Computational Statistics

Microbiome data analysis often relies on the identification of a subset of potential biomarkers associated with a clinical outcome of interest. Robust ZeroSum regression, an elastic-net penalized compositional regression built on the least trimmed squares estimator, is a variable selection procedure capable to cope with the high dimensionality of these data, their compositional nature, and, at the same time, it guarantees robustness against the presence of outliers. The necessity of discovering “true” effects and to improve clinical research quality and reproducibility has motivated us to propose a two-step robust compositional knockoff filter procedure, which allows selecting the set of relevant biomarkers, among the many measured features having a nonzero effect on the response, controlling the expected fraction of false positives. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal in an extensive simulation study, and illustrate its usefulness in an application to intestinal microbiome analysis.

Asymptotic approximations to the distributions of the ability estimator and its transformations in item response theory are derived beyond the usual normal one when associated item parameters are given as in tailored testing. For the approximations, the asymptotic cumulants of the estimators up to the fourth order with the higher-order asymptotic variances are obtained under possible model misspecification. For testing and interval estimation of abilities, the asymptotic cumulants of the pivots studentized in four ways are derived. Numerical examples with simulations including those for confidence intervals for abilities are given using the three-parameter logistic model.

In this paper a robust fuzzy k-means clustering model for interval valued data is introduced. The peculiarity of the proposed model is the capability to manage anomalous interval valued data by reducing the effects of such outliers in the clustering model. In the interval case, the concept of anomalous data involves both the center and the width (the radius) of an interval. In order to show how our model works the results of a simulation experiment and an application to real interval valued data are discussed.

Stochastic volatility (SV) models mimic many of the stylized facts attributed to time series of asset returns, while maintaining conceptual simplicity. The commonly made assumption of conditionally normally distributed or Student-t-distributed returns, given the volatility, has however been questioned. In this manuscript, we introduce a novel maximum penalized likelihood approach for estimating the conditional distribution in an SV model in a nonparametric way, thus avoiding any potentially critical assumptions on the shape. The considered framework exploits the strengths both of the hidden Markov model machinery and of penalized B-splines, and constitutes a powerful alternative to recently developed Bayesian approaches to semiparametric SV modelling. We demonstrate the feasibility of the approach in a simulation study before outlining its potential in applications to three series of returns on stocks and one series of stock index returns.

Influence concepts have an important place in linear regression models and case deletion is a useful method for assessing the influence of single case. The influence measures in the presence of multicollinearity were discussed under the linear regression models when the errors structure is uncorrelated and homoscedastic. In contrast to other article on this subject, we consider the influence measures in ridge regression with autocorrelated errors. Theoretical results are illustrated with a numerical example and a Monte Carlo simulation is conducted to see the effect autocorrelation coefficient, strength of multicollinearity and sample size on leverage points and influential observations.

This paper introduces the hhsmm R package, which involves functions for initializing, fitting, and predication of hidden hybrid Markov/semi-Markov models. These models are flexible models with both Markovian and semi-Markovian states, which are applied to situations where the model involves absorbing or macro-states. The left-to-right models and the models with series/parallel networks of states are two models with Markovian and semi-Markovian states. The hhsmm also includes Markov/semi-Markov switching regression model as well as the auto-regressive HHSMM, the nonparametric estimation of the emission distribution using penalized B-splines, prediction of future states and the residual useful lifetime estimation in the predict function. The commercial modular aero-propulsion system simulation (C-MAPSS) data-set is also included in the package, which is used for illustration of the application of the package features. The application of the hhsmm package to the analysis and prediction of the Spain’s energy demand is also presented.

A data smoothing method is described where the roughness penalty depends on a parameter that must be estimated from the data. Three levels of parameters are involved in this situation: Local parameters are the coefficients of the basis function expansion defining the smooth, global parameters define low-dimensional trend and the roughness penalty, and a complexity parameter controls the amount of roughness in the smooth. By defining local parameters as regularized functions of global parameters, and global parameters in turn as functions of complexity parameter, we define a parameter cascade, and show that the accompanying multi-criterion optimization problem leads to good estimates of all levels of parameters and their precisions. The approach is illustrated with real and simulated data, and this application is a prototype for a wide range of problems involving nuisance or local parameters.

This article deals with the progressively first failure censored Lindley distribution. Maximum likelihood and Bayes estimators of the parameter and reliability characteristics of Lindley distribution based on progressively first failure censored samples are derived. Asymptotic confidence intervals based on observed Fisher information and bootstrap confidence intervals of the parameter are constructed. Bayes estimators using non-informative and gamma informative priors are derived using importance sampling procedure and Metropolis–Hastings (MH) algorithm under squared error loss function. Also, HPD credible intervals based on importance sampling procedure and MH algorithm for the parameter are constructed. To study the performance of various estimators discussed in this article, a Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted. Finally, a real data set is studied for illustration purposes.