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.     

Using Heteroscedasticity-Consistent Standard Errors for the Linear Regression Model with Correlated Regressors

The use of heteroscedasticity-consistent covariance matrix (HCCM) estimators is very common in practice to draw correct inference for the coefficients of a linear regression model with heteroscedastic errors. However, in addition to the problem of heteroscedasticity, linear regression models may also be plagued with some considerable degree of collinearity among the regressors when two or more regressors are considered. This situation causes many adverse effects on the least squares measures and alternatively, the ordinary ridge regression method is used as a common practice. But in the available literature, the problems of multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity have not been discussed as a combined issue especially, for the inference of the regression coefficients. The present article addresses the inference about the regression coefficients taking both the issues of multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity into account and suggests the use of HCCM estimators for the ridge regression. This article proposes t- and F-tests, based on these HCCM estimators, that perform adequately well in the numerical evaluation of the Monte Carlo simulations.     

On a preliminary test estimator for one of the parameters of the log-zero-poisson distribution

A discrete distribution called the log-zero-Poisson distribution has been recommended by Katti (c.f. Biometrics 1970) as an alternate to the negative binomial and other distributions usually called "contagious" distributions.A major problem in the use of this and all other contagious distributions has been the difficulty of obtaining the maximum likelihood esti-mates. A custom-made ad hoc estimator, λ, has been proposed for the parameter λ of this distribution in Katti and Khedr (1980). In this paper, its efficiency relative to Fisher information is studied, only to discover that λ can be 30 times better than the maximum likelihood estimate in some parts of the parameter space and much weaker in other parts.A preliminary test is recommended to choose between the estimates, and the efficiency of the procedure is tabulated. As it is to be expected, the resultant estimator equals the better of the two estimators with some error at the values of the parameters where the two estimators are equivalent.     

Small sample study on estimators of life distributions and of mean survival times using randomly censored data

Whereas large-sample properties of the estimators of survival distributions using censored data have been studied by many authors, exact results for small samples have been difficult to obtain. In this paper we obtain the exact expression for the ath moment (a > 0) of the Bayes estimator of survival distribution using the censored data under proportional hazard model. Using the exact expression we compute the exact mean, variance and MSE of the Bayes estimator. Also two estimators ofthe mean survival time based on the Kaplan-Meier estimator and the Bayes estimator are compared for small samples under proportional hazards.     

Estimating Average Worth of the Selected Subset from Two-Parameter Exponential Populations

ABSTRACT

Suppose independent random samples are available from k(k ≥ 2) exponential populations ∏₁,…,∏ _k with a common location θ and scale parameters σ₁,…,σ _k , respectively. Let X _i and Y _i denote the minimum and the mean, respectively, of the ith sample, and further let X = min{X ₁,…, X _k } and T _i  = Y _i  ? X; i = 1,…, k. For selecting a nonempty subset of {∏₁,…,∏ _k } containing the best population (the one associated with max{σ₁,…,σ _k }), we use the decision rule which selects ∏ _i if T _i  ≥ c max{T ₁,…,T _k }, i = 1,…, k. Here 0 < c ≤ 1 is chosen so that the probability of including the best population in the selected subset is at least P* (1/k ≤ P* < 1), a pre-assigned level. The problem is to estimate the average worth W of the selected subset, the arithmetic average of means of selected populations. In this article, we derive the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator (UMVUE) of W. The bias and risk function of the UMVUE are compared numerically with those of analogs of the best affine equivariant estimator (BAEE) and the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE).     

Reliability estimation based on ranked set sampling

In this paper we consider the problem of estimating the reliability of an exponential component based on a Ranked Set Sample (RSS) of size n. Given the first r observations of that sample, 1≤r≤n, we construct an unbiased estimator for this reliability and we show that these n unbiased estimators are the only ones in a certain class of estimators. The variances of some of these estimators are compared. By viewing the observations of the RSS of size n as the lifetimes of n independent k-out-of-n systems, 1≤k≤n, we are able to utilize known properties of these systems in conjunction with the powerful tools of majorization and Schur functions to derive our results.     

Estimation of parameters of a pareto distribution by generalized order statistics

In this paper we address the problem of estimating the parameters of Pareto II distribution based on generalized order statistics. The estimators based on order statistics and record values are shown to be special cases of these estimators.     

Bayesian,MLE, and GMM Estimation of a Spot Rate Model

ABSTRACT

We develop Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for estimating the parameters of the short-term interest rate model. Using Monte Carlo experiments we compare the Bayes estimators with the maximum likelihood and generalized method of moments estimators. We estimate the model using the Japanese overnight call rate data.     

From Ordinary to Shrinkage Square-Root Estimators

Consider a skewed population. Suppose an intelligent guess could be made about an interval that contains the population mean. There may exist biased estimators with smaller mean squared error than the arithmetic mean within such an interval. This article indicates when it is advisable to shrink the arithmetic mean towards a guessed interval using root estimators. The goal is to obtain an estimator that is better near the average of natural origins. An estimator proposed. This estimator contains the Thompson (1968 Thompson , J. R. ( 1968 ). Accuracy borrowing in the estimation of the mean by shrinkage towards an interval . J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 63 : 953 – 963 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) ordinary shrinkage estimator, the Jenkins et al. (1973 Jenkins , O. C. , Ringer , L. J. , Hartley , H. O. ( 1973 ). Root estimators . J Amer. Statist. Assoc. 68 : 414 – 419 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) square-root estimator, and the arithmetic sample mean as special cases. The bias and the mean squared error of the proposed more general estimator is compared with the three special cases. Shrinkage coefficients that yield minimum mean squared error estimators are obtained. The proposed estimator is considerably more efficient than the three special cases. This remains true for highly skewed populations. The merits of the proposed shrinkage square-root estimator are supported by the results of numerical and simulation studies.     

A multiparameter extension of two stage modified shrinkage estimator

A multiparameter extension is made to modified two stage shrinkage estimator proposed by Handa andKambo (1990), For aparticular class of shrinkage estimator, the local optimality of the extended modified estimator is shown over the two stage shrinkage estimator defined by Bhattacharya and Prakasa Rao(1990) in terms of quadratic loss.