The robust economic statistical design of the Hotelling's T2 chart

ABSTRACT

Economic statistical designs aim at minimizing the cost of process monitoring when a specific scenario or a set of estimated process and cost parameters is given. But, in practice the process may be affected by more than one scenario which may lead to severe cost penalties if the wrong design is used. Here, we investigate the robust economic statistical design (RESD) of the T² chart in an attempt to reduce these cost penalties when there are multiple scenarios. Our method is to employ the genetic algorithm (GA) optimization method to minimize the total expected monitoring cost across all distinct scenarios. We illustrate the effectiveness of the method using two numerical examples. Simulation studies indicate that robust economic statistical designs should be encouraged in practice.     

Sequential order statistics from dependent random variables

Abstract

This paper provides an extension for “sequential order statistics” (SOS) introduced by Kamps. It is called “developed sequential order statistics” (DSOS) and is useful for describing lifetimes of engineering systems when component lifetimes are dependent. Explicit expressions for the joint density function, the marginal distributions and the means of DSOS are derived. Under the well known “conditional proportional hazard rate” (CPHR) model and the Gumbel families of copulas for dependency among component lifetimes, some findings are reported. For example, it is proved that the joint density functions of DSOS and SOS have the same structure. Various illustrative examples are also given.     

An improved comorbidity summary score for measuring disease burden and predicting mortality with applications to two national cohorts

Abstract

Research involving administrative healthcare data to study patient outcomes requires the investigator to account for the patient’s disease burden in order to reduce the potential for biased results. Here we develop a comorbidity summary score based on variable importance measures derived from several statistical and machine learning methods and show it has superior predictive performance to the Elixhauser and Charlson indices when used to predict 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year mortality. We used two large Veterans Administration cohorts to develop and validate the summary score and compared predictive performance using the area under ROC curve (AUC) and the Brier score.     

Optimal designs for estimating a choice hierarchy by a general nested multinomial logit model

Abstract

In choice experiments the process of decision-making can be more complex than the proposed by the Multinomial Logit Model (MNL). In these scenarios, models such as the Nested Multinomial Logit Model (NMNL) are often employed to model a more complex decision-making. Understanding the decision-making process is important in some fields such as marketing. Achieving a precise estimation of the models is crucial to the understanding of this process. To do this, optimal experimental designs are required. To construct an optimal design, information matrix is key. A previous research by others has developed the expression for the information matrix of the two-level NMNL model with two nests: Alternatives nest (J alternatives) and No-Choice nest (1 alternative). In this paper, we developed the likelihood function for a two-stage NMNL model for M nests and we present the expression for the information matrix for 2 nests with any amount of alternatives in them. We also show alternative D-optimal designs for No-Choice scenarios with similar relative efficiency but with less complex alternatives which can help to obtain more reliable answers and one application of these designs.     

Sample Size Calculation and Blinded Sample Size Recalculation in Clinical Trials Where the Treatment Effect is Measured by the Relative Risk

In clinical trials with binary endpoints, the required sample size does not depend only on the specified type I error rate, the desired power and the treatment effect but also on the overall event rate which, however, is usually uncertain. The internal pilot study design has been proposed to overcome this difficulty. Here, nuisance parameters required for sample size calculation are re-estimated during the ongoing trial and the sample size is recalculated accordingly. We performed extensive simulation studies to investigate the characteristics of the internal pilot study design for two-group superiority trials where the treatment effect is captured by the relative risk. As the performance of the sample size recalculation procedure crucially depends on the accuracy of the applied sample size formula, we firstly explored the precision of three approximate sample size formulae proposed in the literature for this situation. It turned out that the unequal variance asymptotic normal formula outperforms the other two, especially in case of unbalanced sample size allocation. Using this formula for sample size recalculation in the internal pilot study design assures that the desired power is achieved even if the overall rate is mis-specified in the planning phase. The maximum inflation of the type I error rate observed for the internal pilot study design is small and lies below the maximum excess that occurred for the fixed sample size design.     

Evaluating the Effective Degrees of Freedom of the Delete-a-Group Jackknife

The delete-a-group jackknife is sometimes used when estimating the variances of statistics based on a large sample. We investigate heavily poststratified estimators for a population mean and a simple regression coefficient, where both full-sample and domain estimates are of interest. The delete-a-group (DAG) jackknife employing 30, 60, and 100 replicates is found to be highly unstable, even for large sample sizes. The empirical degrees of freedom of these DAG jackknives are usually much less than their nominal degrees of freedom. This analysis calls into question whether coverage intervals derived from replication-based variance estimators can be trusted for highly calibrated estimates.     

Reliability Research of Dependent Failure Systems Using Copula

The computation of reliability characteristics of a system that consists of dependent components sometimes becomes difficult, especially when a specific type of dependence is not identified. In this paper, some systems with arbitrary dependent components are studied using copula. In the system, the components are dependent on each other and the dependent relations may be either linear or nonlinear correlation. The efficient formulas are presented to compute the reliability characteristics, such as reliability function, failure rate and meantime to failure of series, parallel and k-out-of-n systems. The reliability functions of dependant systems are compared with independent system. At last, the numerical examples are presented to illustrate the results obtained in this paper.