No Arabic abstract
Blocking is often used to reduce known variability in designed experiments by collecting together homogeneous experimental units. A common modelling assumption for such experiments is that responses from units within a block are dependent. Accounting for such dependencies in both the design of the experiment and the modelling of the resulting data when the response is not normally distributed can be challenging, particularly in terms of the computation required to find an optimal design. The application of copulas and marginal modelling provides a computationally efficient approach for estimating population-average treatment effects. Motivated by an experiment from materials testing, we develop and demonstrate designs with blocks of size two using copula models. Such designs are also important in applications ranging from microarray experiments to experiments on human eyes or limbs with naturally occurring blocks of size two. We present methodology for design selection, make comparisons to existing approaches in the literature and assess the robustness of the designs to modelling assumptions.
We propose a method for constructing optimal block designs for experiments on networks. The response model for a given network interference structure extends the linear network effects model to incorporate blocks. The optimality criteria are chosen to reflect the experimental objectives and an exchange algorithm is used to search across the design space for obtaining an efficient design when an exhaustive search is not possible. Our interest lies in estimating the direct comparisons among treatments, in the presence of nuisance network effects that stem from the underlying network interference structure governing the experimental units, or in the network effects themselves. Comparisons of optimal designs under different models, including the standard treatment models, are examined by comparing the variance and bias of treatment effect estimators. We also suggest a way of defining blocks, while taking into account the interrelations of groups of experimental units within a network, using spectral clustering techniques to achieve optimal modularity. We expect connected units within closed-form communities to behave similarly to an external stimulus. We provide evidence that our approach can lead to efficiency gains over conventional designs such as randomized designs that ignore the network structure and we illustrate its usefulness for experiments on networks.
Quantile regression, that is the prediction of conditional quantiles, has steadily gained importance in statistical modeling and financial applications. The authors introduce a new semiparametric quantile regression method based on sequentially fitting a likelihood optimal D-vine copula to given data resulting in highly flexible models with easily extractable conditional quantiles. As a subclass of regular vine copulas, D-vines enable the modeling of multivariate copulas in terms of bivariate building blocks, a so-called pair-copula construction (PCC). The proposed algorithm works fast and accurate even in high dimensions and incorporates an automatic variable selection by maximizing the conditional log-likelihood. Further, typical issues of quantile regression such as quantile crossing or transformations, interactions and collinearity of variables are automatically taken care of. In a simulation study the improved accuracy and saved computational time of the approach in comparison with established quantile regression methods is highlighted. An extensive financial application to international credit default swap (CDS) data including stress testing and Value-at-Risk (VaR) prediction demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed method.
Algorithms which compute locally optimal continuous designs often rely on a finite design space or on repeatedly solving a complex non-linear program. Both methods require extensive evaluations of the Jacobian Df of the underlying model. These evaluations present a heavy computational burden. Based on the Kiefer-Wolfowitz Equivalence Theorem we present a novel design of experiments algorithm which computes optimal designs in a continuous design space. For this iterative algorithm we combine an adaptive Bayes-like sampling scheme with Gaussian process regression to approximate the directional derivative of the design criterion. The approximation allows us to adaptively select new design points on which to evaluate the model. The adaptive selection of the algorithm requires significantly less evaluations of Df and reduces the runtime of the computations. We show the viability of the new algorithm on two examples from chemical engineering.
Optimal two-treatment, $p$ period crossover designs for binary responses are determined. The optimal designs are obtained by minimizing the variance of the treatment contrast estimator over all possible allocations of $n$ subjects to $2^p$ possible treatment sequences. An appropriate logistic regression model is postulated and the within subject covariances are modeled through a working correlation matrix. The marginal mean of the binary responses are fitted using generalized estimating equations. The efficiencies of some crossover designs for $p=2,3,4$ periods are calculated. The effect of misspecified working correlation matrix on design efficiency is also studied.
The robust adaptive beamforming design problem based on estimation of the signal of interest steering vector is considered in the paper. In this case, the optimal beamformer is obtained by computing the sample matrix inverse and an optimal estimate of the signal of interest steering vector. The common criteria to find the best estimate of the steering vector are the beamformer output SINR and output power, while the constraints assume as little as possible prior inaccurate knowledge about the signal of interest, the propagation media, and the antenna array. Herein, a new beamformer output power maximization problem is formulated and solved subject to a double-sided norm perturbation constraint, a similarity constraint, and a quadratic constraint that guarantees that the direction-of-arrival (DOA) of the signal of interest is away from the DOA region of all linear combinations of the interference steering vectors. In the new robust design, the prior information required consists of some allowable error norm bounds, the approximate knowledge of the antenna array geometry, and the angular sector of the signal of interest. It turns out that the array output power maximization problem is a non-convex QCQP problem with inhomogeneous constraints. However, we show that the problem is still solvable, and develop efficient algorithms for finding globally optimal estimate of the signal of interest steering vector. The results are generalized to the case where an ellipsoidal constraint is considered, and sufficient conditions for the global optimality are derived. In addition, a new quadratic constraint on the actual signal steering vector is proposed in order to improve the array performance. To validate our results, simulation examples are presented, and they demonstrate the improved performance of the new robust beamformers in terms of the output SINR as well as the output power.