Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Outlier Robust Block Bootstrap For Small Area Estimation, Payam Mokhtarian, Ray Chambers

Payam Mokhtarian

Small area inference based on mixed models, i.e. models that contain both fixed and random effects, are the industry standard for this field, allowing between area heterogeneity to be represented by random area effects. Use of the linear mixed model is ubiquitous in this context, with maximum likelihood, or its close relative, REML, the standard method for estimating the parameters of this model. These parameter estimates, and in particular the resulting predicted values of the random area effects, are then used to construct empirical best linear unbiased predictors (EBLUPs) of the unknown small area means. It is now well known …

Adaptive Pair-Matching In The Search Trial And Estimation Of The Intervention Effect, Laura Balzer, Maya L. Petersen, Mark J. Van Der Laan

Laura B. Balzer

In randomized trials, pair-matching is an intuitive design strategy to protect study validity and to potentially increase study power. In a common design, candidate units are identified, and their baseline characteristics used to create the best n/2 matched pairs. Within the resulting pairs, the intervention is randomized, and the outcomes measured at the end of follow-up. We consider this design to be adaptive, because the construction of the matched pairs depends on the baseline covariates of all candidate units. As consequence, the observed data cannot be considered as n/2 independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) pairs of units, as current practice assumes. …

An Asymptotically Minimax Kernel Machine, Debashis Ghosh

Debashis Ghosh

Recently, a class of machine learning-inspired procedures, termed kernel machine methods, has been extensively developed in the statistical literature. It has been shown to have large power for a wide class of problems and applications in genomics and brain imaging. Many authors have exploited an equivalence between kernel machines and mixed eects models and used attendant estimation and inferential procedures. In this note, we construct a so-called `adaptively minimax' kernel machine. Such a construction highlights the role of thresholding in the observation space and limits on the interpretability of such kernel machines.

On Likelihood Ratio Tests When Nuisance Parameters Are Present Only Under The Alternative, Cz Di, K-Y Liang

Chongzhi Di

In parametric models, when one or more parameters disappear under the null hypothesis, the likelihood ratio test statistic does not converge to chi-square distributions. Rather, its limiting distribution is shown to be equivalent to that of the supremum of a squared Gaussian process. However, the limiting distribution is analytically intractable for most of examples, and approximation or simulation based methods must be used to calculate the p values. In this article, we investigate conditions under which the asymptotic distributions have analytically tractable forms, based on the principal component decomposition of Gaussian processes. When these conditions are not satisfied, the principal …

Spectral Density Shrinkage For High-Dimensional Time Series, Mark Fiecas, Rainer Von Sachs

Mark Fiecas