12,767 research outputs found
Variable Selection and Model Choice in Structured Survival Models
In many situations, medical applications ask for flexible survival models that allow to extend the classical Cox-model via the
inclusion of time-varying and nonparametric effects. These structured survival models are very flexible but additional
difficulties arise when model choice and variable selection is desired. In particular, it has to be decided which covariates
should be assigned time-varying effects or whether parametric modeling is sufficient for a given covariate. Component-wise
boosting provides a means of likelihood-based model fitting that enables simultaneous variable selection and model choice. We
introduce a component-wise likelihood-based boosting algorithm for survival data that permits the inclusion of both parametric
and nonparametric time-varying effects as well as nonparametric effects of continuous covariates utilizing penalized splines as
the main modeling technique. Its properties
and performance are investigated in simulation studies.
The new modeling approach is used to build a flexible survival model for
intensive care patients suffering from severe sepsis.
A software implementation is available to the interested reader
Flexible semiparametric mixed models
In linear mixed models the influence of covariates is restricted to a strictly parametric form. With the rise of semi- and nonparametric regression also the mixed model has been expanded to allow for additive predictors. The common approach uses the representation of additive models as mixed models. An alternative approach that is proposed in the present paper is likelihood based boosting. Boosting originates in the machine learning community where it has been proposed as a technique to improve classification procedures by combining estimates with reweighted observations. Likelihood based boosting is a general method which may be seen as an extension of L2 boost. In additive mixed models the advantage of boosting techniques in the form of componentwise boosting is that it is suitable for high dimensional settings where many influence variables are present. It allows to fit additive models for many covariates with implicit selection of relevant variables and automatic selection of smoothing parameters. Moreover, boosting techniques may be used to incorporate the subject-specific variation of smooth influence functions by specifying random slopes on smooth e ects. This results in flexible semiparametric mixed models which are appropriate in cases where a simple random intercept is unable to capture the variation of e ects across subjects
Boosting Additive Models using Component-wise P-Splines
We consider an efficient approximation of Bühlmann & Yu’s L2Boosting algorithm with component-wise smoothing splines. Smoothing spline base-learners are replaced by P-spline base-learners which yield similar prediction errors but are more advantageous from a computational point of view. In particular, we give a detailed analysis on the effect of various P-spline hyper-parameters on the boosting fit. In addition, we derive a new theoretical result on the relationship between the boosting stopping iteration and the step length factor used for shrinking the boosting estimates
Smoothing with Curvature Constraints based on Boosting Techniques
In many applications it is known that the underlying smooth function is constrained to have a specific form. In the present paper, we propose an estimation method based on the regression spline approach, which allows to include concavity or convexity constraints in an appealing way. Instead of using linear or quadratic programming routines, we handle the required inequality constraints on basis coefficients by boosting techniques. Therefore, recently developed componentwise boosting methods for regression purposes are applied, which allow to control the restrictions in each iteration. The proposed approach is compared to several competitors in a simulation study. We also consider a real world data set
Boosting insights in insurance tariff plans with tree-based machine learning methods
Pricing actuaries typically operate within the framework of generalized
linear models (GLMs). With the upswing of data analytics, our study puts focus
on machine learning methods to develop full tariff plans built from both the
frequency and severity of claims. We adapt the loss functions used in the
algorithms such that the specific characteristics of insurance data are
carefully incorporated: highly unbalanced count data with excess zeros and
varying exposure on the frequency side combined with scarce, but potentially
long-tailed data on the severity side. A key requirement is the need for
transparent and interpretable pricing models which are easily explainable to
all stakeholders. We therefore focus on machine learning with decision trees:
starting from simple regression trees, we work towards more advanced ensembles
such as random forests and boosted trees. We show how to choose the optimal
tuning parameters for these models in an elaborate cross-validation scheme, we
present visualization tools to obtain insights from the resulting models and
the economic value of these new modeling approaches is evaluated. Boosted trees
outperform the classical GLMs, allowing the insurer to form profitable
portfolios and to guard against potential adverse risk selection
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