No Arabic abstract
Multiple systems estimation strategies have recently been applied to quantify hard-to-reach populations, particularly when estimating the number of victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. In such contexts, it is not uncommon to see sparse or even no overlap between some of the lists on which the estimates are based. These create difficulties in model fitting and selection, and we develop inference procedures to address these challenges. The approach is based on Poisson log-linear regression modeling. Issues investigated in detail include taking proper account of data sparsity in the estimation procedure, as well as the existence and identifiability of maximum likelihood estimates. A stepwise method for choosing the most suitable parameters is developed, together with a bootstrap approach to finding confidence intervals for the total population size. We apply the strategy to two empirical data sets of trafficking in US regions, and find that the approach results in stable, reasonable estimates. An accompanying R software implementation has been made publicly available.
In the Pioneer 100 (P100) Wellness Project (Price and others, 2017), multiple types of data are collected on a single set of healthy participants at multiple timepoints in order to characterize and optimize wellness. One way to do this is to identify clusters, or subgroups, among the participants, and then to tailor personalized health recommendations to each subgroup. It is tempting to cluster the participants using all of the data types and timepoints, in order to fully exploit the available information. However, clustering the participants based on multiple data views implicitly assumes that a single underlying clustering of the participants is shared across all data views. If this assumption does not hold, then clustering the participants using multiple data views may lead to spurious results. In this paper, we seek to evaluate the assumption that there is some underlying relationship among the clusterings from the different data views, by asking the question: are the clusters within each data view dependent or independent? We develop a new test for answering this question, which we then apply to clinical, proteomic, and metabolomic data, across two distinct timepoints, from the P100 study. We find that while the subgroups of the participants defined with respect to any single data type seem to be dependent across time, the clustering among the participants based on one data type (e.g. proteomic data) appears not to be associated with the clustering based on another data type (e.g. clinical data).
The mean value theorem of calculus states that, given a differentiable function $f$ on an interval $[a, b]$, there exists at least one mean value abscissa $c$ such that the slope of the tangent line at $c$ is equal to the slope of the secant line through $(a, f(a))$ and $(b, f(b))$. In this article, we study how the choices of $c$ relate to varying the right endpoint $b$. In particular, we ask: When we can write $c$ as a continuous function of $b$ in some interval? Drawing inspiration from graphed examples, we first investigate this question by proving and using a simplified implicit function theorem. To handle certain edge cases, we then build on this analysis to prove and use a simplified Morses lemma. Finally, further developing the tools proved so far, we conclude that if $f$ is analytic, then it is always possible to choose mean value abscissae so that $c$ is a continuous function of $b$, at least locally.
In multiple testing, the family-wise error rate can be bounded under some conditions by the copula of the test statistics. Assuming that this copula is Archimedean, we consider two non-parametric Archimedean generator estimators. More specifically, we use the non-parametric estimator from Genest et al. (2011) and a slight modification thereof. In simulations, we compare the resulting multiple tests with the Bonferroni test and the multiple test derived from the true generator as baselines.
Classical canonical correlation analysis (CCA) requires matrices to be low dimensional, i.e. the number of features cannot exceed the sample size. Recent developments in CCA have mainly focused on the high-dimensional setting, where the number of features in both matrices under analysis greatly exceeds the sample size. These approaches impose penalties in the optimization problems that are needed to be solve iteratively, and estimate multiple canonical vectors sequentially. In this work, we provide an explicit link between sparse multiple regression with sparse canonical correlation analysis, and an efficient algorithm that can estimate multiple canonical pairs simultaneously rather than sequentially. Furthermore, the algorithm naturally allows parallel computing. These properties make the algorithm much efficient. We provide theoretical results on the consistency of canonical pairs. The algorithm and theoretical development are based on solving an eigenvectors problem, which significantly differentiate our method with existing methods. Simulation results support the improved performance of the proposed approach. We apply eigenvector-based CCA to analysis of the GTEx thyroid histology images, analysis of SNPs and RNA-seq gene expression data, and a microbiome study. The real data analysis also shows improved performance compared to traditional sparse CCA.
Multistage design has been used in a wide range of scientific fields. By allocating sensing resources adaptively, one can effectively eliminate null locations and localize signals with a smaller study budget. We formulate a decision-theoretic framework for simultaneous multi-stage adaptive testing and study how to minimize the total number of measurements while meeting pre-specified constraints on both the false positive rate (FPR) and missed discovery rate (MDR). The new procedure, which effectively pools information across individual tests using a simultaneous multistage adaptive ranking and thresholding (SMART) approach, can achieve precise error rates control and lead to great savings in total study costs. Numerical studies confirm the effectiveness of SMART for FPR and MDR control and show that it achieves substantial power gain over existing methods. The SMART procedure is demonstrated through the analysis of high-throughput screening data and spatial imaging data.