Quantile Regression with Left-Truncated and Right-Censored Data in a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space

Li et al. (2007 Li, Y., Liu, Y., Zhu, J. (2007). Quantile regression in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102:255–268.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) developed an estimation method for quantile functions in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space for complete data, and Park and Kim (2011 Park, J., Kim, J. (2011). Quantile regression with an epsilon-insensitive loss in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Statist. Probab. Lett. 81:62–70.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) proposed an estimation method using the ε-insensitive loss. This article extends these estimation methods to left-truncated and right-censored data. As a measure of goodness of fit, the check loss and the ε-insensitive loss were used to estimate the quantile function. The ε-insensitive loss can shrink the estimated coefficients toward zero; hence, it can reduce the variability of the estimates. Simulation studies show that the estimated quantile functions based on the ε-insensitive loss perform slightly better when ε is adequately chosen.     

Slope-rotatable designs with equal maximum directional variance for second order response surface models

The concept of sloperotaiability with equal maximum directional vari ance for second order response surface models is introduced as a new design property. This requires that the maximum variance of the estimated slope over all possible directions be only a function of p, which is the distance from the design originif is shown that a rotatable design satisfies this property Also, minimization of tiie maximum variance of the estimated slope over all possible directions is proposed as a new design optirnality criterion, and op¬timal designs are called slope-directional minirnax designs. For the class of cquiradial designs, the slope-directional minirnax designs are compared with D— optimal designs.     

Smoothing techniques via the bezier curve

Although the Bezier curve is very popular in the area of computational graphics it has rarely been used by statisticians. In this paper we develop methods and techniques for use of the Bezier curve in estimation of density and regression function. Also, asymptotic mean integrated square error for both estimators are derived. Comparisons with kernel estimator are conducted using simulation.     

The Kumaraswamy distribution: median-dispersion re-parameterizations for regression modeling and simulation-based estimation

The Kumaraswamy distribution is very similar to the Beta distribution, but has the important advantage of an invertible closed form cumulative distribution function. The parameterization of the distribution in terms of shape parameters and the lack of simple expressions for its mean and variance hinder, however, its utilization with modeling purposes. The paper presents two median-dispersion re-parameterizations of the Kumaraswamy distribution aimed at facilitating its use in regression models in which both the location and the dispersion parameters are functions of their own distinct sets of covariates, and in latent-variable and other models estimated through simulation-based methods. In both re-parameterizations the dispersion parameter establishes a quantile-spread order among Kumaraswamy distributions with the same median and support. The study also describes the behavior of the re-parameterized distributions, determines some of their limiting distributions, and discusses the potential comparative advantages of using them in the context of regression modeling and simulation-based estimation.     

The power series distribution wite unknown truncation parameter: Two sample problem

The uniformly most powerful unbiased tests are formulated for the two sample problem of the power series distribution with unknown truncation parameter.     

Point estimation after early stopping in a repeated measures trial

When the individual measurements are statistically independent, the maximum likelihood estimator calculated at the end of a sequential procedure overestimates the underlying effect. There are many clinical trials in which we are interested in comparing changes in responses between two treatment groups sequentially. Lee and DeMets (1991, JASA 86, 757–762) proposed a group sequential method for comparing rates of change when a response variable is measured for eaeh patient at successive follow-up visits. They assumed that the response follows the linear mixed effects model and derived the asymptotic joint distribution of the sequentially computed statistics. In this article, we consider the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), the median unbiased estimator (MUE) and the midpoint of a 100(1-α)% confidence interval as point estimators for the rate of change in the linear mixed effects model, and investigate their properties by Monte Carlo simulation.     

Kullback–Leibler information of a censored variable and its applications

In this paper, we study the Kullback–Leibler (KL) information of a censored variable, which we will simply call it censored KL information. The censored KL information is shown to have the necessary monotonicity property in addition to inherent properties of nonnegativity and characterization. We also present a representation of the censored KL information in terms of the relative risk and study its relation with the Fisher information in censored data. Finally, we evaluate the estimated censored KL information as a goodness-of-fit test statistic.