Discovering hidden statistical issues through individual-level models in ecological studies

ABSTRACT

In ecological studies, individual inference is made based on results from ecological models. Interpretation of the results requires caution since ecological analysis on group level may not hold in the individual level within the groups, leading to ecological fallacy. Using an ecological regression example for analyzing voting behaviors, we highlight that the explicit use of individual-level models is crucial in understanding the results of ecological studies. In particular, we clarify three relevant statistical issues for each individual-level models: assessment of the uncertainty of parameter estimates obtained from a wrong model, the use of shrinkage estimation method for simultaneous estimation of many parameters, and the necessity of sensitivity analysis rather than adhering to one seemingly most compelling assumption.     

Bias correction for parameter estimates of spatial point process models

When a spatial point process model is fitted to spatial point pattern data using standard software, the parameter estimates are typically biased. Contrary to folklore, the bias does not reflect weaknesses of the underlying mathematical methods, but is mainly due to the effects of discretization of the spatial domain. We investigate two approaches to correcting the bias: a Newton–Raphson-type correction and Richardson extrapolation. In simulation experiments, Richardson extrapolation performs best.     

Transductive versions of the LASSO and the Dantzig Selector

Transductive methods are useful in prediction problems when the training dataset is composed of a large number of unlabeled observations and a smaller number of labeled observations. In this paper, we propose an approach for developing transductive prediction procedures that are able to take advantage of the sparsity in the high dimensional linear regression. More precisely, we define transductive versions of the LASSO (Tibshirani, 1996) and the Dantzig Selector (Candès and Tao, 2007). These procedures combine labeled and unlabeled observations of the training dataset to produce a prediction for the unlabeled observations. We propose an experimental study of the transductive estimators that shows that they improve the LASSO and Dantzig Selector in many situations, and particularly in high dimensional problems when the predictors are correlated. We then provide non-asymptotic theoretical guarantees for these estimation methods. Interestingly, our theoretical results show that the Transductive LASSO and Dantzig Selector satisfy sparsity inequalities under weaker assumptions than those required for the “original” LASSO.     

Modified likelihood ratio tests in heteroskedastic multivariate regression models with measurement error

In this paper, we develop modified versions of the likelihood ratio test for multivariate heteroskedastic errors-in-variables regression models. The error terms are allowed to follow a multivariate distribution in the elliptical class of distributions, which has the normal distribution as a special case. We derive the Skovgaard-adjusted likelihood ratio statistics, which follow a chi-squared distribution with a high degree of accuracy. We conduct a simulation study and show that the proposed tests display superior finite sample behaviour as compared to the standard likelihood ratio test. We illustrate the usefulness of our results in applied settings using a data set from the WHO MONICA Project on cardiovascular disease.     

Soft Classification Trees

An extension of soft classification trees to multinomial outcomes is presented. Estimates of the method's predictive accuracy, as well as average tree size and tree depths, are systematically compared to those of the conventional Classification and Regression Tree (CART) approach by the means of simulations. A similar comparison is performed on real datasets. Results point to an advantage in favor of the soft tree.     

Results concerning the generalized partially linear single-index model

The central topic of this article is the estimation of parameters of the generalized partially linear single-index model (GPLSIM). Two numerical optimization procedures are presented and an S-plus program based on these procedures is compared to a program by Wand in a simulation setting. The results from these simulations indicate that the estimates for the new procedures are as good, if not better, than Wand's. Also, this program is much more flexible than Wand's since it can handle more general models. Other simulations are also conducted. The first compares the effects of using linear interpolation versus spline interpolation in an optimization procedure. The results indicate that by using spline interpolation one gets more stable estimates at a cost of increased computational time. A second simulation was conducted to assess the performance of a method for estimating the variance of alpha. A third set of simulations is carried out to determine the best criterion for testing that one of the elements of alpha is equal to zero. The GPLSIM is applied to a water quality data set and the results indicate an interesting relationship between gastrointestinal illness and turbidity (cloudiness) of drinking water.     

Comparing diagnostic tests: test of hypothesis for likelihood ratios

Likelihood ratios (LRs) are used to characterize the efficiency of diagnostic tests. In this paper, we use the classical weighted least squares (CWLS) test procedure, which was originally used for testing the homogeneity of relative risks, for comparing the LRs of two or more binary diagnostic tests. We compare the performance of this method with the relative diagnostic likelihood ratio (rDLR) method and the diagnostic likelihood ratio regression (DLRReg) approach in terms of size and power, and we observe that the performances of CWLS and rDLR are the same when used to compare two diagnostic tests, while DLRReg method has higher type I error rates and powers. We also examine the performances of the CWLS and DLRReg methods for comparing three diagnostic tests in various sample size and prevalence combinations. On the basis of Monte Carlo simulations, we conclude that all of the tests are generally conservative and have low power, especially in settings of small sample size and low prevalence.     

On partial linear additive isotonic regression

In this paper we discuss semiparametric additive isotonic regression models. We discuss the efficiency bound of the model and the least squares estimator under this model. We show that the ordinary least square estimator studied by Huang (2002) and Cheng (2009) for the semiparametric isotonic regression achieves the efficiency bound for the regular estimator when the true parameter belongs to the interior of the parameter space. We also show that the result by Cheng (2009) can be generalized to the case that the covariates are dependent on each other.