Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Posterior Integration on a Riemannian Manifold

The geodesic Markov chain Monte Carlo method and its variants enable computation of integrals with respect to a posterior supported on a manifold. However, for regular integrals, the convergence rate of the ergodic average will be sub-optimal. To fill this gap, this paper extends the efficient posterior integration method of Oates et al. (2017) to the case of a Riemannian manifold. In contrast to the original Euclidean case, no non-trivial boundary conditions are needed for a closed manifold. The method is assessed through simulation and deployed to compute posterior integrals for an Australian Mesozoic paleomagnetic pole model, whose parameters are constrained to lie on the manifold $M = \mathbb{S}^2 \times \mathbb{R}_+$.
Principal stratification analysis using principal scores

Practitioners are interested in not only the average causal effect of a treatment on the outcome but also the underlying causal mechanism in the presence of an intermediate variable between the treatment and outcome. However, in many cases we cannot randomize the intermediate variable, resulting in sample selection problems even in randomized experiments. Therefore, we view randomized experiments with intermediate variables as semiobservational studies. In parallel with the analysis of observational studies, we provide a theoretical foundation for conducting objective causal inference with an intermediate variable under the principal stratification framework, with principal strata defined as the joint potential values of the intermediate variable. Our strategy constructs weighted samples based on principal scores, defined as the conditional probabilities of the latent principal strata given covariates, without access to any outcome data. This principal stratification analysis yields robust causal inference without relying on any model assumptions on the outcome distributions. We also propose approaches to conducting sensitivity analysis for violations of the ignorability and monotonicity assumptions: the very crucial but untestable identification assumptions in our theory. When the assumptions required by the classical instrumental variable analysis cannot be justified by background knowledge or cannot be made because of scientific questions of interest, our strategy serves as a useful alternative tool to deal with intermediate variables. We illustrate our methodologies by using two real data examples and find scientifically meaningful conclusions.
Heritability Estimation in Matrix-Variate Mixed models -- A Bayesian Approach

Since the emergence of genome-wide association studies (GWASs), estimation of the narrow sense heritability explained by common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) via linear mixed model approaches became widely used. As in most GWASs, most of the heritability analyses are performed using univariate approaches i.e. considering each phenotype independently. In this study, we propose a Bayesian matrix-variate mixed model that takes into account the genetic correlation between phenotypes in addition to the genetic correlation between individuals which is usually modelled via a relatedness matrix. We showed that when the relatedness matrix is estimated using all the genome-wide SNPs, our model is equivalent to a matrix normal regression with matrix normal prior on the effect sizes. Using real data we demonstrate that there is a boost in the heritability explained when phenotypes are jointly modelled (25-35% increase). In fact based on their standard error, the joint modelling provides more accurate estimates of the heritability over the univariate modelling. Moreover, our Bayesian approach provides slightly higher estimates of heritability compared to the maximum likelihood method. On the other hand, although our method performs less well in phenotype prediction, we note that an initial imputation step relatively increases the prediction accuracy.
BigVAR: Tools for Modeling Sparse High-Dimensional Multivariate Time Series

The R package BigVAR allows for the simultaneous estimation of high-dimensional time series by applying structured penalties to the conventional vector autoregression (VAR) and vector autoregression with exogenous variables (VARX) frameworks. Our methods can be utilized in many forecasting applications that make use of time-dependent data such as macroeconomics, finance, and internet traffic. Our package extends solution algorithms from the machine learning and signal processing literatures to a time dependent setting: selecting the regularization parameter by sequential cross validation and provides substantial improvements in forecasting performance over conventional methods. We offer a user-friendly interface that utilizes R's s4 object class structure which makes our methodology easily accessible to practicioners. In this paper, we present an overview of our notation, the models that comprise BigVAR, and the functionality of our package with a detailed example using publicly available macroeconomic data. In addition, we present a simulation study comparing the performance of several procedures that refit the support selected by a BigVAR procedure according to several variants of least squares and conclude that refitting generally degrades forecast performance.
Constrained Multi-Slot Optimization for Ranking Recommendations

Ranking items to be recommended to users is one of the main problems in large scale social media applications. This problem can be set up as a multi-objective optimization problem to allow for trading off multiple, potentially conflicting objectives (that are driven by those items) against each other. Most previous approaches to this problem optimize for a single slot without considering the interaction effect of these items on one another. In this paper, we develop a constrained multi-slot optimization formulation, which allows for modeling interactions among the items on the different slots. We characterize the solution in terms of problem parameters and identify conditions under which an efficient solution is possible. The problem formulation results in a quadratically constrained quadratic program (QCQP). We provide an algorithm that gives us an efficient solution by relaxing the constraints of the QCQP minimally. Through simulated experiments, we show the benefits of modeling interactions in a multi-slot ranking context, and the speed and accuracy of our QCQP approximate solver against other state of the art methods. CCS Concepts •Theory of computation → Mathematical optimization; Quadratic programming; •Information systems → Content ranking;
A Comprehensive Approach to Mode Clustering

Mode clustering is a nonparametric method for clustering that defines clusters using the basins of attraction of a density estimator's modes. We provide several enhancements to mode clustering: (i) a soft variant of cluster assignment, (ii) a measure of connectivity between clusters, (iii) a technique for choosing the bandwidth, (iv) a method for denoising small clusters, and (v) an approach to visualizing the clusters. Combining all these enhancements gives us a complete procedure for clustering in multivariate problems. We also compare mode clustering to other clustering methods in several examples
Collapsibility of marginal models for categorical data

We consider marginal log-linear models for parameterizing distributions on multidimensional contingency tables. These models generalize ordinary log-linear and multivariate logistic models, besides several others. First, we obtain some characteristic properties of marginal log-linear parameters. Then we define collapsibility and strict collapsibility of these parameters in a general sense. Several necessary and sufficient conditions for collapsibility and strict collapsibility are derived using the technique of M\"{o}bius inversion. These include results for an arbitrary set of marginal log-linear parameters having some common effects. The connections of collapsibility and strict collapsibility to various forms of independence of the variables are discussed. Finally, we establish a result on the relationship between parameters with the same effect but different margins, and use it to demonstrate smoothness of marginal log-linear models under collapsibility conditions thereby obtaining a curved exponential family.
Bayesian estimates of astronomical time delays between gravitationally lensed stochastic light curves

The gravitational field of a galaxy can act as a lens and deflect the light emitted by a more distant object such as a quasar. If the galaxy is a strong gravitational lens, it can produce multiple images of the same quasar in the sky. Since the light in each gravitationally lensed image traverses a different path length from the quasar to the Earth, fluctuations in the source brightness are observed in the several images at different times. The time delay between these fluctuations can be used to constrain cosmological parameters and can be inferred from the time series of brightness data or light curves of each image. To estimate the time delay, we construct a model based on a state-space representation for irregularly observed time series generated by a latent continuous-time Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We account for microlensing, an additional source of independent long-term extrinsic variability, via a polynomial regression. Our Bayesian strategy adopts a Metropolis-Hastings within Gibbs sampler. We improve the sampler by using an ancillarity-sufficiency interweaving strategy and adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo. We introduce a profile likelihood of the time delay as an approximation of its marginal posterior distribution. The Bayesian and profile likelihood approaches complement each other, producing almost identical results; the Bayesian method is more principled but the profile likelihood is simpler to implement. We demonstrate our estimation strategy using simulated data of doubly- and quadruply-lensed quasars, and observed data from quasars Q0957+561 and J1029+2623.
Using model distances to investigate the simplifying assumption, model selection and truncation levels for vine copulas

Vine copulas are a useful statistical tool to describe the dependence structure between several random variables, especially when the number of variables is very large. When modeling data with vine copulas, one often is confronted with a set of candidate models out of which the best one is supposed to be selected. For example, this may arise in the context of non-simplified vine copulas, truncations of vines and other simplifications regarding pair-copula families or the vine structure. With the help of distance measures we develop a parametric bootstrap based testing procedure to decide between copulas from nested model classes. In addition we use distance measures to select among different candidate models. All commonly used distance measures, e.g. the Kullback-Leibler distance, suffer from the curse of dimensionality due to high-dimensional integrals. As a remedy for this problem, Killiches, Kraus and Czado (2017) propose several modifications of the Kullback-Leibler distance. We apply these distance measures to the above mentioned model selection problems and substantiate their usefulness.
Controlled sequential Monte Carlo

Sequential Monte Carlo methods, also known as particle methods, are a popular set of techniques for approximating high-dimensional probability distributions and their normalizing constants. These methods have found numerous applications in statistics and related fields; e.g. for inference in non-linear non-Gaussian state space models, and in complex static models. Like many Monte Carlo sampling schemes, they rely on proposal distributions which crucially impact their performance. We introduce here a class of controlled sequential Monte Carlo algorithms, where the proposal distributions are determined by approximating the solution to an associated optimal control problem using an iterative scheme. This method builds upon a number of existing algorithms in econometrics, physics, and statistics for inference in state space models, and generalizes these methods so as to accommodate complex static models. We provide a theoretical analysis concerning the fluctuation and stability of this methodology that also provides insight into the properties of related algorithms. We demonstrate significant gains over state-of-the-art methods at a fixed computational complexity on a variety of applications.
Statistical inference for expectile-based risk measures

Expectiles were introduced by Newey and Powell [43] in the context of linear regression models. Recently, Bellini et al. [6] revealed that expectiles can also be seen as reasonable law-invariant risk measures. In this article, we show that the corresponding statistical functionals are continuous w.r. t. the 1-weak topology and suitably functionally differentiable. By means of these regularity results we can derive several properties such as consistency, asymptotic normality, bootstrap consistency, and qualitative robustness of the corresponding estimators in nonparametric and parametric statistical models.
Inference for Multiple Change-points in Linear and Non-linear Time Series Models

In this paper we develop a generalized likelihood ratio scan method (GLRSM) for multiple change-points inference in piecewise stationary time series, which estimates the number and positions of change-points and provides a confidence interval for each change-point. The computational complexity of using GLRSM for multiple change-points detection is as low as $O(n(\log n)^3)$ for a series of length $n$. Consistency of the estimated numbers and positions of the change-points is established. Extensive simulation studies are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology under different scenarios.
Gaussian Processes for Local Polynomial Forecasting of Time Series

Non-stationary time series with non-linear trends are frequently encountered in applications. We consider here the feasibility of accurately forecasting the signals of multiple such time series considering jointly when the number of historic samples is inadequate for accurately forecasting the signal of each considered in isolation. We develop a new forecasting methodology based on Gaussian process regression that is successful in doing so in examples for which the method of generalized least-squares is not. The new method employs a form of deep machine learning.
MM Algorithms for Variance Components Models

Abstract Variance components estimation and mixed model analysis are central themes in statistics with applications in numerous scientific disciplines. Despite the best efforts of generations of statisticians and numerical analysts, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and restricted MLE of variance component models remain numerically challenging. Building on the minorization–maximization (MM) principle, this article presents a novel iterative algorithm for variance components estimation. Our MM algorithm is trivial to implement and competitive on large data problems. The algorithm readily extends to more complicated problems such as linear mixed models, multivariate response models possibly with missing data, maximum a posteriori estimation, and penalized estimation. We establish the global convergence of the MM algorithm to a Karush–Kuhn–Tucker point and demonstrate, both numerically and theoretically, that it converges faster than the classical EM algorithm when the number of variance components is greater than two and all covariance matrices are positive definite. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Estimating the mean of a heavy-tailed distribution under random censoring

The central limit theorem introduced by Stute [The central limit theorem under random censorship. Ann. Statist. 1995; 23: 422-439] does not hold for some class of heavy-tailed distributions. In this paper, we make use of the extreme value theory to propose an alternative estimating approach of the mean ensuring the asymptotic normality property. A simulation study is carried out to evaluate the performance of this estimation procedure
Diversion Detection in Partially Observed Nuclear Fuel Cycle Networks

A nuclear fuel cycle contains several facilities with different purposes such as mining, conversion, enrichment, and fuel rod fabrication. These facilities form a network, which is naturally sparse in the number of connections (i.e., edges) since not every facility directly interacts with all the others. Given the knowledge of a network baseline, we are interested in detecting anomalous activities in this network, which may signal the diversion of nuclear materials. Anomalies can take the form of a new or missing edge or abnormal rates of interaction. However, often it is not possible to observe the entire network traffic directly due to some constraints such as cost, physical limitations, or laws. By treating the unobserved network traffic as latent variables, we propose estimators for the true network traffic, including the anomalous activity, to use in testing for significant deviations from the baseline. We provide simulation results of a simple network of facilities and show that our estimators have superior performance over existing alternatives. Additionally, we establish that while a good estimate of the network traffic is necessary, perfect reconstruction is not required to effectively detect anomalous network activity. Instead it suffices to detect perturbations within the network at an aggregate or global scale.
Statistical inference versus mean field limit for Hawkes processes

We consider a population of $N$ individuals, of which we observe the number of actions as time evolves. For each couple of individuals $(i,j)$, $j$ may or not influence $i$, which we model by i.i. d. Bernoulli$(p)$-random variables, for some unknown parameter $p\in (0,1]$. Each individual acts autonomously at some unknown rate $\mu>0$ and acts by mimetism at some rate depending on the number of recent actions of the individuals which influence him, the age of these actions being taken into account through an unknown function $\varphi$ (roughly, decreasing and with fast decay). The goal of this paper is to estimate $p$, which is the main charateristic of the graph of interactions, in the asymptotic $N\to\infty$, $t\to\infty$. The main issue is that the mean field limit (as $N \to \infty$) of this model is unidentifiable, in that it only depends on the parameters $\mu$ and $p\varphi$. Fortunately, this mean field limit is not valid for large times. We distinguish the subcritical case, where, roughly, the mean number $m_t$ of actions per individual increases linearly and the supercritical case, where $m_t$ increases exponentially. Although the nuisance parameter $\varphi$ is non-parametric, we are able, in both cases, to estimate $p$ without estimating $\varphi$ in a nonparametric way, with a precision of order $N^{-1/2}+N^{1/2}m_t^{-1}$, up to some arbitrarily small loss. We explain, using a Gaussian toy model, the reason why this rate of convergence might be (almost) optimal.
Generic Identifiability of Linear Structural Equation Models by Ancestor Decomposition

Linear structural equation models, which relate random variables via linear interdependencies and Gaussian noise, are a popular tool for modelling multivariate joint distributions. The models correspond to mixed graphs that include both directed and bidirected edges representing the linear relationships and correlations between noise terms, respectively. A question of interest for these models is that of parameter identifiability, whether or not it is possible to recover edge coefficients from the joint covariance matrix of the random variables. For the problem of determining generic parameter identifiability, we present an algorithm building upon the half‐trek criterion. Underlying our new algorithm is the idea that ancestral subsets of vertices in the graph can be used to extend the applicability of a decomposition technique.
Combining historical data and bookmakers’ odds in modelling football scores

Modelling football outcomes has gained increasing attention, in large part due to the potential for making substantial profits. Despite the strong connection existing between football models and the bookmakers’ betting odds, no authors have used the latter for improving the fit and the predictive accuracy of these models. We have developed a hierarchical Bayesian Poisson model in which the scoring rates of the teams are convex combinations of parameters estimated from historical data and the additional source of the betting odds. We apply our analysis to a nine-year dataset of the most popular European leagues in order to predict match outcomes for their tenth seasons. In this article, we provide numerical and graphical checks for our model.
Consistent FDR estimation for adaptive multiple testing Normal means under principal correlation structure

We consider multiple testing means of many dependent Normal random variables when these random variables have a principal correlation structure and different variances. We extend Jin's estimator of the proportion of nonzero Normal means to this setting and show that the extended estimator is consistent. We also show that the false discovery rate of the adaptive single-step multiple testing procedure that employs this estimator can be consistently estimated by its false discovery proportion and that the rejection threshold of the procedure can be explicitly determined to ensure the conservativeness of the procedure. The extended estimator and adaptive procedure are applied to multiple testing in an association study based on brain imaging data.
Some Permutationllay Symmetric Multiple Hypotheses Testing Rules Under Dependent Set up

In this paper, our interest is in the problem of simultaneous hypothesis testing when the test statistics corresponding to the individual hypotheses are possibly correlated. Specifically, we consider the case when the test statistics together have a multivariate normal distribution (with equal correlation between each pair) with an unknown mean vector and our goal is to decide which components of the mean vector are zero and which are non-zero. This problem was taken up earlier in Bogdan et al. (2011) for the case when the test statistics are independent normals. Asymptotic optimality in a Bayesian decision theoretic sense was studied in this context, the optimal precodures were characterized and optimality of some well-known procedures were thereby established. The case under dependence was left as a challenging open problem. We have studied the problem both theoretically and through extensive simulations and have given some permutation invariant rules. Though in Bogdan et al. (2011), the asymptotic derivations were done in the context of sparsity of the non-zero means, our result does not require the assumption of sparsity and holds under a more general setup.
On convergence of the sample correlation matrices in high-dimensional data

In this paper, we consider an estimation problem concerning the matrix of correlation coefficients in context of high dimensional data settings. In particular, we revisit some results in Li and Rolsalsky [Li, D. and Rolsalsky, A. (2006). Some strong limit theorems for the largest entries of sample correlation matrices, The Annals of Applied Probability, 16, 1, 423-447]. Four of the main theorems of Li and Rolsalsky (2006) are established in their full generalities and we simplify substantially some proofs of the quoted paper. Further, we generalize a theorem which is useful in deriving the existence of the pth moment as well as in studying the convergence rates in law of large numbers.