A small sample test for an absolutely continuous bivariate exponential model

The finite sample distribution of the likelihood ratio sta-tistic is obtained for testing independence, given marginal homo-geneity, in the absolutely continuous bivariate exponential distri-bution of Block and Basu (1974). This test is discussed in light of the analysis of Gross and Lam (1981) on times to relief of head-aches for standard and new treatments on ten subjects.     

Penalized likelihood-ratio test for finite mixture models with multinomial observations

Due to the irregularity of finite mixture models, the commonly used likelihood-ratio statistics often have complicated limiting distributions. We propose to add a particular type of penalty function to the log-likelihood function. The resulting penalized likelihood-ratio statistics have simple limiting distributions when applied to finite mixture models with multinomial observations. The method is especially effective in addressing the problems discussed by Chernoff and Lander (1995). The theory developed and simulations conducted show that the penalized likelihood method can give very good results, better than the well-known C(α) procedure, for example. The paper does not, however, fully explore the choice of penalty function and weight. The full potential of the new procedure is to be explored in the future.     

A generalization of discrete Weibull distribution

In this paper, we introduce a new family of discrete distributions and study its properties. It is shown that the new family is a generalization of discrete Marshall-Olkin family of distributions. In particular, we study generalized discrete Weibull distribution in detail. Discrete Marshall-Olkin Weibull distribution, exponentiated discrete Weibull distribution, discrete Weibull distribution, discrete Marshall-Olkin generalized exponential distribution, exponentiated geometric distribution, generalized discrete exponential distribution, discrete Marshall-Olkin Rayleigh distribution and exponentiated discrete Rayleigh distribution are sub-models of generalized discrete Weibull distribution. We derive some basic distributional properties such as probability generating function, moments, hazard rate and quantiles of the generalized discrete Weibull distribution. We can see that the hazard rate function can be decreasing, increasing, bathtub and upside-down bathtub shape. Estimation of the parameters are done using maximum likelihood method. A real data set is analyzed to illustrate the suitability of the proposed model.     

A two sample ordered alternative test for means and variances

A two sample test of likelihood ratio type is proposed, assuming normal distribution theory, for testing the hypothesis that two samples come from identical normal populations versus the alternative that the populations are normal but vary in mean value and variance with one population having a smaller mean and smaller variance than the other. The small sample and large sample distribution of the proposed statistic are derived assuming normality. Some computations are presented which show the speed of convergence of small sample critical values to their asymptotic counterparts. Comparisons of local power of the proposed test are made with several potential competing tests. Asymptotics for the test statistic are derived when underlying distributions are not necessarily normal.     

A new goodness of fit test for the equality of multinomial cell probabilities versus trend alternatives

In this paper, a new test statistic is presented for testing the null hypothesis of equal multinomial cell probabilities versus various trend alternatives. Exact asymptotic critical values are obtained, The power of the test is compared with several other statistics considered by Choulakian et al (1995), The test is shown to have better power for certain trend alternatives.     

Theoretical results on the discrete Weibull distribution of Nakagawa and Osaki

In this paper, we discuss some theoretical results and properties of the discrete Weibull distribution, which was introduced by Nakagawa and Osaki [The discrete Weibull distribution. IEEE Trans Reliab. 1975;24:300–301]. We study the monotonicity of the probability mass, survival and hazard functions. Moreover, reliability, moments, p-quantiles, entropies and order statistics are also studied. We consider likelihood-based methods to estimate the model parameters based on complete and censored samples, and to derive confidence intervals. We also consider two additional methods to estimate the model parameters. The uniqueness of the maximum likelihood estimate of one of the parameters that index the discrete Weibull model is discussed. Numerical evaluation of the considered model is performed by Monte Carlo simulations. For illustrative purposes, two real data sets are analyzed.     

Symbolic computation for approximating distributions of some families of one and two-sample nonparametric test statistics

A conditional saddlepoint approximation was provided by Gatto and Jammalamadaka (1999) for computing the distribution function of many test statistics based on dependent quantities like multinomial frequencies, spacing frequencies, etc. The considerable complexity of the formulas involved can be bypassed by symbolic computation. This article illustrates the effectiveness of symbolic computation to evaluate the saddlepoint approximation for the likelihood ratio, the exponential score, and the Wald-Wolfowitz test statistics. The case of composite hypotheses is also discussed.     

On an asymptotic relative efficiency concept based on expected volumes of confidence regions

ABSTRACT

The paper deals with an asymptotic relative efficiency concept for confidence regions of multidimensional parameters that is based on the expected volumes of the confidence regions. Under standard conditions the asymptotic relative efficiencies of confidence regions are seen to be certain powers of the ratio of the limits of the expected volumes. These limits are explicitly derived for confidence regions associated with certain plugin estimators, likelihood ratio tests and Wald tests. Under regularity conditions, the asymptotic relative efficiency of each of these procedures with respect to each one of its competitors is equal to 1. The results are applied to multivariate normal distributions and multinomial distributions in a fairly general setting.     

Empirical likelihood ratio-based goodness-of-fit test for the logistic distribution

The logistic distribution has been used to model growth curves in survival analysis and biological studies. In this article, we propose a goodness-of-fit test for the logistic distribution based on the empirical likelihood ratio. The test is constructed based on the methodology introduced by Vexler and Gurevich [17 A. Vexler and G. Gurevich, Empirical likelihood ratios applied to goodness-of-fit tests based on sample entropy, Comput. Stat. Data Anal. 54 (2010), pp. 531–545. doi: 10.1016/j.csda.2009.09.025[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]]. In order to compute the test statistic, parameters of the distribution are estimated by the method of maximum likelihood. Power comparisons of the proposed test with some known competing tests are carried out via simulations. Finally, an illustrative example is presented and analyzed.     

Maximum likelihood estimation for the negative multinomial log-linear model

A log-linear model is defined for multiway contingency tables with negative multinomial frequency counts. The maximum likelihood estimator of the model parameters and the estimator covariance matrix is given. The likelihood ratio test for the general log-linear hypothesis also is presented.     

On bivariate discrete Weibull distribution

Recently, Lee and Cha proposed two general classes of discrete bivariate distributions. They have discussed some general properties and some specific cases of their proposed distributions. In this paper we have considered one model, namely bivariate discrete Weibull distribution, which has not been considered in the literature yet. The proposed bivariate discrete Weibull distribution is a discrete analogue of the Marshall–Olkin bivariate Weibull distribution. We study various properties of the proposed distribution and discuss its interesting physical interpretations. The proposed model has four parameters, and because of that it is a very flexible distribution. The maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters cannot be obtained in closed forms, and we have proposed a very efficient nested EM algorithm which works quite well for discrete data. We have also proposed augmented Gibbs sampling procedure to compute Bayes estimates of the unknown parameters based on a very flexible set of priors. Two data sets have been analyzed to show how the proposed model and the method work in practice. We will see that the performances are quite satisfactory. Finally, we conclude the paper.     

Necessary sample sizes for categorial data

This paper deals with the problem how to determine the necessary sample size for the estimation of the parameter π=(π1,...,πk) (πj ≥ 0, Σjπj=1) based on the vector f=(f1,...,fk) of relative frequencies with sample size n. The vector n-f has a multinomial distribution. For a given precision c, 0≤c≤1, and a given confidence number β, 0≤β≤1, there exists a smallest positive integer N⁰=N⁰(β, c, k) with P{|fj−πj|≤c; j=1, ...,k}≥β for all sample sizes n≥N⁰ and for all π. As results are given in this paper exact upper bounds for N⁰ and an improved asymptotical upper bound for N⁰ which is derived from the asymptotical multinormal approximation for the distribution of f.     

An F-type small sample simultaneous test for nested linear regression models

A small sample simultaneous testing method is proposed for nested linear regression model. The methodology is based on the generalized likelihood ratio test which is the large sample simultaneous testing method for general nested models. The proposed test is also used for model identification.     

A multi sample test for the equality of coefficients of variation in normal populations

Two tests are derived for the hypothesis that the coefficients of variation of k normal populations are equal. The k samples may be of unequal size. The first test is the likelihood ratio test with the usual X²-approximation. A simulation study shows that the small sample behaviour under the null hypothesis is unsatisfactory. An alternative test, based on the sample coefficients of variation, appears to have somewhat better properties.     

A likelihood ratio test of quasi-independence for sparse two-way contingency tables

We consider a likelihood ratio test of independence for large two-way contingency tables having both structural (non-random) and sampling (random) zeros in many cells. The solution of this problem is not available using standard likelihood ratio tests. One way to bypass this problem is to remove the structural zeroes from the table and implement a test on the remaining cells which incorporate the randomness in the sampling zeros; the resulting test is a test of quasi-independence of the two categorical variables. This test is based only on the positive counts in the contingency table and is valid when there is at least one sampling (random) zero. The proposed (likelihood ratio) test is an alternative to the commonly used ad hoc procedures of converting the zero cells to positive ones by adding a small constant. One practical advantage of our procedure is that there is no need to know if a zero cell is structural zero or a sampling zero. We model the positive counts using a truncated multinomial distribution. In fact, we have two truncated multinomial distributions; one for the null hypothesis of independence and the other for the unrestricted parameter space. We use Monte Carlo methods to obtain the maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters and also the p-value of our proposed test. To obtain the sampling distribution of the likelihood ratio test statistic, we use bootstrap methods. We discuss many examples, and also empirically compare the power function of the likelihood ratio test relative to those of some well-known test statistics.     

Multivariate discrete exponential family of distributions and their properties

The paper generalizes the univariate discrete exponential family of distributions to the multivariate situation, and this generalization includes the multivariate power series distributions, the multivariate Lagrangian distributions, and the modified multivariate power-series distributions. This provides a unified approach for the study of these three classes of distributions. We obtain recurrence relations for moments and cumulants, and the maximum likelihood estimation for the discrete exponential family. These results are applied to some multivariate discrete distributions like the Lagrangian Poisson, Lagrangian (negative) multinomial, logarithmic series distributions and multivariate Lagrangian negative binomial distribution.     

The roles of prior catchability assumptions and sample features on bayes estimates of the number of classes in a population

The object of this paper is to explain the role played by the catchability and sampling in the Bayesian estimation of k, the unknown number of classes in a multinomial population. It is shown that the posterior distribution of k increases as the capture probabilities of the classes become more unequal, and that the posterior distribution of k increases with the number of classes observed in the sample and decreases with the sample size. Moreover, it is shown that the posterior mean of k is consistent.     

Affiliation discrete weighted networks with an increasing degree sequence

Affiliation network is one kind of two-mode social network with two different sets of nodes (namely, a set of actors and a set of social events) and edges representing the affiliation of the actors with the social events. The connections in many affiliation networks are only binary weighted between actors and social events that can not reveal the affiliation strength relationship. Although a number of statistical models are proposed to analyze affiliation binary weighted networks, the asymptotic behaviors of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) are still unknown or have not been properly explored in affiliation weighted networks. In this paper, we study an affiliation model with the degree sequence as the exclusively natural sufficient statistic in the exponential family distributions. We derive the consistency and asymptotic normality of the maximum likelihood estimator in affiliation finite discrete weighted networks when the numbers of actors and events both go to infinity. Simulation studies and a real data example demonstrate our theoretical results.     

Asymptotic normality for limiting discrete distributions

Three basic asymptotic normality conditions for limiting discrete distributions are given in terms of differencing operators. Under these conditions one can establish asymptotic normality by directly dealing with the limiting behaviors of distribution functions themselves without resorting to the central limit theorem.     

捕获-再捕获模型的统计学原理

捕获-再捕获模型由国外学者首创,最初用于野生动物总体规模估计,后来经过改进逐步应用于人口普查质量评估和其他统计领域。为了正确使用该模型,采取独一无二的方法,从试验背景、组格概率和边缘概率之间的关系、组格条件概率、条件多项分布和条件似然函数等方面对其进行全面解读和研究。研究表明:使用捕获-再捕获模型必须遵守三项理论原则:即总体封闭原则、个体同质原则、独立性原则;对实际问题与理论原则之间存在的差距必须做三件事情:即发现实际问题与理论原则之间的所有分歧点、评估各个分歧点问题的严重程度、寻找解决问题的办法。