No Arabic abstract
We present and describe the GPFDA package for R. The package provides flexible functionalities for dealing with Gaussian process regression (GPR) models for functional data. Multivariate functional data, functional data with multidimensional inputs, and nonseparable and/or nonstationary covariance structures can be modeled. In addition, the package fits functional regression models where the mean function depends on scalar and/or functional covariates and the covariance structure is modeled by a GPR model. In this paper, we present the versatility of GPFDA with respect to mean function and covariance function specifications and illustrate the implementation of estimation and prediction of some models through reproducible numerical examples.
Process data refer to data recorded in the log files of computer-based items. These data, represented as timestamped action sequences, keep track of respondents response processes of solving the items. Process data analysis aims at enhancing educational assessment accuracy and serving other assessment purposes by utilizing the rich information contained in response processes. The R package ProcData presented in this article is designed to provide tools for processing, describing, and analyzing process data. We define an S3 class proc for organizing process data and extend generic methods summary and print for class proc. Two feature extraction methods for process data are implemented in the package for compressing information in the irregular response processes into regular numeric vectors. ProcData also provides functions for fitting and making predictions from a neural-network-based sequence model. These functions call relevant functions in package keras for constructing and training neural networks. In addition, several response process generators and a real dataset of response processes of the climate control item in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment are included in the package.
We introduce the UPG package for highly efficient Bayesian inference in probit, logit, multinomial logit and binomial logit models. UPG offers a convenient estimation framework for balanced and imbalanced data settings where sampling efficiency is ensured through Markov chain Monte Carlo boosting methods. All sampling algorithms are implemented in C++, allowing for rapid parameter estimation. In addition, UPG provides several methods for fast production of output tables and summary plots that are easily accessible to a broad range of users.
The R package sns implements Stochastic Newton Sampler (SNS), a Metropolis-Hastings Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm where the proposal density function is a multivariate Gaussian based on a local, second-order Taylor series expansion of log-density. The mean of the proposal function is the full Newton step in Newton-Raphson optimization algorithm. Taking advantage of the local, multivariate geometry captured in log-density Hessian allows SNS to be more efficient than univariate samplers, approaching independent sampling as the density function increasingly resembles a multivariate Gaussian. SNS requires the log-density Hessian to be negative-definite everywhere in order to construct a valid proposal function. This property holds, or can be easily checked, for many GLM-like models. When initial point is far from density peak, running SNS in non-stochastic mode by taking the Newton step, augmented with with line search, allows the MCMC chain to converge to high-density areas faster. For high-dimensional problems, partitioning of state space into lower-dimensional subsets, and applying SNS to the subsets within a Gibbs sampling framework can significantly improve the mixing of SNS chains. In addition to the above strategies for improving convergence and mixing, sns offers diagnostics and visualization capabilities, as well as a function for sample-based calculation of Bayesian predictive posterior distributions.
Although models for count data with over-dispersion have been widely considered in the literature, models for under-dispersion -- the opposite phenomenon -- have received less attention as it is only relatively common in particular research fields such as biodosimetry and ecology. The Good distribution is a flexible alternative for modelling count data showing either over-dispersion or under-dispersion, although no R packages are still available to the best of our knowledge. We aim to present in the following the R package good that computes the standard probabilistic functions (i.e., probability density function, cumulative distribution function, and quantile function) and generates random samples from a population following a Good distribution. The package also considers a function for Good regression, including covariates in a similar way to that of the standard glm function. We finally show the use of such a package with some real-world data examples addressing both over-dispersion and especially under-dispersion.
SDRcausal is a package that implements sufficient dimension reduction methods for causal inference as proposed in Ghosh, Ma, and de Luna (2021). The package implements (augmented) inverse probability weighting and outcome regression (imputation) estimators of an average treatment effect (ATE) parameter. Nuisance models, both treatment assignment probability given the covariates (propensity score) and outcome regression models, are fitted by using semiparametric locally efficient dimension reduction estimators, thereby allowing for large sets of confounding covariates. Techniques including linear extrapolation, numerical differentiation, and truncation have been used to obtain a practicable implementation of the methods. Finding the suitable dimension reduction map (central mean subspace) requires solving an optimization problem, and several optimization algorithms are given as choices to the user. The package also provides estimators of the asymptotic variances of the causal effect estimators implemented. Plotting options are provided. The core of the methods are implemented in C language, and parallelization is allowed for. The user-friendly and freeware R language is used as interface. The package can be downloaded from Github repository: https://github.com/stat4reg.