On robust and efficient designs for risk estimation in epidemiologic studies

We consider the design problem for the estimation of several scalar measures suggested in the epidemiological literature for comparing the success rate in two samples. The designs considered so far in the literature are local in the sense that they depend on the unknown probabilities of success in the two groups and are not necessarily robust with respect to their misspecification. A maximin approach is proposed to obtain efficient and robust designs for the estimation of the relative risk, attributable risk and odds ratio, whenever a range for the success rates can be specified by the experimenter. It is demonstrated that the designs obtained by this method are usually more efficient than the uniform design, which allocates equal sample sizes to the two groups. --two by two table,odds ratio,relativ risk,attributable risk,optimal design,efficient design

Multiplier bootstrap of tail copulas with applications

For the problem of estimating lower tail and upper tail copulas, we propose two bootstrap procedures for approximating the distribution of the corresponding empirical tail copulas. The first method uses a multiplier bootstrap of the empirical tail copula process and requires estimation of the partial derivatives of the tail copula. The second method avoids this estimation problem and uses multipliers in the two-dimensional empirical distribution function and in the estimates of the marginal distributions. For both multiplier bootstrap procedures, we prove consistency. For these investigations, we demonstrate that the common assumption of the existence of continuous partial derivatives in the the literature on tail copula estimation is so restrictive, such that the tail copula corresponding to tail independence is the only tail copula with this property. Moreover, we are able to solve this problem and prove weak convergence of the empirical tail copula process under nonrestrictive smoothness assumptions that are satisfied for many commonly used models. These results are applied in several statistical problems, including minimum distance estimation and goodness-of-fit testing.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/12-BEJ425 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Optimal designs for comparing curves

We consider the optimal design problem for a comparison of two regression curves, which is used to establish the similarity between the dose response relationships of two groups. An optimal pair of designs minimizes the width of the confidence band for the difference between the two regression functions. Optimal design theory (equivalence theorems, efficiency bounds) is developed for this non standard design problem and for some commonly used dose response models optimal designs are found explicitly. The results are illustrated in several examples modeling dose response relationships. It is demonstrated that the optimal pair of designs for the comparison of the regression curves is not the pair of the optimal designs for the individual models. In particular it is shown that the use of the optimal designs proposed in this paper instead of commonly used "non-optimal" designs yields a reduction of the width of the confidence band by more than 50%.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figure

Complete classes of designs for nonlinear regression models and principal representations of moment spaces

In a recent paper Yang and Stufken [Ann. Statist. 40 (2012a) 1665-1685] gave sufficient conditions for complete classes of designs for nonlinear regression models. In this note we demonstrate that there is an alternative way to validate this result. Our main argument utilizes the fact that boundary points of moment spaces generated by Chebyshev systems possess unique representations.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AOS1108 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Matrix measures, random moments and Gaussian ensembles

We consider the moment space $\mathcal{M}_n$ corresponding to $p \times p$ real or complex matrix measures defined on the interval $[0,1]$. The asymptotic properties of the first $k$ components of a uniformly distributed vector $(S_{1,n}, ..., S_{n,n})^* \sim \mathcal{U} (\mathcal{M}_n)$ are studied if $n \to \infty$. In particular, it is shown that an appropriately centered and standardized version of the vector $(S_{1,n}, ..., S_{k,n})^*$ converges weakly to a vector of $k$ independent $p \times p$ Gaussian ensembles. For the proof of our results we use some new relations between ordinary moments and canonical moments of matrix measures which are of their own interest. In particular, it is shown that the first $k$ canonical moments corresponding to the uniform distribution on the real or complex moment space $\mathcal{M}_n$ are independent multivariate Beta distributed random variables and that each of these random variables converge in distribution (if the parameters converge to infinity) to the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble or to the Gaussian unitary ensemble, respectively.Comment: 25 page