composite linear models for incomplete multinomial data a composite linear model clm is a matrix model for incomplete multinomial data a clm provides a unified approach for maximum likelihood inference which is applicable to a wide variety of problems involving incomplete multinomial data by formulating a model as a clm one can simplify computation of maximum likelihood estimates and asymptotic standard errors as an example we use clm to test marginal homogeneity for ordered categories subject to both ignorable and non ignorable missing data mechanisms

generic mean curvature flow i generic singularities it has long been conjectured that starting at a generic smooth closed embedded surface in r 3 the mean curvature ow remains smooth until it arrives at a singularity in a neighborhood of which the ow looks like concentric spheres or cylinders that is the only singularities of a generic ow are spherical or cylindrical we will address this conjecture here and in a sequel the higher dimensional case will be addressed elsewhere the key to showing this conjecture is to show that shrinking spheres cylinders and planes are the only stable self shrinkers under the mean curvature ow we prove this here in all dimensions an easy consequence of this is that every singularity other than spheres and cylinders can be perturbed away

using replicate observations in observer agreement studies with binary assessments by introducing replicate observations into observer agreement studies one can obtain better measures of observer agreement than heretofore possible new methodology based on the analysis of latent variables allows a separation of within and between observer variation for binary measures of assessment among pairs of observers maximum likelihood estimation and hypothesis testing are discussed the methodology is illustrated using data on the assessment of dysplasia by pathologists

classification of limiting shapes for isotropic curve flows with a 5 0 and initial condition x p 0 xzo p this produces a family of curves yt x si t here n is the curvature and n is the outward pointing unit normal vector these equations are particularly natural in that they are isotropic equivariant under rotations in the plane and homogeneous equivariant under dilation of space if time is also scaled accordingly the main aim of this paper is to provide a complete description of the behaviour of embedded convex curves moving by equations of the form 1 1 in certain cases this description has already been provided if a 1 then equation 1 1 is the curve shortening flow for which the following holds

regression analysis for categorical variables with outcome subject to nonignorable nonresponse abstract we develop a log linear model for categorical response subject to nonignorable nonresponse the paper differs from fay 1986 in its focus on estimation and hypothesis testing in a regression setting as opposed to imputation in a multivariate setting we present several new results concerning the existence of solutions on the boundary of the parameter space and the construction of confidence intervals for estimates we illustrate the method by estimating the proportion of voters preferring truman in a 1948 preelection poll mosteller hyman mccarthy marks and truman 1949 results may depend strongly on the model assumed for nonresponse goodness of fit tests are available for comparing alternative models

a latent trait finite mixture model for the analysis of rating agreement this article presents a latent distribution model for the analysis of agreement on dichotomous or ordered category ratings the model includes parameters that characterize bias category definitions and measurement error for each rater or test parameter estimates can be used to evaluate rater performance and to improve classification or measurement with use of multiple ratings a simple maximum likelihood estimation procedure is described two examples illustrate the approach although considered in the context of analyzing rater agreement the model provides a general approach for mixture analysis using two or more ordered caregory measures

on the eigenvalues of some tridiagonal matrices a solution is given for a problem on eigenvalues of some symmetric tridiagonal matrices suggested by william trench the method presented can be generalizable to other problems

the size of the singular set in mean curvature flow of mean convex sets in this paper we study the singularities that form when a hypersurface of positive mean curvature moves with a velocity that is equal at each point to the mean curvature of the surface at that point it is most convenient to describe the results in terms of the level set flow also called biggest flow i2 of chen giga goto cgg and evans spruck es under the level set flow any closed set k in r generates a one parameter family of closed sets ft k t 0 with f0 k k if the boundary of k is a smooth compact hypersurface then so is the boundary of ft k for t in some interval 0 and for such t s the evolution coincides with motion by mean curvature as defined classically by partial differential equations and differential geometry as in h1 however if k is compact then the boundary of ft k will necessarily become singular at some finite time our goal is to show that the singular sets are necessarily quite small this we do provided the initial set k is compact and mean convex in the sense that ft k interior k for all t 0 in case m k is a smooth hypersurface we have the following equivalent characterization of mean convexity k is mean convex if and only if the mean curvature of m with respect to the inward unit normal is everywhere non negative given a compact set k let k be the region in spacetime swept out by the ft k k x t r r t 0 x ft k a point x x t in the boundary of k is called a regular point if 1 x has a neighborhood in which k is a smooth manifold with boundary and 2 the tangent plane to k at x is not horizontal i e is not r 0 note that if x x t is a regular point then in a neighborhood of x ft k is a smooth manifold with boundary in r a point x x t in k with t 0 that is not a regular point is called a singular point

a stable manifold theorem for the curve shortening equation on presente une famille de solutions homothetiques de l equation pour une courbe planaire x kn et on demontre l existence de varietes non lineaires stables et instables autour de telles solutions

how reliable are change corrected measures of agreement chance corrected measures of agreement are prone to exhibit paradoxical and counter intuitive results when used as measures of reliability it is demonstrated that these problems arise with cohen s kappa as well as with aickin s alpha they are the consequence of an analogy to simpson s paradox in mixed populations it is further shown that chance corrected measures of agreement may yield misleading values for binary ratings it is concluded that improvements in the design and the analysis of reliability studies are a pre requisite for valid and pertinent results

testing the equality of two dependent kappa statistics procedures are developed and compared for testing the equality of two dependent kappa statistics in the case of two raters and a dichotomous outcome variable such problems may arise when each of a sample of subjects are rated under two distinct settings and it is of interest to compare the observed levels of inter observer and intra observer agreement the procedures compared are extensions of previously developed procedures for comparing kappa statistics computed from independent samples the results of a monte carlo simulation show that adjusting for the dependency between samples tends to be worthwhile only if the between setting correlation is comparable in magnitude to the within setting correlations in this case a goodness of fit procedure that takes into account the dependency between samples is recommended

asymptotic properties of maximum likelihood estimators and likelihood ratio tests under nonstandard conditions abstract large sample properties of the likelihood function when the true parameter value may be on the boundary of the parameter space are described specifically the asymptotic distribution of maximum likelihood estimators and likelihood ratio statistics are derived these results generalize the work of moran 1971 chant 1974 and chernoff 1954 some of chant s results are shown to be incorrect the approach used in deriving these results follows from comments made by moran and chant the problem is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to the problem of estimating the restricted mean of a multivariate gaussian distribution from a sample of size 1 in this representation the gaussian random variable corresponds to the limit of the normalized score statistic and the estimate of the mean corresponds to the limit of the normalized maximum likelihood estimator thus the limiting distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator is the same as the distribution of the projection of the gaussian random v

simultaneous estimation of intrarater and interrater agreement for multiple raters under order restrictions for a binary trait it is valuable in many studies to assess both intrarater and interrater agreement most measures of intrarater agreement do not adjust for unequal estimates of prevalence between the separate rating occasions for a given rater and measures of interrater agreement typically ignore data from the second set of assessments when raters make duplicate assessments in the event when both measures are assessed there are instances where interrater agreement is larger than at least one of the corresponding intrarater agreements this implies that a rater agrees less with him herself and more with another rater in the situation of multiple raters making duplicate assessments on all subjects the authors propose properties for an agreement measure based on the odds ratio for a dichotomous trait i estimate a single prevalence across two reading occasions for each rater ii estimate pairwise interrater agreement from all available data iii bound the pairwise interrater agreement above by the corresponding intrarater agreements estimation of odds ratios under these properties is done by maximizing the multinomial likelihood with constraints using generalized log linear models in combination with a generalization of the lemke dykstra iterative incremental algorithm an example from a mammography examination reliability study is used to demonstrate the new method

flow by mean curvature of convex surfaces into spheres the motion of surfaces by their mean curvature has been studied by brakke 1 from the viewpoint of geometric measure theory other authors investigated the corresponding nonparametric problem 2 5 9 a reason for this interest is that evolutionary surfaces of prescribed mean curvature model the behavior of grain boundaries in annealing pure metal in this paper we take a more classical point of view consider a compact uniformly convex w dimensional surface m mo without boundary which is smoothly imbedded in r let mo be represented locally by a diffeomorphism

the heat equation shrinks embedded plane curves to round points soit c 0 s 1 r 2 une courbe lisse plongee dans le plan alors c s 1 0 t r 2 existe en satisfaisant c t k n ou k est la courbure de c et n est son vecteur unite normal entrant c t est lisse pour tout t il converge vers un point quand t t et sa forme limite quand t t est un cercle rond avec convergence dans norme c

maximum likelihood estimation and model selection in contingency tables with missing data abstract in many studies the values of one or more variables are missing for subsets of the original sample this article focuses on the problem of obtaining maximum likelihood estimates mle for the parameters of log linear models under this type of incomplete data the appropriate systems of equations are presented and the expectation maximization em algorithm dempster laird and rubin 1977 is suggested as one of the possible methods for solving them the algorithm has certain advantages but other alternatives may be computationally more effective tests of fit for log linear models in the presence of incomplete data are considered the data from the protective services project for older persons blenkner bloom and nielsen 1971 blenkner bloom and weber 1974 are used to illustrate the procedures discussed in the article

the space of embedded minimal surfaces of fixed genus in a 3 manifold iii planar domains this paper is the third in a series where we describe the space of all embedded minimal surfaces of fixed genus in a fixed but arbitrary closed 3 manifold in cm3 cm5 we describe the case where the surfaces are topologically disks on any fixed small scale although the focus of this paper general planar domains is more in line with cm6 we will prove a result here namely corollary iii 3 5 below which is needed in cm5 even for the case of disks roughly speaking there are two main themes in this paper the first is that stability leads to improved curvature estimates this allows us to find large graphical regions these graphical regions lead to two possibilities

the heat equation shrinking convex plane curves soient m et m des varietes de riemann et f m m une application reguliere si m est une courbe convexe plongee dans le plan r 2 l equation de la chaleur contracte m a un point

the space of embedded minimal surfaces of fixed genus in a 3 manifold ii multi valued graphs in disks this paper is the second in a series where we give a description of the space of all embedded minimal surfaces of fixed genus in a fixed but arbitrary closed 3 manifold the key for understanding such surfaces is to understand the local structure in a ball and in particular the structure of an embedded minimal disk in a ball in r 3 we show here that if the curvature of such a disk becomes large at some point then it contains an almost flat multi valued graph nearby that continues almost all the way to the boundary this will be proved by showing the existence of small multi valued graphs near points of large curvature and then using the extension result for multi valued graphs proved in the first paper in this series there are two local models for embedded minimal disks by an embedded disk we mean a smooth injective map from the closed unit ball in r 2 into r 3 one model is the plane or more generally a minimal graph the other is a piece of a helicoid in the first four papers of this series we will show that every embedded minimal disk is either a graph of a function or is a double spiral staircase like a helicoid recall that a double spiral staircase consists of two spiral staircases that spiral together around a common axis one inside the other this will be done by showing that if the curvature is large at some point and hence the surface is not a graph then it is a double spiral staircase to prove that it is a double spiral staircase we will first prove that it is built out of n valued graphs where n is a fixed number these n valued graphs are like a single spiral staircase connecting n floors the existence of the n valued graphs was initiated in the first paper and will be completed here the third and fourth papers of this series will deal with how the multi valued graphs fit together and in particular prove regularity of the set of points of large curvature the axis of the double spiral staircase

using test retest reliability data to improve estimates of relative risk an application of latent class analysis the paper discusses the problem of interval estimation for the relative risk when some test retest data are available on random subsamples drawn from case control studies it is shown that although the upper portion of the interval may be very wide indeed the lower bound of the interval estimate may be improved considerably by the collection of even modest amounts of repeat measurements