Functional estimation and hypothesis testing in nonparametric boundary models

Consider a Poisson point process with unknown support boundary curve $g$, which forms a prototype of an irregular statistical model. We address the problem of estimating non-linear functionals of the form $\int \Phi(g(x))\,dx$. Following a nonparametric maximum-likelihood approach, we construct an estimator which is UMVU over H\"older balls and achieves the (local) minimax rate of convergence. These results hold under weak assumptions on $\Phi$ which are satisfied for $\Phi(u)=|u|^p$, $p\ge 1$. As an application, we consider the problem of estimating the $L^p$-norm and derive the minimax separation rates in the corresponding nonparametric hypothesis testing problem. Structural differences to results for regular nonparametric models are discussed.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figur

Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation

Many empirical questions in economics and other social sciences depend on causal effects of programs or policies. In the last two decades much research has been done on the econometric and statistical analysis of the effects of such programs or treatments. This recent theoretical literature has built on, and combined features of, earlier work in both the statistics and econometrics literatures. It has by now reached a level of maturity that makes it an important tool in many areas of empirical research in economics, including labor economics, public finance, development economics, industrial organization and other areas of empirical micro-economics. In this review we discuss some of the recent developments. We focus primarily on practical issues for empirical researchers, as well as provide a historical overview of the area and give references to more technical research.program evaluation, causality, unconfoundedness, Rubin Causal Model, potential outcomes, instrumental variables

Recent developments in the econometrics of program evaluation

Many empirical questions in economics and other social sciences depend on causal effects of programs or policies. In the last two decades much research has been done on the econometric and statistical analysis of the effects of such programs or treatments. This recent theoretical literature has built on, and combined features of, earlier work in both the statistics and econometrics literatures. It has by now reached a level of maturity that makes it an important tool in many areas of empirical research in economics, including labor economics, public finance, development economics, industrial organization and other areas of empirical micro-economics. In this review we discuss some of the recent developments. We focus primarily on practical issues for empirical researchers, as well as provide a historical overview of the area and give references to more technical research.

Recent advances in directional statistics

Mainstream statistical methodology is generally applicable to data observed in Euclidean space. There are, however, numerous contexts of considerable scientific interest in which the natural supports for the data under consideration are Riemannian manifolds like the unit circle, torus, sphere and their extensions. Typically, such data can be represented using one or more directions, and directional statistics is the branch of statistics that deals with their analysis. In this paper we provide a review of the many recent developments in the field since the publication of Mardia and Jupp (1999), still the most comprehensive text on directional statistics. Many of those developments have been stimulated by interesting applications in fields as diverse as astronomy, medicine, genetics, neurology, aeronautics, acoustics, image analysis, text mining, environmetrics, and machine learning. We begin by considering developments for the exploratory analysis of directional data before progressing to distributional models, general approaches to inference, hypothesis testing, regression, nonparametric curve estimation, methods for dimension reduction, classification and clustering, and the modelling of time series, spatial and spatio-temporal data. An overview of currently available software for analysing directional data is also provided, and potential future developments discussed.Comment: 61 page

A Method for Constructing Fuzzy Test Statistics with Application

The scale parameter theta play an important role in statistical inference and in statistical testing of hypotheses ,but sometimes when the available observation about this parameter ,especially when theta represent the percentage of defective in production, or mean time to failure of certain product ,imprecise information about parameter of the distribution under hypotheses testing lead to test the hypothesis with fuzzy concepts.....More details are available in the full paper

Evolution of statistical analysis in empirical software engineering research: Current state and steps forward

Software engineering research is evolving and papers are increasingly based on empirical data from a multitude of sources, using statistical tests to determine if and to what degree empirical evidence supports their hypotheses. To investigate the practices and trends of statistical analysis in empirical software engineering (ESE), this paper presents a review of a large pool of papers from top-ranked software engineering journals. First, we manually reviewed 161 papers and in the second phase of our method, we conducted a more extensive semi-automatic classification of papers spanning the years 2001--2015 and 5,196 papers. Results from both review steps was used to: i) identify and analyze the predominant practices in ESE (e.g., using t-test or ANOVA), as well as relevant trends in usage of specific statistical methods (e.g., nonparametric tests and effect size measures) and, ii) develop a conceptual model for a statistical analysis workflow with suggestions on how to apply different statistical methods as well as guidelines to avoid pitfalls. Lastly, we confirm existing claims that current ESE practices lack a standard to report practical significance of results. We illustrate how practical significance can be discussed in terms of both the statistical analysis and in the practitioner's context.Comment: journal submission, 34 pages, 8 figure

Three-structured smooth transition regression models based on CART algorithm

In the present work, a tree-based model that combines aspects of CART (Classification and Regression Trees) and STR (Smooth Transition Regression) is proposed. The main idea relies on specifying a parametric nonlinear model through a tree-growing procedure. The resulting model can be analysed either as a fuzzy regression or as a smooth transition regression with multiple regimes. Decisions about splits are entirely based on statistical tests of hypotheses and confidence intervals are constructed for the parameters within the terminal nodes as well as the final predictions. A Monte Carlo Experiment shows the estimators’ properties and the ability of the proposed algorithm to identify correctly several tree architectures. An application to the famous Boston Housing dataset shows that the proposed model provides better explanation with the same number of leaves as the one obtained with the CART algorithm.