De‐Biasing the Reporting Bias in Social Media Analytics

User‐generated contents (UGC) in social media such as online reviews are inherently incomplete since we do not capture the opinions of users who do not write a review. These silent users may be systematically different than those who speak up. Such differences can be driven by users’ differing sentiments toward their shopping experiences as well as their disposition to generate UGC. Overlooking silent users’ opinions can result in a reporting bias. We develop a method to model users’ UGC generating process and then rectify this bias through an inverse probability weighting (IPW) approach. In the context of users’ movie review activities at Blockbuster.com, our results show that the average probability for a customer to post a review is 0.06 when the customer is unsatisfied with a movie, 0.23 when indifferent, and 0.32 when satisfied. The distribution of user's reporting probability with positive experience first‐order stochastically dominates the one with negative experience. Our approach provides a realistic solution for business managers to properly utilize incomplete UGC.     

Prediction of order statistics and record values based on ordered ranked set sampling

In this paper, we consider two-sample prediction problems. First, based on ordered ranked set sampling (ORSS) introduced by Balakrishnan and Li [Ordered ranked set samples and applications to inference. Ann Inst Statist Math. 2006;58:757–777], we obtain prediction intervals for order statistics from a future sample and compare the results with the one based on the usual-order statistics. Next, we construct prediction intervals for record values from a future sequence based on ORSS and compare the results with the one based on an another independent record sequence developed recently by Ahmadi and Balakrishnan [Prediction of order statistics and record values from two independent sequences. Statistics. 2010;44:417–430].     

Jackknife Empirical Likelihood for the Accelerated Failure Time Model with Censored Data

Kendall and Gehan estimating functions are commonly used to estimate the regression parameter in accelerated failure time model with censored observations in survival analysis. In this paper, we apply the jackknife empirical likelihood method to overcome the computation difficulty about interval estimation. A Wilks’ theorem of jackknife empirical likelihood for U-statistic type estimating equations is established, which is used to construct the confidence intervals for the regression parameter. We carry out an extensive simulation study to compare the Wald-type procedure, the empirical likelihood method, and the jackknife empirical likelihood method. The proposed jackknife empirical likelihood method has a better performance than the existing methods. We also use a real data set to compare the proposed methods.     

Assessing the treatment effect in a randomized controlled trial with extensive non‐adherence: the EVOLVE trial

Intention‐to‐treat (ITT) analysis is widely used to establish efficacy in randomized clinical trials. However, in a long‐term outcomes study where non‐adherence to study drug is substantial, the on‐treatment effect of the study drug may be underestimated using the ITT analysis. The analyses presented herein are from the EVOLVE trial, a double‐blind, placebo‐controlled, event‐driven cardiovascular outcomes study conducted to assess whether a treatment regimen including cinacalcet compared with placebo in addition to other conventional therapies reduces the risk of mortality and major cardiovascular events in patients receiving hemodialysis with secondary hyperparathyroidism. Pre‐specified sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the impact of non‐adherence on the estimated effect of cinacalcet. These analyses included lag‐censoring, inverse probability of censoring weights (IPCW), rank preserving structural failure time model (RPSFTM) and iterative parameter estimation (IPE). The relative hazard (cinacalcet versus placebo) of mortality and major cardiovascular events was 0.93 (95% confidence interval 0.85, 1.02) using the ITT analysis; 0.85 (0.76, 0.95) using lag‐censoring analysis; 0.81 (0.70, 0.92) using IPCW; 0.85 (0.66, 1.04) using RPSFTM and 0.85 (0.75, 0.96) using IPE. These analyses, while not providing definitive evidence, suggest that the intervention may have an effect while subjects are receiving treatment. The ITT method remains the established method to evaluate efficacy of a new treatment; however, additional analyses should be considered to assess the on‐treatment effect when substantial non‐adherence to study drug is expected or observed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dose finding with continuous outcome in phase I oncology trials

The goal of a phase I clinical trial in oncology is to find a dose with acceptable dose‐limiting toxicity rate. Often, when a cytostatic drug is investigated or when the maximum tolerated dose is defined using a toxicity score, the main endpoint in a phase I trial is continuous. We propose a new method to use in a dose‐finding trial with continuous endpoints. The new method selects the right dose on par with other methods and provides more flexibility in assigning patients to doses in the course of the trial when the rate of accrual is fast relative to the follow‐up time. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of selection procedures for selecting the best normal population under heterogeneity of variance

This study examines the comparative probabilities of making a correct selection when using the means procedure (M), the medians procedure (D) and the rank-sum procedure (S) to correctly select the normal population with the largest mean under heterogeneity of variance. The comparison is conducted by using Monte-Carlo simulation techniques for 3, 4, and 5 normal populations under the condition that equal sample sizes are taken from each population. The population means and standard deviations are assumed to be equally-spaced. Two types of heterogeneity of variance are considered: (1) associating larger means with larger variances, and (2) associating larger means with smaller variances.     

A nine‐parameter version of the Heligman‐Pollard formula

In this paper we outline and evaluate a nine‐parameter version of the Heligman‐Pollard formula. In our applications, using mortality data for five European countries we found that this version provides closer fits to empirical mortality data than the classical eight‐parameter formula, thus eliminating a source of systematic error in this latter formula.     

Estimating the Population Coefficient of Variation by Confidence Intervals

Several researchers considered various interval estimators for estimating the population coefficient of variation (CV) of symmetric and skewed distributions. Since they considered at different times and under different simulation conditions, their performances are not comparable as a whole. In this article, an attempt has been made to review some existing estimators along with some proposed methods and compare them under the same simulation condition. In particular, we have considered Hendricks and Robey, Mckay, Miller, Sharma and Krishna, Curto and Pinto, and also some bootstrap proposed interval estimators for estimating the population CV. A simulation study has been conducted to compare the performance of the estimators. Both average widths and coverage probabilities are considered as a criterion of the good estimators. Two real life health related data sets are analyzed to illustrate the findings of the article. Based on the simulation study, some possible good interval estimators have been recommended for the practitioners.     

Number of matches and matched people in the birthday problem

The well known birthday problem asks for the probability of at least one match out of a group of n people. Also of interest are the number of matches and the number of matched people. In this paper the means and variances of the number of matches and matched people are obtained. A generalization of the use of these methods to computer storage analysis is discussed.     

A bayesian analysis of interrelated bernoulli processes with an application for clinical trials

Prior information regarding the interrelation of two Bernoulli processes may justify a clinical trial designed to corroborate this information. Antelman (1973) has studied the Dirichlet-beta which permits the expression of the prior knowledge of such interrelation. However, use of this prior distribution leads to complicated and intractable analyses. Alternately, such prior information regarding the interrelation of the processes may be adequately summarized by a simple Dirichlet distribution. Procedures for testing hypotheses regarding a priori interrelations of the success probabilities of the processes are given. Exact expressions for the posterior probabi1ities of these hypotheses are shown to be approximately equal to weighted p-values or 1ikelihood ratios.