Data Model

This article suggests random and fixed effects spatial two-stage least squares estimators for the generalized mixed regressive spatial autoregressive panel data model. This extends the generalized spatial panel model of Baltagi et al. (2013 Baltagi, B. H., Egger, P., Pfaffermayr, M. (2013). A generalized spatial panel data model with random effects. Econometric Reviews 32:650–685.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) by the inclusion of a spatial lag term. The estimation method utilizes the Generalized Moments method suggested by Kapoor et al. (2007 Kapoor, M., Kelejian, H. H., Prucha, I. R. (2007). Panel data models with spatially correlated error components. Journal of Econometrics 127(1):97–130.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) for a spatial autoregressive panel data model. We derive the asymptotic distributions of these estimators and suggest a Hausman test a la Mutl and Pfaffermayr (2011 Mutl, J., Pfaffermayr, M. (2011). The Hausman test in a Cliff and Ord panel model. Econometrics Journal 14:48–76.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) based on the difference between these estimators. Monte Carlo experiments are performed to investigate the performance of these estimators as well as the corresponding Hausman test.     

Construction of regular 2n41 designs with general minimum lower-order confounding

Mixed-level designs, especially two- and four-level designs, are very useful in practice. In the last two decades, there are quite a few literatures investigating the selection of this kind of optimal designs. Recently, the general minimum lower-order confounding (GMC) criterion (Zhang et al., 2008 Zhang, R.C., Li, P.F., Zhao, S.L., Ai, M.Y. (2008). A general minimum lower order confounding criterion for two-level regular design. Stat. Sin. 18:1689–1705.[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) gave a new approach for choosing optimal factorials. It is proved that the GMC designs are more powerful than other criteria in the widely practical situations. In this paper, we extend the GMC theory to the mixed-level designs. Under the theory we establish a new criterion for choosing optimal regular two- and four-level designs. Further, a construction method is proposed to obtain all the 2ⁿ4¹ GMC designs with N/4 + 1 ? n + 2 ? 5N/16, where N is the number of runs and n is the number of two-level factors.     

A Generalized Time-Dependent Conditional Linear Model with Left-Truncated and Right-Censored Data

Consider the model φ(S(y | X)) = β(y) ^T X, where φ is a known link function, S(· | X) is the survival function of a response Y given a covariate X = (1, X, X ²,…, X ^p ), and β(y) is an unknown vector of time-dependent regression coefficients. The response Y is subject to left truncation and right censoring. We assume that given X, Y is independent of (C, T) where C and T are censoring and truncation variables with P(C ≥ T) = 1. In this article, with some modification of the assumptions in Lemmas 5 and 6 of Iglesias-Pérez and González-Manteiga (1999 Iglesias-Pérez , C. J. , González-Manteiga , W. G. ( 1999 ). Strong representation of a generalized product-limit estimator for truncated and censored data with some application . J. Nonparametric Statist. 10 : 213 – 244 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we present an almost sure representation for the generalized product-limit estimator (GPL) of S(y | X). Based on the GPL and the approach of Teodorescu et al. (2010 Teodorescu , B. , Keilegom , I. V. , Cao , R. ( 2010 ). Generalized time-dependent conditional linear models under left truncation and right censoring . Ann. Instit. Statist. Math. 62 : 465 – 485 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), a least squares estimator of β(y) is obtained and a bootstrap procedure is proposed to choose the optimum bandwidth.     

Steady-state Gibbs sampler estimation for lung cancer data

This paper is based on the application of a Bayesian model to a clinical trial study to determine a more effective treatment to lower mortality rates and consequently to increase survival times among patients with lung cancer. In this study, Qian et al. [13 J. Qian, D.K. Stangl, and S. George, A Weibull model for survival data: Using prediction to decide when to stop a clinical trial, in Bayesian Biostatistics, D. Berry and D. Stangl, eds., Marcel Dekker, New York, 1996, pp. 187–205. [Google Scholar]] strived to determine if a Weibull survival model can be used to decide whether to stop a clinical trial. The traditional Gibbs sampler was used to estimate the model parameters. This paper proposes to use the independent steady-state Gibbs sampling (ISSGS) approach, introduced by Dunbar et al. [3 M. Dunbar, H.M. Samawi, R. Vogel, and L. Yu, A more efficient Gibbs sampler estimation using steady state simulation: Application to public health studies, J. Stat. Simul. Comput. 10.1080/00949655.2013.770857.[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]], to improve the original Gibbs sampler in multidimensional problems. It is demonstrated that ISSGS provides accuracy with unbiased estimation and improves the performance and convergence of the Gibbs sampler in this application.     

On Simultaneous Estimation of the Number of Signals and Frequencies of Multiple Sinusoids When Some Observations Are Missing

In an earlier article (Bai et al., 1999 Bai , Z. D. , Rao , C. R. , Wu , Y. H. , Zen , M. M. , Zhao , L. C. ( 1999 ). The simultaneous estimation of the number of signals and frequencies of multiple sinusods when some observations are missing: I. Asymptotics . Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 96 : 11,106 – 11,110 . [CSA] [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the problem of simultaneous estimation of the number of signals and frequencies of multiple sinusoids is considered in the case that some observations are missing. The number of signals is estimated with an information theoretic criterion and the frequencies are estimated with eigenvariation linear prediction. Asymptotic properties of the procedure are investigated but the Monte Carlo simulation is not performed. In this article, a slightly different but scale invariant criterion for detection is proposed and the estimation of frequencies remains the same. Asymptotic properties of this new procedure are provided. Monte Carlo Simulation for both procedures is carried out. Furthermore, comparison on the real signals is also given.