Stochastic models for the spread of HIV amongst intravenous drug users

In this paper we examine the spread of HIV when this disease is transmitted through the random sharing of contaminated drug injection equipment. We first model the spread of disease using a standard set of behavioral assumptions discussed by Kaplan [1] Kaplan, E.H. 1989. Needles That Kill: Modeling Human Immunodeficiency Virus Transmission via Shared Drug Injection Equipment in Shooting Galleries. Rev. Inf. Dis., 11: 289–298. [Crossref], [PubMed] , [Google Scholar]. We demonstrate that deterministic and stochastic models based on these assumptions behave very similarly and use a branching process approximation to show that if the basic reproductive number, R ₀, is less than or equal to unity then the disease will always become extinct. If R ₀>1 then, although the disease might take off, it is still possible for it to die out, and we calculate the probability of extinction. This is not of the simple form R ₀ ^?a , where a is the initial number of infectious addicts, which might have been expected from Whittle's stochastic threshold theorem [2] Whittle, P. 1955. The Outcome of a Stochastic Epidemic—a Note on Bailey's Paper. Biometrika, 42: 116–122. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. We next discuss an extended model that incorporates a three-stage AIDS incubation period and again examine a branching process approximation. We finally explore the extent to which control strategies such as needle exchange and improved needle cleaning can reduce the risk of a HIV epidemic before concluding with a brief discussion.     

A MONTE CARLO COMPARISON OF VARIOUS ASYMPTOTIC APPROXIMATIONS TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF INSTRUMENTAL VARIABLES ESTIMATORS

ABSTRACT

We examine empirical relevance of three alternative asymptotic approximations to the distribution of instrumental variables estimators by Monte Carlo experiments. We find that conventional asymptotics provides a reasonable approximation to the actual distribution of instrumental variables estimators when the sample size is reasonably large. For most sample sizes, we find Bekker[11] Bekker, P. A. 1994. Alternative Approximations to the Distributions of Instrumental Variable Estimators. Econometrica, 62: 657–681. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] asymptotics provides reasonably good approximation even when the first stage R ² is very small. We conclude that reporting Bekker[11] Bekker, P. A. 1994. Alternative Approximations to the Distributions of Instrumental Variable Estimators. Econometrica, 62: 657–681. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] confidence interval would suffice for most microeconometric (cross-sectional) applications, and the comparative advantage of Staiger and Stock[5] Staiger, D. and Stock, J. H. 1997. Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments. Econometrica, 65: 556–586. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] asymptotic approximation is in applications with sample sizes typical in macroeconometric (time series) applications.     

POOLED SLICING METHODS VERSUS SLICING METHODS

We consider the semiparametric regression model introduced by [1] Duan, N. and Li, K. C. 1991. Slicing regression: a link-free regression method. The Annals of Statistics, 19: 505–530. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. The dependent variable y is linked to the index x′ β through an unknown link function. [1] Duan, N. and Li, K. C. 1991. Slicing regression: a link-free regression method. The Annals of Statistics, 19: 505–530. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and [2] Li, K. C. 1991. Sliced inverse regression for dimension reduction, with discussions. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 86: 316–342. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] present Slicing methods (the Sliced Inverse Regression methods SIR-I, SIR-II and SIR_α) in order to estimate the direction of the unknown slope parameter β. These methods are computationally simple and fast but depend on the choice of an arbitrary slicing fixed by the user. When the sample size is small, the number and the position of slices have an influence on the estimated direction. In this paper, we suggest to use the corresponding Pooled Slicing methods: PSIR-I (proposed by [3] Aragon, Y. and Saracco, J. 1997. Sliced Inverse Regression (SIR): an appraisal of small sample alternatives to slicing. Computational Statistics, 12: 109–130. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), PSIR-II and PSIR_α. These methods combine the results from a number of slicings. We compare the sample behaviour of Slicing and Pooled Slicing methods on simulations. We also propose a practical choice of α in SIR_α and PSIR_α methods.     

EVALUATION OF POWER OF TESTS INVOLVING COVARIATES UNDER NONCONSTANT VARIANCE

In many experiments where pre-treatment and post-treatment measurements are taken, investigators wish to determine if there is a difference between two treatment groups. For this type of data, the post-treatment variable is used as the primary comparison variable and the pre-treatment variable is used as a covariate. Although most of the discussion in this paper is written with the pre-treatment variable as the covariate the results are applicable to other choices of a covariate. Tests based on residuals have been proposed as alternatives to the usual covariance methods. Our objective is to investigate how the powers of these tests are affected when the conditional variance of the post-treatment variable depends on the magnitude of the pre-treatment variable. In particular, we investigate two cases. [1] Crager, Michael R. 1987. Analysis of Covariance in Parallel-Group Clinical Trials With Pretreatment Baselines. Biometrics, 43: 895–901. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] The conditional variance of the post-treatment variable gradually increases as the magnitude of the pre-treatment variable increases. (In many biological models this is the case.) [2] Knoke, James D. 1991. Nonparametric Analysis of Covariance for Comparing Change in Randomized Studies with Baseline Values Subject to Error. Biometrics, 47: 523–533. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] The conditional variance of the post-treatment variable is dependent upon natural or imposed subgroups contained within the pre-treatment variable. Power comparisons are made using Monte Carlo techniques.     

ESTIMATION OF PARAMETERS IN ARFIMA PROCESSES: A SIMULATION STUDY

It is known that, in the presence of short memory components, the estimation of the fractional parameter d in an Autoregressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average, ARFIMA(p, d, q), process has some difficulties (see [1] Smith, J., Taylor, N. and Yadav, S. 1997. Comparing the bias and misspecification in ARFIMA models. Journal of Time Series Analysis, 18(5): 507–527. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In this paper, we continue the efforts made by Smith et al. [1] Smith, J., Taylor, N. and Yadav, S. 1997. Comparing the bias and misspecification in ARFIMA models. Journal of Time Series Analysis, 18(5): 507–527. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Beveridge and Oickle [2] Beveridge, S. and Oickle, C. 1993. Estimating fractionally integrated time series models. Economics Letters, 43: 137–142.  [Google Scholar] by conducting a simulation study to evaluate the convergence properties of the iterative estimation procedure suggested by Hosking [3] Hosking, J. 1981. Fractional differencing. Biometrika, 68(1): 165–176. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. In this context we consider some semiparametric approaches and a parametric method proposed by Fox-Taqqu[4] Fox, R. and Taqqu, M. S. 1986. Large-sample properties of parameter estimates for strongly dependent stationary gaussian time series. The Annals of Statistics, 14(2): 517–532. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. We also investigate the method proposed by Robinson [5] Robinson, P. M. 1995a. Log-periodogram regression of time series with long range dependence. The Annals of Statistics, 23(3): 1048–1072. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and a modification using the smoothed periodogram function.     

Generalized linear regression models incorporating original outcome distributions

ABSTRACT

In this article, we propose an approach for incorporating continuous and discrete original outcome distributions into the usual exponential family regression models. The new approach is an extension of the works of Suissa (1991 Suissa, S. (1991). Binary methods for continuous outcomes: A parametric alternative. J. Clin. Epidemiol. 44:241–248.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Suissa and Blais (1995 Suissa, S., Blais, L. (1995). Binary regression with continuous outcomes. Stat. Med. 14:247–255.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which present methods to estimate the risk of an event defined in a sample subspace of an original continuous outcome variable. Simulation studies are presented in order to illustrate the performance of the developed methodology. Real data sets are analyzed by using the proposed models.     

COMPUTING MARGINAL EFFECTS IN THE BOX–COX MODEL

ABSTRACT

This paper considers computation of fitted values and marginal effects in the Box–Cox regression model. Two methods, 1 the “smearing” technique suggested by Duan (see Ref. [10] Duan, N. 1983. Smearing Estimate: A Nonparametric Retransformation Method. J. Amer. Statistical Assoc., 78: 605–610. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and 2 direct numerical integration, are examined and compared with the “naive” method often used in econometrics.     

Two Statistics for Unconditional Exact Tests in Matched-Pairs Design

Abstract

In a recent article Hsueh et al. (Hsueh, H.-M., Liu, J.-P., Chen, J. J. (2001 Hsueh, H.-M., Liu, J.-P. and Chen, J. J. 2001. Unconditional exact tests for equivalence or noninferiority for paired binary endpoints. Biometrics, 57: 478–483. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Unconditional exact tests for equivalence or noninferiority for paired binary endpoints. Biometrics 57:478–483.) considered unconditional exact tests for paired binary endpoints. They suggested two statistics one of which is based on the restricted maximum-likelihood estimator. Properties of these statistics and the related tests are treated in this article.     

Baker- Lin-Huang Type Bivariate Distributions Based on Order Statistics

Baker (2008 Baker, R. (2008). An order-statistics-based method for constructing multivariate distributions with fixed marginals. J. Multivariate Anal. 99: 23122327.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) introduced a new class of bivariate distributions based on distributions of order statistics from two independent samples of size n. Lin and Huang (2010 Lin, G.D., Huang, J.S. (2010). A note on the maximum correlation for Baker’s bivariate distributions with fixed marginals. J. Multivariate Anal. 101: 22272233.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) discovered an important property of Baker’s distribution and showed that the Pearson’s correlation coefficient for this distribution converges to maximum attainable value, i.e., the correlation coefficient of the Fréchet upper bound, as n increases to infinity. Bairamov and Bayramoglu (2013 Bairamov, I., Bayramoglu, K. (2013). From Huang-Kotz distribution to Baker’s distribution. J. Multivariate Anal. 113: 106115.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) investigated a new class of bivariate distributions constructed by using Baker’s model and distributions of order statistics from dependent random variables, allowing higher correlation than that of Baker’s distribution. In this article, a new class of Baker’s type bivariate distributions with high correlation are constructed based on distributions of order statistics by using an arbitrary continuous copula instead of the product copula.     

Bootstrap test of hypothesis for the multi-state models in survival analysis

Abstract

In the present paper we develop bootstrap tests of hypothesis, based on simulation, for the transition probability matrix arising in the context of a multi-state model. The bootstrap test statistic is based on the paper of Tattar and Vaman (2008 Tattar, P. N., Vaman, H. J. (2008). Testing transition probability matrix of a multi-state model with censored data. Lifetime Data Anal. 14(2):216–230.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which develops a statistic for the testing problems concerning the transition probability matrix of the non homogeneous Markov process.     

Inference in log-alpha-power and log-skew-normal multivariate models

ABSTRACT

Random vectors with positive components are common in many applied fields, for example, in meteorology, when daily precipitation is measured through a region Marchenko and Genton (2010 Marchenko, Y., Genton, M. (2010). Multivariate log-skew-elliptical distributions with applications to precipitation data. Environmetrics 21:318–340.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Frequently, the log-normal multivariate distribution is used for modeling this type of data. This modeling approach is not appropriate for data with high asymmetry or kurtosis. Consequently, more flexible multivariate distributions than the log-normal multivariate are required. As an alternative to this distribution, we propose the log-alpha-power multivariate and log-skew-normal multivariate models. The first model is an extension for positive data of the fractional order statistics model Durrans (1992 Durrans, S. (1992). Distributions of fractional order statistics in hydrology. Water Resour. Res. 28:1649–1655.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The second one is an extension of the log-skew-normal model studied by Mateu-Figueras and Pawlowsky-Glahn (2007 Mateu-Figueras, G., Pawlowsky-Glahn, V. (2007). The skew-normal distribution on the simplex. Commun. Stat.-Theory Methods 36:1787–1802.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We study parameter estimation for these models by means of pseudo-likelihood and maximum likelihood methods. We illustrate the proposal analyzing a real dataset.     

REGRESSION DIAGNOSTIC USING LOCAL INFLUENCE: A REVIEW

The local influence approach of Cook [1] Cook, R. D. 1986. Assessment of Local Influence. Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series B-Methodological, 48: 133–169.  [Google Scholar]to regression diagnostic is developed and discussed, and compared with Cook's [2] Cook, R. D. 1977. Detection of Influential Observations in Linear Regression. Technometrics, 19: 15–18. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]deletion approach. The ability of the local influence approach to handle cases simultaneously, as well as some of its theoretical and practical difficulties, are reviewed. The perturbation ideas of the approach are applied to the linear model making distinction between the local perturbations on the assumptions of the model and the data.     

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.     

Estimation of the covariance matrix with two-step monotone missing data

Abstract

We suggest shrinkage based technique for estimating covariance matrix in the high-dimensional normal model with missing data. Our approach is based on the monotone missing scheme assumption, meaning that missing values patterns occur completely at random. Our asymptotic framework allows the dimensionality p grow to infinity together with the sample size, N, and extends the methodology of Ledoit and Wolf (2004) Ledoit, O., Wolf, M. (2004). A well-conditioned estimator for large dimensional covariance matrices. J. Multivariate Anal. 88:365–411.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] to the case of two-step monotone missing data. Two new shrinkage-type estimators are derived and their dominance properties over the Ledoit and Wolf (2004) Ledoit, O., Wolf, M. (2004). A well-conditioned estimator for large dimensional covariance matrices. J. Multivariate Anal. 88:365–411.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] estimator are shown under the expected quadratic loss. We perform a simulation study and conclude that the proposed estimators are successful for a range of missing data scenarios.     

Bayes minimax ridge regression estimators

The problem of estimating of the vector β of the linear regression model y = Aβ + ? with ? ～ N_p(0, σ²I_p) under quadratic loss function is considered when common variance σ² is unknown. We first find a class of minimax estimators for this problem which extends a class given by Maruyama and Strawderman (2005 Maruyama, Y., and W. E. Strawderman. 2005. A new class of generalized Bayes minimax ridge regression estimators. Annals of Statistics 33:1753–70.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and using these estimators, we obtain a large class of (proper and generalized) Bayes minimax estimators and show that the result of Maruyama and Strawderman (2005 Maruyama, Y., and W. E. Strawderman. 2005. A new class of generalized Bayes minimax ridge regression estimators. Annals of Statistics 33:1753–70.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is a special case of our result. We also show that under certain conditions, these generalized Bayes minimax estimators have greater numerical stability (i.e., smaller condition number) than the least-squares estimator.     

Group Variable Selection with Oracle Property by Weight-Fused Adaptive Elastic Net Model for Strongly Correlated Data

This paper is the generalization of weight-fused elastic net (Fu and Xu, 2012 Fu, G., Xu, Q. (2012). Grouping variable selection by weight fused elastic net for multi-collinear data. Communications in Statistics-Simulation and Computation 41(2):205–221.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which performs group variable selection by combining weight-fused LASSO(wfLasso) and elastic net (Zou and Hastie, 2005 Zou, H., Hastie, T. (2005). Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology) 67(2):301–320.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) penalties. In this study, the elastic net penalty is replaced by adaptive elastic net penalty (AdaEnet) (Zou and Zhang, 2009 Zou, H., Zhang, H. (2009). On the adaptive elastic-net with a diverging number of parameters. Annals of Statistics 37(4):1733–1751.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and a new group variable selection algorithm with oracle property (Fan and Li, 2001 Fan, J., Li, R. (2001). Variable selection via nonconcave penalized likelihood and its oracle properties. Journal of the American Statistical Association 96(456):1348–1360.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Zou, 2006 Zou, H. (2006). The adaptive lasso and its oracle properties. Journal of the American Statistical Association 101(476):1418–1429.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is obtained.     

SIZE AND SHAPE AS LINEAR COMBINATIONS OF UNTRANSFORMED MEASUREMENTS

A numerical specification of ‘size’ and ‘shape’ is of interest for making interpretations in morphometrics. Starting from a, possibly large, set m ₁,…, m_r of size measurements, e.g. m ₁= height, m ₂= sitting height, etc., a preliminary analysis provides the set x ₁,…,x_p of size measurements to be used, e.g. x ₁= m ₁? m ₂= subischial leg length, x ₂= m ₂= sitting height, and x ₃= head circumference. In general these x_j are constructed as appropriately scaled linear combinations of the original measurements. A constant term should not be included because size measurements have to be 0 if all x_j are 0. Our theory requires a (compromise) vector μof means and a matrix Σof (co)variances. Size being specified as an optimalsize characteristic of the form c ′ x , the remaining morphological information is expressed by, at most, p? 1 components of shapeof the form d ′ x. Relations with Darroch-Mosimann [9] Darroch, J. N. and Mosimann, J. E. 1985. Canonical and Principal Components of Shape. Biometrika, 72: 241–252. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]are indicated. An application to human growth is made and other applications are suggested.

Don't read my book, think for yourself.

C. R. Rao, personal communications, 1981     

A NOTE ON ESTIMATING THE NUMBER OF SUPERIMPOSED EXPONENTIAL SIGNALS BY THE CROSS-VALIDATION APPROACH

In this paper, a procedure based on the delete-1 cross-validation is given for estimating the number of superimposed exponential signals, its limiting behavior is explored and it is shown that the probability of overestimating the true number of signals is greater than a positive constant for sufficiently large samples. Also a general procedure based on the cross-validation is presented when the deletion proceeds according to a collection of subsets of indices. The result is similar to the delete-1 cross-validation if the number of deletions is fixed. The simulation results are provided for the performance of the procedure when the collections of subsets of indices are chosen as those suggested by Shao [1] Shao, J. 1993. Linear model selection by cross-validation. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 88: 486–494. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]in a linear model selection problem.     

Restricted estimation and testing of hypothesis in linear measurement errors models

ABSTRACT

In this article, the linear models with measurement error both in the response and in the covariates are considered. Following Shalabh et al. (2007 Shalabh, Garg, G., Misra, N. (2007). Restricted regression estimation in measurement error models. Comput. Stat. Data Anal. 52:1149–1166.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2009 Shalabh, Garg, G., Misra, N. (2009). Use of prior information in the consistent estimation of regression coefficients in measurement error models. J. Multivariate Anal. 100:1498–1520.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we propose several restricted estimators for the regression coefficients. The consistency and asymptotic normality of the restricted estimators are established. Furthermore, we also discuss the superiority of the restricted estimators to unrestricted estimators under Pitman closeness criterion. We also develop several variance estimators and establish their asymptotic distributions. Wald-type statistics are constructed for testing the linear restrictions. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to illustrate the finite-sample properties of the proposed estimators.