Simultaneous confidence intervals for one-way layout based on generalized pivotal quantities

In this paper, we consider simultaneous confidence intervals for all-pairwise comparisons of treatment means in a one-way layout under heteroscedasticity. Two kinds of simultaneous intervals are provided based on the fiducial generalized pivotal quantities of the interest parameters. We prove that they both have asymptotically correct coverage. Simulation results and an example are also reported. It is concluded from calculational evidence that the second kind of simultaneous confidence intervals, which we provide, performs better than existing methods.     

Construction of closed interval for process capability indices Cpu,Cpl, and Spk based on Boole’s inequality and de Morgan’s laws

ABSTRACT

Considerable effort has been spent on the development of confidence intervals for process capability indices (PCIs) based on the sampling distribution of the PCI or the transferred PCI. However, there is still no definitive way to construct a closed interval for a PCI. The aim of this study is to develop closed intervals for the PCIs C_pu, C_pl, and S_pk based on Boole's inequality and de Morgan's laws. The relationships between different sample sizes, the significance levels, and the confidence intervals of the PCIs C_pu, C_pl, and S_pk are investigated. Then, a testing model for interval estimation for the PCIs C_pu, C_pl, and S_pk is built as a powerful tool for measuring the quality performance of a product. Finally, an applied example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed method and the testing model.     

A note on the asymptotic distribution of the process capability index C pmk

Process capability indices have been widely used to evaluate the process performance to the continuous improvement of quality and productivity. The distribution of the estimator of the process capability index C _pmk is very complicated and the asymptotic distribution is proposed by Chen and Hsu [The asymptotic distribution of the processes capability index C _pmk , Comm. Statist. Theory Methods 24(5) (1995), pp. 1279–1291]. However, we found a critical error for the asymptotic distribution when the population mean is not equal to the midpoint of the specification limits. In this paper, a correct version of the asymptotic distribution is given. An asymptotic confidence interval of C _pmk by using the correct version of asymptotic distribution is proposed and the lower bound can be used to test if the process is capable. A simulation study of the coverage probability of the proposed confidence interval is shown to be satisfactory. The relation of six sigma technique and the index C _pmk is also discussed in this paper. An asymptotic testing procedure to determine if a process is capable based on the index of C _pmk is also given in this paper.     

A new confidence interval in errors-in-variables model with known error variance

This paper considers constructing a new confidence interval for the slope parameter in the structural errors-in-variables model with known error variance associated with the regressors. Existing confidence intervals are so severely affected by Gleser–Hwang effect that they are subject to have poor empirical coverage probabilities and unsatisfactory lengths. Moreover, these problems get worse with decreasing reliability ratio which also result in more frequent absence of some existing intervals. To ease these issues, this paper presents a fiducial generalized confidence interval which maintains the correct asymptotic coverage. Simulation results show that this fiducial interval is slightly conservative while often having average length comparable or shorter than the other methods. Finally, we illustrate these confidence intervals with two real data examples, and in the second example some existing intervals do not exist.     

Semi-empirical likelihood inference for the ROC curve with missing data

The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is one of the most commonly used methods to compare the diagnostic performance of two or more laboratory or diagnostic tests. In this paper, we propose semi-empirical likelihood based confidence intervals for ROC curves of two populations, where one population is parametric and the other one is non-parametric and both have missing data. After imputing missing values, we derive the semi-empirical likelihood ratio statistic and the corresponding likelihood equations. It is shown that the log-semi-empirical likelihood ratio statistic is asymptotically scaled chi-squared. The estimating equations are solved simultaneously to obtain the estimated lower and upper bounds of semi-empirical likelihood confidence intervals. We conduct extensive simulation studies to evaluate the finite sample performance of the proposed empirical likelihood confidence intervals with various sample sizes and different missing probabilities.     

Bayesian estimation and prediction for Weibull model with progressive censoring

This article presents the statistical inferences on Weibull parameters with the data that are progressively type II censored. The maximum likelihood estimators are derived. For incorporation of previous information with current data, the Bayesian approach is considered. We obtain the Bayes estimators under squared error loss with a bivariate prior distribution, and derive the credible intervals for the parameters of Weibull distribution. Also, the Bayes prediction intervals for future observations are obtained in the one- and two-sample cases. The method is shown to be practical, although a computer program is required for its implementation. A numerical example is presented for illustration and some simulation study are performed.     

Interval estimation for the breakpoint in segmented regression: a smoothed score‐based approach

This paper is concerned with interval estimation for the breakpoint parameter in segmented regression. We present score‐type confidence intervals derived from the score statistic itself and from the recently proposed gradient statistic. Due to lack of regularity conditions of the score, non‐smoothness and non‐monotonicity, naive application of the score‐based statistics is unfeasible and we propose to exploit the smoothed score obtained via induced smoothing. We compare our proposals with the traditional methods based on the Wald and the likelihood ratio statistics via simulations and an analysis of a real dataset: results show that the smoothed score‐like statistics perform in practice somewhat better than competitors, even when the model is not correctly specified.     

The economic design of multivariate binomial EWMA VSSI control charts

Since multi-attribute control charts have received little attention compared with multivariate variable control charts, this research is concerned with developing a new methodology to employ the multivariate exponentially weighted moving average (MEWMA) charts for m-attribute binomial processes; the attributes being the number of nonconforming items. Moreover, since the variable sample size and sampling interval (VSSI) MEWMA charts detect small process mean shifts faster than the traditional MEWMA, an economic design of the VSSI MEWMA chart is proposed to obtain the optimum design parameters of the chart. The sample size, the sampling interval, and the warning/action limit coefficients are obtained using a genetic algorithm such that the expected total cost per hour is minimized. At the end, a sensitivity analysis has been carried out to investigate the effects of the cost and the model parameters on the solution of the economic design of the VSSI MEWMA chart.     

Bootstrap method in ranking and slippage problems

In this paper, the bootstrap method of Efron (1979) is given for a ranking and a slippage problem, where the ranking (or slippage) is with respect to the mean of the distributions. The method is also applied to obtain a confidence interval for the largest mean.     

Performance of Confidence Intervals in Regression Models with Unbalanced One-Fold Nested Error Structures

Abstract

In this article we consider the problem of constructing confidence intervals for a linear regression model with unbalanced nested error structure. A popular approach is the likelihood-based method employed by PROC MIXED of SAS. In this article, we examine the ability of MIXED to produce confidence intervals that maintain the stated confidence coefficient. Our results suggest that intervals for the regression coefficients work well, but intervals for the variance component associated with the primary level cannot be recommended. Accordingly, we propose alternative methods for constructing confidence intervals on the primary level variance component. Computer simulation is used to compare the proposed methods. A numerical example and SAS code are provided to demonstrate the methods.