corrected confidence bands for functional data using principal components functional principal components fpc analysis is widely used to decompose and express functional observations curve estimates implicitly condition on basis functions and other quantities derived from fpc decompositions however these objects are unknown in practice in this article we propose a method for obtaining correct curve estimates by accounting for uncertainty in fpc decompositions additionally pointwise and simultaneous confidence intervals that account for both model and decomposition based variability are constructed standard mixed model representations of functional expansions are used to construct curve estimates and variances conditional on a specific decomposition iterated expectation and variance formulas combine model based conditional estimates across the distribution of decompositions a bootstrap procedure is implemented to understand the uncertainty in principal component decomposition quantities our method compares favorably to competing approaches in simulation studies that include both densely and sparsely observed functions we apply our method to sparse observations of cd4 cell counts and to dense white matter tract profiles code for the analyses and simulations is publicly available and our method is implemented in the r package refund on cran

gaps of operators via rank one perturbations in this note we consider rank one perturbations of weighted shifts to examine distinctions between various sorts of weak hyponormalities including p hyponormality p paranormality and absolute p paranormality our examples enable us to add to the small collection of examples that exhibit the gaps between these classes

dimension reduction in a semiparametric regression model with errors in covariates we consider a semiparametric estimation method for general regression models when some of the predictors are measured with error the technique relies on a kernel regression of the true covariate on all the observed covariates and surrogates this requires a nonparametric regression in as many dimensions as there are covariates and surrogates the usual theory copes with such higher dimensional problems by using higher order kernels but this is unrealistic for most problems we show that the usual theory is essentially as good as one can do with this technique instead of regression with higher order kernels we propose the use of dimension reduction techniques we assume that the true covariate depends only on a linear combination of the observed covariates and surrogates if this linear combination were known we could apply the one dimensional versions of the semiparametric problem for which standard kernels are applicable we show that if one can estimate the linear directions at the root n rate then asymptotically the resulting estimator of the parameters in the main regression model behaves as if the linear combination were known simulations lend some credence to the asymptotic results

generalized partially linear single index models abstract the typical generalized linear model for a regression of a response y on predictors x z has conditional mean function based on a linear combination of x z we generalize these models to have a nonparametric component replacing the linear combination t 0x t 0z by 0 t 0x t 0z where 0 is an unknown function we call these generalized partially linear single index models gplsim the models include the single index models which have 0 0 using local linear methods we propose estimates of the unknown parameters 0 0 and the unknown function 0 and obtain their asymptotic distributions examples illustrate the models and the proposed estimation methodology

nonparametric inferences for additive models additive models with backfitting algorithms are popular multivariate nonparametric fitting techniques however the inferences of the models have not been very well developed due partially to the complexity of the backfitting estimators there are few tools available to answer some important and frequently asked questions such as whether a specific additive component is significant or admits a certain parametric form in an attempt to address these issues we extend the generalized likelihood ratio glr tests to additive models using the backfitting estimator we demonstrate that under the null models the newly proposed glr statistics follow asymptotically rescaled chi squared distributions with the scaling constants and the degrees of freedom independent of the nuisance parameters this demonstrates that the wilks phenomenon continues to hold under a variety of smoothing techniques and more relaxed models with unspecified error distributions we further prove that the glr tests are asymptotically o

objective bayesian survival analysis using shape mixtures of log normal distributions survival models such as the weibull or log normal lead to inference that is not robust to the presence of outliers they also assume that all heterogeneity between individuals can be modeled through covariates this article considers the use of infinite mixtures of lifetime distributions as a solution for these two issues this can be interpreted as the introduction of a random effect in the survival distribution we introduce the family of shape mixtures of log normal distributions which covers a wide range of density and hazard functions bayesian inference under nonsubjective priors based on the jeffreys rule is examined and conditions for posterior propriety are established the existence of the posterior distribution on the basis of a sample of point observations is not always guaranteed and a solution through set observations is implemented in addition we propose a method for outlier detection based on the mixture structure a simulation study illustrates the performance of our methods under dif

gaps of operators abstract we construct examples which distinguish clearly the classes of p hyponormal operators for 0 p in addition we show that those examples classify the classes of w hyponormal absolute p paranormal and normaloid operators on the complex hilbert space only a few examples of p hyponormal operators have been examined our technique can provide many examples related to the above operators

joint modelling of paired sparse functional data using principal components we propose a modelling framework to study the relationship between two paired longitudinally observed variables the data for each variable are viewed as smooth curves measured at discrete time points plus random errors while the curves for each variable are summarized using a few important principal components the association of the two longitudinal variables is modelled through the association of the principal component scores we use penalized splines to model the mean curves and the principal component curves and cast the proposed model into a mixed effects model framework for model fitting prediction and inference the proposed method can be applied in the difficult case in which the measurement times are irregular and sparse and may differ widely across individuals use of functional principal components enhances model interpretation and improves statistical and numerical stability of the parameter estimates

multivariate student t regression models pitfalls and inference we consider likelihood based inference from multivariate regression models with independent student t errors some very intruiging pitfalls of both bayesian and classical methods on the basis of point observations are uncovered bayesian inference may be precluded as a consequence of the coarse nature of the data global maximization of the likelihood function is a vacuous exercise since the likelihood function is unbounded as we tend to the boundary of the parameter space a bayesian analysis on the basis of set observations is proposed and illustrated by several examples

on the nonparametric estimation of covariance functions we describe kernel methods for estimating the covariance function of a stationary stochastic process and show how to ensure that the estimator has the positive semidefiniteness property from a practical viewpoint our method is significant because it does not demand a parametric model for covariance from a technical angle our results exhibit a striking departure from those in more familiar cases of kernel estimation for example in the context of covariance estimation kernel estimators can have the same convergence rates as maximum likelihood estimators and can have exceptionally fast convergence rates when employed to estimate variance

locally adaptive bandwidth choice for kernel regression estimators abstract kernel estimators with a global bandwidth are commonly used to estimate regression functions on the other hand it is obvious that the choice of a local bandwidth can lead to better results because a larger class of kernel estimators is available evidently this may in turn affect variability the optimal bandwidths depend essentially on the regression function itself and on the residual variance and it is desirable to estimate them from the data in this article a local bandwidth estimator is studied a comparison with its global bandwidth equivalent is performed both in theory and in simulations as the main result it is shown that the possible gain in mean integrated squared error of the resulting regression estimator must be paid for by a larger variability of the estimator this may lead to worse results if the sample size is small an algorithm has been devised that puts special weight on stability aspects our simulation study shows that improvements over a global bandwidth estimator

functional varying coefficient models for longitudinal data the proposed functional varying coefficient model provides a versatile and flexible analysis tool for relating longitudinal responses to longitudinal predictors specifically this approach provides a novel representation of varying coefficient functions through suitable auto and cross covariances of the underlying stochastic processes which is particularly advantageous for sparse and irregular designs as often encountered in longitudinal studies existing methodology for varying coefficient models is not adapted to such data the proposed approach extends the customary varying coefficient models to a more general setting in which not only current but also recent past values of the predictor time course may have an impact on the current value of the response time course the influence of past predictor values is modeled by a smooth history index function while the effects on the response are described by smooth varying coefficient functions the resulting estimators for varying coefficient and history

information and asymptotic efficiency in parametric nonparametric models asymptotic lower bounds for estimation of the parameters of models with both parametric and nonparametric components are given in the form of representation theorems for regular estimates and asymptotic minimax bounds the methods used involve i the notion of a hellinger differentiable root density where part of the differentiation is with respect to the nonparametric part of the model to obtain appropriate scores and ii calculation of the effective score for the real or vector finite dimensional parameter of interest as that component of the score function orthogonal to all nuisance parameter scores perhaps infinite dimensional the resulting asymptotic information for estimation of the parametric component of the model is just 4 times the squared l 2 norm of the effective score a corollary of these results is a simple necessary condition for adaptive estimation adaptation is possible only if the scores for the parameter of interest are orthogonal to the scores for the nuisance function or nonparametric part of the model examples considered include the one sample location model with and without symmetry mixture models the two sample shift model and cox s proportional hazards model

objective bayesian analysis for the student t regression model we develop a bayesian analysis based on two different jeffreys priors for the student t regression model with unknown degrees of freedom it is typically difficult to estimate the number of degrees of freedom improper prior distributions may lead to improper posterior distributions whereas proper prior distributions may dominate the analysis we show that bayesian analysis with either of the two considered jeffreys priors provides a proper posterior distribution finally we show that bayesian estimators based on jeffreys analysis compare favourably to other bayesian estimators based on priors previously proposed in the literature

empirical likelihood semiparametric regression analysis for longitudinal data a semiparametric regression model for longitudinal data is considered the empirical likelihood method is used to estimate the regression coefficients and the baseline function and to construct confidence regions and intervals it is proved that the maximum empirical likelihood estimator of the regression coefficients achieves asymptotic efficiency and the estimator of the baseline function attains asymptotic normality when a bias correction is made two calibrated empirical likelihood approaches to inference for the baseline function are developed we propose a groupwise empirical likelihood procedure to handle the inter series dependence for the longitudinal semiparametric regression model and employ bias correction to construct the empirical likelihood ratio functions for the parameters of interest this leads us to prove a nonparametric version of wilks theorem compared with methods based on normal approximations the empirical likelihood does not require consistent estimators for the asymptotic variance and bias a simulation compares the empirical likelihood and normal based methods in terms of coverage accuracies and average areas lengths of confidence regions intervals

uniform convergence rates for nonparametric regression and principal component analysis in functional longitudinal data we consider nonparametric estimation of the mean and covariance functions for functional longitudinal data strong uniform convergence rates are developed for estimators that are local linear smoothers our results are obtained in a unified framework in which the number of observations within each curve cluster can be of any rate relative to the sample size we show that the convergence rates for the procedures depend on both the number of sample curves and the number of observations on each curve for sparse functional data these rates are equivalent to the optimal rates in nonparametric regression for dense functional data root n rates of convergence can be achieved with proper choices of bandwidths we further derive almost sure rates of convergence for principal component analysis using the estimated covariance function the results are illustrated with simulation studies

nested hierarchical functional data modeling and inference for the analysis of functional plant phenotypes abstractin a plant science root image study the process of seedling roots bending in response to gravity is recorded using digital cameras and the bending rates are modeled as functional plant phenotype data the functional phenotypes are collected from seeds representing a large variety of genotypes and have a three level nested hierarchical structure with seeds nested in groups nested in genotypes the seeds are imaged on different days of the lunar cycle and an important scientific question is whether there are lunar effects on root bending we allow the mean function of the bending rate to depend on the lunar day and model the phenotypic variation between genotypes groups of seeds imaged together and individual seeds by hierarchical functional random effects we estimate the covariance functions of the functional random effects by a fast penalized tensor product spline approach perform multi level functional principal component analysis fpca using the best linear unbiased predictor of the pri

the intrinsic bayes factor for model selection and prediction abstract in the bayesian approach to model selection or hypothesis testing with models or hypotheses of differing dimensions it is typically not possible to utilize standard noninformative or default prior distributions this has led bayesians to use conventional proper prior distributions or crude approximations to bayes factors in this article we introduce a new criterion called the intrinsic bayes factor which is fully automatic in the sense of requiring only standard noninformative priors for its computation and yet seems to correspond to very reasonable actual bayes factors the criterion can be used for nested or nonnested models and for multiple model comparison and prediction from another perspective the development suggests a general definition of a reference prior for model comparison

generalized quasi likelihood ratio tests for semiparametric analysis of covariance models in longitudinal data abstractwe model generalized longitudinal data from multiple treatment groups by a class of semiparametric analysis of covariance models which take into account the parametric effects of time dependent covariates and the nonparametric time effects in these models the treatment effects are represented by nonparametric functions of time and we propose a generalized quasi likelihood ratio test procedure to test if these functions are identical our estimation procedure is based on profile estimating equations combined with local linear smoothers we find that the much celebrated wilks phenomenon which is well established for independent data still holds for longitudinal data if a working independence correlation structure is assumed in the test statistic however this property does not hold in general especially when the working variance function is misspecified our empirical study also shows that incorporating correlation into the test statistic does not necessarily improve the power of the test the

functional mixed effects models in this article a new class of functional models in which smoothing splines are used to model fixed effects as well as random effects is introduced the linear mixed effects models are extended to nonparametric mixed effects models by introducing functional random effects which are modeled as realizations of zero mean stochastic processes the fixed functional effects and the random functional effects are modeled in the same functional space which guarantee the population average and subject specific curves have the same smoothness property these models inherit the flexibility of the linear mixed effects models in handling complex designs and correlation structures can include continuous covariates as well as dummy factors in both the fixed or random design matrices and include the nested curves models as special cases two estimation procedures are proposed the first estimation procedure exploits the connection between linear mixed effects models and smoothing splines and can be fitted using existing software the second procedure is a sequential estimation procedure using kalman filtering this algorithm avoids inversion of large dimensional matrices and therefore can be applied to large data sets a generalized maximum likelihood gml ratio test is proposed for inference and model selection an application to comparison of cortisol profiles is used as an illustration

semiparametric regression for clustered data we consider estimation in a semiparametric partially generalised linear model for clustered data using estimating equations a marginal model is assumed where the mean of the outcome variable depends on some covariates parametrically and a cluster level covariate nonparametrically a profile kernel method allowing for working correlation matrices is developed we show that the nonparametric part of the model can be estimated using standard nonparametric methods including smoothing parameter estimation and the parametric part of the model can be estimated in a profile fashion the asymptotic distributions of the parameter estimators are derived and the optimal estimators of both the nonparametric and parametric parts are shown to be obtained when the working correlation matrix equals the actual correlation matrix the asymptotic covariance matrix of the parameter estimator is consistently estimated by the sandwich estimator we show that the semiparametric efficient score takes on a simple form and our profile kernel method is semiparametric efficient the results for the case where the nonparametric part of the model is an observation level covariate are noted to be dramatically different

functional data analysis for sparse longitudinal data we propose a nonparametric method to perform functional principal components analysis for the case of sparse longitudinal data the method aims at irregularly spaced longitudinal data where the number of repeated measurements available per subject is small in contrast classical functional data analysis requires a large number of regularly spaced measurements per subject we assume that the repeated measurements are located randomly with a random number of repetitions for each subject and are determined by an underlying smooth random subject specific trajectory plus measurement errors basic elements of our approach are the parsimonious estimation of the covariance structure and mean function of the trajectories and the estimation of the variance of the measurement errors the eigenfunction basis is estimated from the data and functional principal components score estimates are obtained by a conditioning step this conditional estimation method is conceptually simple and straightforward to implement

three part joint modeling methods for complex functional data mixed with zero and one inflated proportions and zero inflated continuous outcomes with skewness we take a functional data approach to longitudinal studies with complex bivariate outcomes this work is motivated by data from a physical activity study that measured 2 responses over time in 5 minute intervals one response is the proportion of time active in each interval a continuous proportions with excess zeros and ones the other response energy expenditure rate in the interval is a continuous variable with excess zeros and skewness this outcome is complex because there are 3 possible activity patterns in each interval inactive partially active and completely active and those patterns which are observed induce both nonrandom and random associations between the responses more specifically the inactive pattern requires a zero value in both the proportion for active behavior and the energy expenditure rate a partially active pattern means that the proportion of activity is strictly between zero and one and that the energy expenditure rate is greater than zero and likely to be moderate and the completely active pattern means that the proportion of activity is exactly one and the energy expenditure rate is greater than zero and likely to be higher to address these challenges we propose a 3 part functional data joint modeling approach the first part is a continuation ratio model to reorder the ordinal valued 3 activity patterns the second part models the proportions when they are in interval 0 1 the last component specifies the skewed continuous energy expenditure rate with box cox transformations when they are greater than zero in this 3 part model the regression structures are specified as smooth curves measured at various time points with random effects that have a correlation structure the smoothed random curves for each variable are summarized using a few important principal components and the association of the 3 longitudinal components is modeled through the association of the principal component scores the difficulties in handling the ordinal and proportional variables are addressed using a quasi likelihood type approximation we develop an efficient algorithm to fit the model that also involves the selection of the number of principal components the method is applied to physical activity data and is evaluated empirically by a simulation study

modeling partly conditional means with longitudinal data abstract we propose a general modeling approach to longitudinal data that is a hybrid of the marginal regression models of zeger and liang and of the classical transition models such as used in time series analyses rather than conditioning at time t only on covariate values as is typical with the marginal approach or on the entire history of the process up to t as is typical with the transition model approach we suggest models that condition on a subset of the process history estimation proceeds using generalized estimating equation methodology but with the restriction that the working covariance matrix is diagonal the proposed regression models share common features with cox regression models for failure time data in that they are composed of a nuisance baseline function of time and a simple parametric function of the covariates two illustrative examples are presented

nonnegative decomposition of functional count data we present a novel decomposition of nonnegative functional count data that draws on concepts from nonnegative matrix factorization our decomposition which we refer to as narfd nonnegative and regularized function decomposition enables the study of patterns in variation across subjects in a highly interpretable manner prototypic modes of variation are estimated directly on the observed scale of the data are local and are transparently added together to reconstruct observed functions this contrasts with generalized functional principal component analysis an alternative approach that estimates functional principal components on a transformed scale produces components that typically vary across the entire functional domain and reconstructs observations using complex patterns of cancellation and multiplication of functional principal components narfd is implemented using an alternating minimization algorithm and we evaluate our approach in simulations we apply narfd to an accelerometer dataset comprising observations of physical activity for healthy older americans

semiparametric models for longitudinal data with application to cd4 cell numbers in hiv seroconverters summary the paper describes a semiparametric model for longitudinal data which is illustrated by its application to data on the time evolution of cd4 cell numbers in hiv seroconverters the essential ingredients of the model are a parametric linear model for covariate adjustment a nonparametric estimation of a smooth time trend serial correlation between measurements on an individual subject and random measurement error a back fitting algorithm is used in conjunction with a cross validation prescription to fit the model a notable feature in the application is that the onset of hiv infection is associated with a sudden drop in cd4 cells followed by a longer term slower decay the model is also used to estimate an individual s curve by combining his data with the population curve shrinkage toward the population mean trajectory is controlled in a natural way by the estimated covariance structure of the data

nonparametric estimation of correlation functions in longitudinal and spatial data with application to colon carcinogenesis experiments in longitudinal and spatial studies observations often demonstrate strong correlations that are stationary in time or distance lags and the times or locations of these data being sampled may not be homogeneous we propose a nonparametric estimator of the correlation function in such data using kernel methods we develop a pointwise asymptotic normal distribution for the proposed estimator when the number of subjects is fixed and the number of vectors or functions within each subject goes to infinity based on the asymptotic theory we propose a weighted block bootstrapping method for making inferences about the correlation function where the weights account for the inhomogeneity of the distribution of the times or locations the method is applied to a data set from a colon carcinogenesis study in which colonic crypts were sampled from a piece of colon segment from each of the 12 rats in the experiment and the expression level of p27 an important cell cycle protein was then measured for each cell within the sampled crypts a simulation study is also provided to illustrate the numerical performance of the proposed method

longitudinal data analysis using generalized linear models summary this paper proposes an extension of generalized linear models to the analysis of longitudinal data we introduce a class of estimating equations that give consistent estimates of the regression parameters and of their variance under mild assumptions about the time dependence the estimating equations are derived without specifying the joint distribution of a subject s observations yet they reduce to the score equations for multivariate gaussian outcomes asymptotic theory is presented for the general class of estimators specific cases in which we assume independence m dependence and exchangeable correlation structures from each subject are discussed efficiency of the proposed estimators in two simple situations is considered the approach is closely related to quasi likelih ood some key ironh estimating equation generalized linear model longitudinal data quasi likelihood repeated measures

wavelet based functional mixed models increasingly scientific studies yield functional data in which the ideal units of observation are curves and the observed data consist of sets of curves that are sampled on a fine grid we present new methodology that generalizes the linear mixed model to the functional mixed model framework with model fitting done by using a bayesian wavelet based approach this method is flexible allowing functions of arbitrary form and the full range of fixed effects structures and between curve covariance structures that are available in the mixed model framework it yields nonparametric estimates of the fixed and random effects functions as well as the various between curve and within curve covariance matrices the functional fixed effects are adaptively regularized as a result of the non linear shrinkage prior that is imposed on the fixed effects wavelet coefficients and the random effect functions experience a form of adaptive regularization because of the separately estimated variance components for each wavelet coefficient because we have posterior samples for all model quantities we can perform pointwise or joint bayesian inference or prediction on the quantities of the model the adaptiveness of the method makes it especially appropriate for modelling irregular functional data that are characterized by numerous local features like peaks

outlier models and prior distributions in bayesian linear regression summary bayesian inference in regression models is considered using heavy tailed error distri butions to accommodate outliers the particular class of distributions that can be con structed as scale mixtures of normal distributions are examined and use is made of them as both error models and prior distributions in bayesian linear modelling includ ing simple regression and more complex hierarchical models with structured priors depending on unknown hyperprior parameters the modelling of outliers in nominally normal linear regression models using alternative error distributions which are heavy tailed relative to the normal provides an automatic means of both detecting and accommodating possibly aberrant observations such realistic models do however often lead to analytically intractable analyses with complex posterior distributions in several dimensions that are difficult to summarize and understand in this paper we consider a special yet rather wide class of heavy tailed unimodal and symmetric error distributions for which the analyses though apparently intractable can be examined in some depth by exploiting certain properties of the assumed error form the distributions concerned are those that can be con structed as scale mixtures of normal distributions in his paper concerning location parameters de finetti 1961 discusses such distributions and suggests the hypothetical interpretation that each observation is taken using an instrument with normal error but each time chosen at random from a collection of instruments of different precisions the distribution of the

registration for exponential family functional data we consider the problem of aligning curves from exponential family distributions the approach is based on the combination of alignment and functional principal components analysis and is facilitated by recent extensions of fpca to non gaussian settings our work is motivated by the study of physical activity using accelerometers wearable devices that provide around the clock monitoring of activity and produce non gaussian measurements we apply the proposed methods to activity counts using a poisson distribution and to a binary active vs inactive indicator using a binomial distribution after alignment the trajectories show clear peaks of activity in the morning and afternoon with a dip in the middle of the day

marginal nonparametric kernel regression accounting for within subject correlation there has been substantial recent interest in non and semiparametric methods for longitudinal or clustered data with dependence within clusters it has been shown rather inexplicably that when standard kernel smoothing methods are used in a natural way higher efficiency is obtained by assuming independence than by using the true correlation structure it is shown here that this result is a natural consequence of how standard kernel methods incorporate the within subject correlation in the asymptotic setting considered where the cluster sizes are fixed and the cluster number increases in this paper an alternative kernel smoothing method is proposed unlike the standard methods the smallest variance of the new estimator is achieved when the true correlation is assumed asymptotically the variance of the proposed method is uniformly smaller than that of the most efficient working independence approach a small simulation study shows that significant improvement is obtained for finite samples

semiparametric regression for clustered data using generalized estimating equations we consider estimation in a semiparametric generalized linear model for clustered data using estimating equations our results apply to the case where the number of observations per cluster is finite whereas the number of clusters is large the mean of the outcome variable is of the form g xt t where g is a link function x and t are covariates is an unknown parameter vector and t is an unknown smooth function kernel estimating equations proposed previously in the literature are used to estimate the infinite dimensional nonparametric function t and a profile based estimating equation is used to estimate the finite dimensional parameter vector we show that for clustered data this conventional profile kernel method often fails to yield a n consistent estimator of along with appropriate inference unless working independence is assumed or t is artificially undersmoothed in which case asymptotic inference is possible to gain insight into these results we derive the se

robust statistical modeling using the t distribution abstract the t distribution provides a useful extension of the normal for statistical modeling of data sets involving errors with longer than normal tails an analytical strategy based on maximum likelihood for a general model with multivariate t errors is suggested and applied to a variety of problems including linear and nonlinear regression robust estimation of the mean and covariance matrix with missing data unbalanced multivariate repeated measures data multivariate modeling of pedigree data and multivariate nonlinear regression the degrees of freedom parameter of the t distribution provides a convenient dimension for achieving robust statistical inference with moderate increases in computational complexity for many models estimation of precision from asymptotic theory and the bootstrap is discussed and graphical methods for checking the appropriateness of the t distribution are presented

bayesian linear regression with skew symmetric error distributions with applications to survival analysis we study bayesian linear regression models with skew symmetric scale mixtures of normal error distributions these kinds of models can be used to capture departures from the usual assumption of normality of the errors in terms of heavy tails and asymmetry we propose a general noninformative prior structure for these regression models and show that the corresponding posterior distribution is proper under mild conditions we extend these propriety results to cases where the response variables are censored the latter scenario is of interest in the context of accelerated failure time models which are relevant in survival analysis we present a simulation study that demonstrates good frequentist properties of the posterior credible intervals associated with the proposed priors this study also sheds some light on the trade off between increased model flexibility and the risk of over fitting we illustrate the performance of the proposed models with real data although we focus on models with univariate response variables we also present some extensions to the multivariate case in the supporting information copyright 2016 john wiley sons ltd

analysis of longitudinal data with semiparametric estimation of covariance function improving efficiency for regression coefficients and predicting trajectories of individuals are two important aspects in the analysis of longitudinal data both involve estimation of the covariance function yet challenges arise in estimating the covariance function of longitudinal data collected at irregular time points a class of semiparametric models for the covariance function by that imposes a parametric correlation structure while allowing a nonparametric variance function is proposed a kernel estimator for estimating the nonparametric variance function is developed two methods for estimating parameters in the correlation structure a quasi likelihood approach and a minimum generalized variance method are proposed a semiparametric varying coefficient partially linear model for longitudinal data is introduced and an estimation procedure for model coefficients using a profile weighted least squares approach is proposed sampling properties of the proposed estimation procedures are studied and asy

markov chain monte carlo methods for stochastic volatility models this paper is concerned with simulation based inference in generalized models of stochastic volatility defined by heavy tailed student t distributions with unknown degrees of freedom and exogenous variables in the observation and volatility equations and a jump component in the observation equation by building on the work of kim shephard and chib rev econom stud 65 1998 361 we develop efficient markov chain monte carlo algorithms for estimating these models the paper also discusses how the likelihood function of these models can be computed by appropriate particle filter methods computation of the marginal likelihood by the method of chib j amer statist assoc 90 1995 1313 is also considered the methodology is extensively tested and validated on simulated data and then applied in detail to daily returns data on the s p 500 index where several stochastic volatility models are formally compared under different priors on the parameters

properties of principal component methods for functional and longitudinal data analysis the use of principal component methods to analyze functional data is appropriate in a wide range of different settings in studies of functional data analysis it has often been assumed that a sample of random functions is observed precisely in the continuum and without noise while this has been the traditional setting for functional data analysis in the context of longitudinal data analysis a random function typically represents a patient or subject who is observed at only a small number of randomly distributed points with nonnegligible measurement error nevertheless essentially the same methods can be used in both these cases as well as in the vast number of settings that lie between them how is performance affected by the sampling plan in this paper we answer that question we show that if there is a sample of n functions or subjects then estimation of eigenvalues is a semiparametric problem with root n consistent estimators even if only a few observations are made of each function and if each observation is encumbered by noise however estimation of eigenfunctions becomes a nonparametric problem when observations are sparse the optimal convergence rates in this case are those which pertain to more familiar function estimation settings we also describe the effects of sampling at regularly spaced points as opposed to random points in particular it is shown that there are often advantages in sampling randomly however even in the case of noisy data there is a threshold sampling rate depending on the number of functions treated above which the rate of sampling either randomly or regularly has negligible impact on estimator performance no matter whether eigenfunctions or eigenvectors are being estimated

improved heteroscedasticity consistent covariance matrix estimators summary the heteroscedasticity consistent covariance matrix estimator proposed by white 1980 is commonly used in practical applications and is implemented into a number of pieces of statistical software however although consistent it can display substantial bias in small to moderately large samples as shown by monte carlo simulations elsewhere this paper defines modified white estimators which are approximately bias free numerical results show that the modified estimators display much smaller bias than white s estimator in small samples we also show that the bias correction leads to some variance inflation in hypothesis testing based on heteroscedasticity consistent covariance matrix estimators numerical results suggest that tests based on the proposed bias corrected estimators typically display smaller size distortions

on bayesian modeling of fat tails and skewness abstract we consider a bayesian analysis of linear regression models that can account for skewed error distributions with fat tails the latter two features are often observed characteristics of empirical datasets and we formally incorporate them in the inferential process a general procedure for introducing skewness into symmetric distributions is first proposed even though this allows for a great deal of flexibility in distributional shape tail behavior is not affected applying this skewness procedure to a student t distribution we generate a skewed student distribution which displays both flexible tails and possible skewness each entirely controlled by a separate scalar parameter the linear regression model with a skewed student error term is the main focus of the article we first characterize existence of the posterior distribution and its moments using standard improper priors and allowing for inference on skewness and tail parameters for posterior inference with this model we suggest

efficient semiparametric regression for longitudinal data with nonparametric covariance estimation summary for longitudinal data when the within subject covariance is misspecified the semiparametric regression estimator may be inefficient we propose a method that combines the efficient semiparametric estimator with nonparametric covariance estimation and is robust against misspecification of covariance models we show that kernel covariance estimation provides uniformly consistent estimators for the within subject covariance matrices and the semiparametric profile estimator with substituted nonparametric covariance is still semiparametrically efficient the finite sample performance of the proposed estimator is illustrated by simulation in an application to cd4 count data from an aids clinical trial we extend the proposed method to a functional analysis of the covariance model

bayesian semiparametric regression for longitudinal binary processes with missing data longitudinal studies with binary repeated measures are widespread in biomedical research marginal regression approaches for balanced binary data are well developed whereas for binary process data where measurement times are irregular and may differ by individuals likelihood based methods for marginal regression analysis are less well developed in this article we develop a bayesian regression model for analyzing longitudinal binary process data with emphasis on dealing with missingness we focus on the settings where data are missing at random mar which require a correctly specified joint distribution for the repeated measures in order to draw valid likelihood based inference about the marginal mean to provide maximum flexibility the proposed model specifies both the marginal mean and serial dependence structures using nonparametric smooth functions serial dependence is allowed to depend on the time lag between adjacent outcomes as well as other relevant covariates inference is fully bayesian using simulations we show that adequate modeling of the serial dependence structure is necessary for valid inference of the marginal mean when the binary process data are mar longitudinal viral load data from the hiv epidemiology research study are analyzed for illustration

a semiparametric change point regression model for longitudinal observations many longitudinal studies involve relating an outcome process to a set of possibly time varying covariates giving rise to the usual regression models for longitudinal data when the purpose of the study is to investigate the covariate effects when experimental environment undergoes abrupt changes or to locate the periods with different levels of covariate effects a simple and easy to interpret approach is to introduce change points in regression coefficients in this connection we propose a semiparametric change point regression model in which the error process stochastic component is nonparametric and the baseline mean function functional part is completely unspecified the observation times are allowed to be subject specific and the number locations and magnitudes of change points are unknown and need to be estimated we further develop an estimation procedure that combines the recent advance in semiparametric analysis based on counting process argument and multiple change points inference an

empirical bias bandwidths for local polynomial nonparametric regression and density estimation abstract a data based local bandwidth selector is proposed for nonparametric regression by local fitting of polynomials the estimator called the empirical bias bandwidth selector ebbs is rather simple and easily allows multivariate predictor variables and estimation of any order derivative of the regression function ebbs minimizes an estimate of mean squared error consisting of a squared bias term plus a variance term the variance term used is exact not asymptotic though it involves the conditional variance of the response given the predictors that must be estimated the bias term is estimated empirically not from an asymptotic expression thus ebbs is similar to the double smoothing approach of hardle hall and marron and a local bandwidth selector of schucany but is developed here for a far wider class of estimation problems than what those authors considered ebbs is tested on simulated data and its performance seems quite satisfactory local polynomial smoothing of a histogram is a high

modelling sparse generalized longitudinal observations with latent gaussian processes summary in longitudinal data analysis one frequently encounters non gaussian data that are repeatedly collected for a sample of individuals over time the repeated observations could be binomial poisson or of another discrete type or could be continuous the timings of the repeated measurements are often sparse and irregular we introduce a latent gaussian process model for such data establishing a connection to functional data analysis the functional methods proposed are non parametric and computationally straightforward as they do not involve a likelihood we develop functional principal components analysis for this situation and demonstrate the prediction of individual trajectories from sparse observations this method can handle missing data and leads to predictions of the functional principal component scores which serve as random effects in this model these scores can then be used for further statistical analysis such as inference regression discriminant analysis or clustering we illustrate these non parametric methods with longitudinal data on primary biliary cirrhosis and show in simulations that they are competitive in comparisons with generalized estimating equations and generalized linear mixed models

estimation in partially linear models with missing covariates the partially linear model y xt z has been studied extensively when data are completely observed in this article we consider the case where the covariate x is sometimes missing with missingness probability depending on y z new methods are developed for estimating and our methods are shown to outperform asymptotically methods based only on the complete data asymptotic efficiency is discussed and the semiparametric efficient score function is derived justification of the use of the nonparametric bootstrap in this context is sketched the proposed estimators are extended to a working independence analysis of longitudinal clustered data and applied to analyze an aids clinical trial dataset the results of a simulation experiment are also given to illustrate our approach

some tools for functional data analysis multivariate data analysis permits the study of observations which are finite sets of numbers but modern data collection situations can involve data or the processes giving rise to them which are functions functional data analysis involves infinite dimensional processes and or data the paper shows how the theory of l splines can support generalizations of linear modelling and principal components analysis to samples drawn from random functions spline smoothing rests on a partition of a function space into two orthogonal subspaces one of which contains the obvious or structural components of variation among a set of observed functions and the other of which contains residual components this partitioning is achieved through the use of a linear differential operator and we show how the theory of polynomial splines can be applied more generally with an arbitrary operator and associated boundary constraints these data analysis tools are illustrated by a study of variation in temperature precipitation patterns among some canadian weather stations

efficient semiparametric marginal estimation for longitudinal clustered data we consider marginal generalized semiparametric partially linear models for clustered data lin and carroll derived the semiparametric efficient score function for this problem in the multivariate gaussian case but they were unable to construct a semiparametric efficient estimator that actually achieved the semiparametric information bound here we propose such an estimator and generalize the work to marginal generalized partially linear models we investigate asymptotic relative efficiencies of the estimators that ignore the within cluster correlation structure either in nonparametric curve estimation or throughout we evaluate the finite sample performance of these estimators through simulations and illustrate it using a longitudinal cd4 cell count dataset both theoretical and numerical results indicate that properly taking into account the within subject correlation among the responses can substantially improve efficiency

additive extensions to generalized estimating equation methods the methods underlying vector generalized additive models are extended to provide additive extensions to the generalized estimating equations approaches to multivariate regression problems of liang and zeger and the subsequent literature the methods are illustrated by two examples using correlated binary data concerning the presence or absence of several plant species at the same geographical site and chest pain in male workers from a workforce study with minor modification the extensions are shown to apply to longitudinal data

partially normal composition operators relevant to weighted directed trees abstract we characterize properties including p hyponormality and p paranormality for composition operators arising from measurable transformations on weighted directed trees in terms of a test at each node v involving the masses at nodes in a neighborhood of nodes near v also constructed are certain graphs e universal for p hyponormality in that the neighborhood of any node in any graph yielding a p hyponormal composition operator is a certain limit of neighborhoods in e these results are applied to some examples with particularly regular graph structures

nonparametric smoothing estimates of time varying coefficient models with longitudinal data this paper considers nonparametric estimation in a varying coefficient model with repeated measurements y ij x ij t ij for i 1 n and j 1 n i where x ij x ij x ijk t and y ij x ij t ij denote the jth outcome covariate and time design points respectively of the ith subject the model considered here is y ij x ij t t ij e i t ij where t 0 t k t t for k 0 are smooth nonparametric functions of interest and e i t is a zero mean stochastic process the measurements are assumed to be independent for different subjects but can be correlated at different time points within each subject two nonparametric estimators of t namely a smoothing spline and a locally weighted polynomial are derived for such repeatedly measured data a crossvalidation criterion is proposed for the selection of the corresponding smoothing parameters asymptotic properties such as consistency rates of convergence and asymptotic mean squared errors are established for kernel estimators a special case of the local polynomials these asymptotic results give useful insights into the reliability of our general estimation methods an example of predicting the growth of children born to hiv infected mothers based on gender hiv status and maternal vitamin a levels shows that this model and the corresponding nonparametric estimators are useful in epidemiological studies

penalized spline models for functional principal component analysis summary we propose an iterative estimation procedure for performing functional principal component analysis the procedure aims at functional or longitudinal data where the repeated measurements from the same subject are correlated an increasingly popular smoothing approach penalized spline regression is used to represent the mean function this allows straightforward incorporation of covariates and simple implementation of approximate inference procedures for coefficients for the handling of the within subject correlation we develop an iterative procedure which reduces the dependence between the repeated measurements that are made for the same subject the resulting data after iteration are theoretically shown to be asymptotically equivalent in probability to a set of independent data this suggests that the general theory of penalized spline regression that has been developed for independent data can also be applied to functional data the effectiveness of the proposed procedure is demonstrated via a simulation study and an application to yeast cell cycle gene expression data

bootstrap and wild bootstrap for high dimensional linear models in this paper two bootstrap procedures are considered for the estimation of the distribution of linear contrasts and of f test statistics in high dimensional linear models an asymptotic approach will be chosen where the dimension p of the model may increase for sample size n rightarrow infty the range of validity will be compared for the normal approximation and for the bootstrap procedures furthermore it will be argued that the rates of convergence are different for the bootstrap procedures in this asymptotic framework this is in contrast to the usual asymptotic approach where p is fixed

generalized likelihood ratio statistics and wilks phenomenon likelihood ratio theory has had tremendous success in parametric inference due to the fundamental theory of wilks yet there is no general applicable approach for nonparametric inferences based on function estimation maximum likelihood ratio test statistics in general may not exist in nonparametric function estimation setting even if they exist they are hard to find and can not be optimal as shown in this paper we introduce the generalized likelihood statistics to overcome the drawbacks of nonparametric maximum likelihood ratio statistics a new s wilks phenomenon is unveiled we demonstrate that a class of the generalized likelihood statistics based on some appropriate nonparametric estimators are asymptotically distribution free and follow chi 2 distributions under null hypotheses for a number of useful hypotheses and a variety of useful models including gaussian white noise models nonparametric regression models varying coefficient models and generalized varying coefficient models we further demonstrate that generalized likelihood ratio statistics are asymptotically optimal in the sense that they achieve optimal rates of convergence given by ingster they can even be adaptively optimal in the sense of spokoiny by using a simple choice of adaptive smoothing parameter our work indicates that the generalized likelihood ratio statistics are indeed general and powerful for nonparametric testing problems based on function estimation

semiparametric estimation of covariance matrixes for longitudinal data estimation of longitudinal data covariance structure poses significant challenges because the data usually are collected at irregular time points a viable semiparametric model for covariance matrixes has been proposed that allows one to estimate the variance function nonparametrically and to estimate the correlation function parametrically by aggregating information from irregular and sparse data points within each subject but the asymptotic properties of the quasi maximum likelihood estimator qmle of parameters in the covariance model are largely unknown we address this problem in the context of more general models for the conditional mean function including parametric nonparametric or semiparametric we also consider the possibility of rough mean regression function and introduce the difference based method to reduce biases in the context of varying coefficient partially linear mean regression models this provides a more robust estimator of the covariance function under a wider range of situati

semiparametric estimation in general repeated measures problems summary the paper considers a wide class of semiparametric problems with a parametric part for some covariate effects and repeated evaluations of a nonparametric function special cases in our approach include marginal models for longitudinal or clustered data conditional logistic regression for matched case control studies multivariate measurement error models generalized linear mixed models with a semiparametric component and many others we propose profile kernel and backfitting estimation methods for these problems derive their asymptotic distributions and show that in likelihood problems the methods are semiparametric efficient although generally not true it transpires that with our methods profiling and backfitting are asymptotically equivalent we also consider pseudolikelihood methods where some nuisance parameters are estimated from a different algorithm the methods proposed are evaluated by using simulation studies and applied to the kenya haemoglobin data

modelling and smoothing parameter estimation with multiple quadratic penalties summary penalized likelihood methods provide a range of practical modelling tools including spline smoothing generalized additive models and variants of ridge regression selecting the correct weights for penalties is a critical part of using these methods and in the single penalty case the analyst has several well founded techniques to choose from however many modelling problems suggest a formulation employing multiple penalties and here general methodology is lacking a wide family of models with multiple penalties can be fitted to data by iterative solution of the generalized ridge regression problem minimise kw 1 2 xp a y k 2 o p m i 1 iip 0 s i p p is a parameter vector x a design matrix si a non negative definite coefficient matrix defining the i th penalty with associated smoothing parameter ii w a diagonal weight matrix y a vector of data or pseudodata and o an overall smoothing parameter included for reasons of computational efficiency this paper shows how smoothing parameter selection can be performed efficiently by applying generalized cross validation to this problem and how this allows non linear generalized linear and linear models to be fitted using multiple penalties substantially increasing the scope of penalized modelling methods examples of non linear modelling generalized additive modelling and anisotropic smoothing are given

generalized linear models with random effects a gibbs sampling approach abstract generalized linear models have unified the approach to regression for a wide variety of discrete continuous and censored response variables that can be assumed to be independent across experimental units in applications such as longitudinal studies genetic studies of families and survey sampling observations may be obtained in clusters responses from the same cluster cannot be assumed to be independent with linear models correlation has been effectively modeled by assuming there are cluster specific random effects that derive from an underlying mixing distribution extensions of generalized linear models to include random effects has thus far been hampered by the need for numerical integration to evaluate likelihoods in this article we cast the generalized linear random effects model in a bayesian framework and use a monte carlo method the gibbs sampler to overcome the current computational limitations the resulting algorithm is flexible to easily accommodate changes in the number

quasi likelihood estimation in semiparametric models abstract suppose the expected value of a response variable y may be written h x t where x and t are covariates each of which may be vector valued is an unknown parameter vector is an unknown smooth function and h is a known function in this article we outline a method for estimating the parameter of this type of semiparametric model using a quasi likelihood function algorithms for computing the estimates are given and the asymptotic distribution theory for the estimators is developed the generalization of this approach to the case in which y is a multivariate response is also considered the methodology is illustrated on two data sets and the results of a small monte carlo study are presented

weak and strong uniform consistency of kernel regression estimates we study the estimation of a regression function by the kernel method under mild conditions on the window the bandwidth and the underlying distribution of the bivariate observations x i y i we obtain the weak and strong uniform convergence rates on a bounded interval these results parallel those of silverman 1978 on density estimation and extend those of schuster and yakowitz 1979 and collomb 1979 on regression estimation

equivalent kernels of smoothing splines in nonparametric regression for clustered longitudinal data correlation we show that a smoothing spline estimator is asymptotically equivalent to a recently proposed seemingly unrelated kernel estimator of wang 2003 for any working covariance matrix we show that both estimators can be obtained iteratively by applying conventional kernel or spline smoothing to pseudo observations this result allows us to study the asymptotic properties of the smoothing spline estimator by deriving its asymptotic bias and variance we show that smoothing splines are consistent for an arbitrary working covariance and have the smallest variance when assuming the true covariance we further show that both the seemingly unrelated kernel estimator and the smoothing spline estimator are nonlocal unless working independence is assumed but have asymptotically negligible bias their finite sample performance is compared through simulations our results justify the use of efficient non local estimators such as smoothing splines for clustered longitudinal data

nonparametric estimation of covariance structure in longitudinal data summary in longitudinal studies the effect of various treatments over time is usually of prime interest however observations on the same subject are usually correlated and any analysis should account for the underlying covariance structure a nonparametric estimate of the covariance structure is useful either as a guide to the formulation of a parametric model or as the basis for formal inference without imposing parametric assumptions the sample covariance matrix provides such an estimate when the data consist of a short sequence of measurements at a common set of time points on each of many subjects but is impractical when the data are severely unbalanced or when the sequences of measurements on individual subjects are long relative to the number of subjects the variogram of residuals from a saturated model for the mean response has previously been suggested as a nonparametric estimator for covariance structure assuming stationarity in this paper we consider kernel weighted local linear regression smoothing of sample variogram ordinates and of squared residuals to provide a nonparametric estimator for the covariance structure without assuming stationarity the value of the estimator as a diagnostic tool is demonstrated in two applications one to a set of data concerning the blood pressure of newborn babies in an intensive care unit and the other to data on the time evolution of cd4 cell numbers in hiv seroconverters

multilevel functional clustering analysis in this article we investigate clustering methods for multilevel functional data which consist of repeated random functions observed for a large number of units e g genes at multiple subunits e g bacteria types to describe the within and between variability induced by the hierarchical structure in the data we take a multilevel functional principal component analysis mfpca approach we develop and compare a hard clustering method applied to the scores derived from the mfpca and a soft clustering method using an mfpca decomposition in a simulation study we assess the estimation accuracy of the clustering membership and the cluster patterns under a series of settings small versus moderate number of time points various noise levels and varying number of subunits per unit we demonstrate the applicability of the clustering analysis to a real data set consisting of expression profiles from genes activated by immunity system cells prevalent response patterns are identified by clustering the expression profiles using our multilevel clustering analysis

profile likelihood and conditionally parametric models in this paper we outline a general approach to estimating the parametric component of a semiparametric model for the case of a scalar parametric component the method is based on the idea of first estimating a one dimensional subproblem of the original problem that is least favorable in the sense of stein the likelihood function for the scalar parameter along this estimated subproblem may be viewed as a generalization of the profile likelihood for the problem the scalar parameter is then estimated by maximizing this generalized profile likelihood this method of estimation is applied to a particular class of semiparametric models where it is shown that the resulting estimator is asymptotically efficient

reduced rank mixed effects models for spatially correlated hierarchical functional data hierarchical functional data are widely seen in complex studies where subunits are nested within units which in turn are nested within treatment groups we propose a general framework of functional mixed effects model for such data within unit and within subunit variations are modeled through two separate sets of principal components the subunit level functions are allowed to be correlated penalized splines are used to model both the mean functions and the principal components functions where roughness penalties are used to regularize the spline fit an expectation maximization em algorithm is developed to fit the model while the specific covariance structure of the model is utilized for computational efficiency to avoid storage and inversion of large matrices our dimension reduction with principal components provides an effective solution to the difficult tasks of modeling the covariance kernel of a random function and modeling the correlation between functions the proposed methodology is illus

generalized multilevel function on scalar regression and principal component analysis this manuscript considers regression models for generalized multilevel functional responses functions are generalized in that they follow an exponential family distribution and multilevel in that they are clustered within groups or subjects this data structure is increasingly common across scientific domains and is exemplified by our motivating example in which binary curves indicating physical activity or inactivity are observed for nearly 600 subjects over 5 days we use a generalized linear model to incorporate scalar covariates into the mean structure and decompose subject specific and subject day specific deviations using multilevel functional principal components analysis thus functional fixed effects are estimated while accounting for within function and within subject correlations and major directions of variability within and between subjects are identified fixed effect coefficient functions and principal component basis functions are estimated using penalized splines model parameters are estimated in a bayesian framework using stan a programming language that implements a hamiltonian monte carlo sampler simulations designed to mimic the application have good estimation and inferential properties with reasonable computation times for moderate datasets in both cross sectional and multilevel scenarios code is publicly available in the application we identify effects of age and bmi on the time specific change in probability of being active over a 24 hour period in addition the principal components analysis identifies the patterns of activity that distinguish subjects and days within subjects

smoothing spline models for the analysis of nested and crossed samples of curves abstract we introduce a class of models for an additive decomposition of groups of curves stratified by crossed and nested factors generalizing smoothing splines to such samples by associating them with a corresponding mixed effects model the models are also useful for imputation of missing data and exploratory analysis of variance we prove that the best linear unbiased predictors blups from the extended mixed effects model correspond to solutions of a generalized penalized regression where smoothing parameters are directly related to variance components and we show that these solutions are natural cubic splines the model parameters are estimated using a highly efficient implementation of the em algorithm for restricted maximum likelihood reml estimation based on a preliminary eigenvector decomposition variability of computed estimates can be assessed with asymptotic techniques or with a novel hierarchical bootstrap resampling scheme for nested mixed effects models our methods are applied to me

probabilistic principal component analysis principal component analysis pca is a ubiquitous technique for data analysis and processing but one which is not based upon a probability model in this paper we demonstrate how the principal axes of a set of observed data vectors may be determined through maximum likelihood estimation of parameters in a latent variable model closely related to factor analysis we consider the properties of the associated likelihood function giving an em algorithm for estimating the principal subspace iteratively and discuss the advantages conveyed by the definition of a probability density function for pca

semiparametric estimation of animal abundance using capture recapture data from open populations a semiparametric partially linear model for the size of an open population is proposed and inference is conducted using weighted martingale estimating equations this extends a previous nonparametric approach to modeling capture recapture data for open populations with frequent capture occasions analytic expressions for the large sample variances are derived and these are confirmed in a simulation study the method is illustrated on monthly penguin banding data collected over 6 years

nonparametric estimation of large covariance matrices of longitudinal data summary estimation of an unstructured covariance matrix is difficult because of its positivedefiniteness constraint this obstacle is removed by regressing each variable on its predecessors so that estimation of a covariance matrix is shown to be equivalent to that of estimating a sequence of varying coefficient and varying order regression models our framework is similar to the use of increasing order autoregressive models in approximating the covariance matrix or the spectrum of a stationary time series as an illustration we adopt fan zhang s 2000 two step estimation of functional linear models and propose nonparametric estimators of covariance matrices which are guaranteed to be positive definite for parsimony a suitable order for the sequence of auto regression models is found using penalised likelihood criteria like aic and bic some asymptotic results for the local polynomial estimators of components of a covariance matrix are established two longitudinal datasets are analysed to illustrate the methodology a simulation study reveals the advantage of the nonparametric covariance estimator over the sample covariance matrix for large covariance matrices

nonparametric function estimation for clustered data when the predictor is measured without with error abstract we consider local polynomial kernel regression with a single covariate for clustered data using estimating equations we assume that at most m observations are available on each cluster in the case of random regressors with no measurement error in the predictor we show that it is generally the best strategy to ignore entirely the correlation structure within each cluster and instead pretend that all observations are independent in the further special case of longitudinal data on individuals with fixed common observation times we show that equivalent to the pooled data approach is the strategy of fitting separate nonparametric regressions at each observation time and constructing an optimal weighted average we also consider what happens when the predictor is measured with error using the simex approach to correct for measurement error we construct an asymptotic theory for both the pooled and the weighted average estimators surprisingly for the same amount of smoothing the weighted a

semiparametric stochastic mixed models for longitudinal data abstract we consider inference for a semiparametric stochastic mixed model for longitudinal data this model uses parametric fixed effects to represent the covariate effects and an arbitrary smooth function to model the time effect and accounts for the within subject correlation using random effects and a stationary or nonstationary stochastic process we derive maximum penalized likelihood estimators of the regression coefficients and the nonparametric function the resulting estimator of the nonparametric function is a smoothing spline we propose and compare frequentist inference and bayesian inference on these model components we use restricted maximum likelihood to estimate the smoothing parameter and the variance components simultaneously we show that estimation of all model components of interest can proceed by fitting a modified linear mixed model we illustrate the proposed method by analyzing a hormone dataset and evaluate its performance through simulations

bayesian analysis of stochastic volatility models with fat tails and correlated errors abstract the basic univariate stochastic volatility model specifies that conditional volatility follows a log normal auto regressive model with innovations assumed to be independent of the innovations in the conditional mean equation since the introduction of practical methods for inference in the basic volatility model j business econom statist 12 4 371 it has been observed that the basic model is too restrictive for many financial series we extend the basic svol to allow for a so called leverage effect via correlation between the volatility and mean innovations and for fat tails in the mean equation innovation a bayesian markov chain monte carlo algorithm is developed for the extended volatility model thus far likelihood based inference for the correlated svol model has not appeared in the literature we develop bayes factors to assess the importance of the leverage and fat tail extensions sampling experiments reveal little loss in precision from adding the model extensions but a large loss from using the basic model in the presence of mis specification there is overwhelming evidence of a leverage effect for weekly and daily equity indices the evidence in favor of fat tails is very strong for daily exchange rate and equity indices but less so for weekly data we also find that volatility estimates from the extended model are markedly different from those produced by the basic svol