16,454 research outputs found
Estimates of heterogeneity (I2) can be biased in small meta-analyses
In meta-analysis, the fraction of variance that is due to heterogeneity is
known as I2. We show that the usual estimator of I2 is biased. The bias is
largest when a meta-analysis has few studies and little heterogeneity. For
example, with 7 studies and the true value of I2 at 0, the average estimate of
I2 is .124. Estimates of I2 should be interpreted cautiously when the
meta-analysis is small and the null hypothesis of homogeneity (I2=0) has not
been rejected. In small meta-analyses, confidence intervals may be preferable
to point estimates for I2.Comment: 7 pages + 3 figure
Better estimates from binned income data: Interpolated CDFs and mean-matching
Researchers often estimate income statistics from summaries that report the
number of incomes in bins such as \$0-10,000, \$10,001-20,000,...,\$200,000+.
Some analysts assign incomes to bin midpoints, but this treats income as
discrete. Other analysts fit a continuous parametric distribution, but the
distribution may not fit well.
We fit nonparametric continuous distributions that reproduce the bin counts
perfectly by interpolating the cumulative distribution function (CDF). We also
show how both midpoints and interpolated CDFs can be constrained to reproduce
the mean of income when it is known.
We compare the methods' accuracy in estimating the Gini coefficients of all
3,221 US counties. Fitting parametric distributions is very slow. Fitting
interpolated CDFs is much faster and slightly more accurate. Both interpolated
CDFs and midpoints give dramatically better estimates if constrained to match a
known mean.
We have implemented interpolated CDFs in the binsmooth package for R. We have
implemented the midpoint method in the rpme command for Stata. Both
implementations can be constrained to match a known mean.Comment: 20 pages (including Appendix), 3 tables, 2 figures (+2 in Appendix
Monotone cellular automata in a random environment
In this paper we study in complete generality the family of two-state,
deterministic, monotone, local, homogeneous cellular automata in
with random initial configurations. Formally, we are given a set
of finite subsets of
, and an initial set
of `infected' sites, which we take to be random
according to the product measure with density . At time ,
the set of infected sites is the union of and the set of all
such that for some . Our
model may alternatively be thought of as bootstrap percolation on
with arbitrary update rules, and for this reason we call it
-bootstrap percolation.
In two dimensions, we give a classification of -bootstrap
percolation models into three classes -- supercritical, critical and
subcritical -- and we prove results about the phase transitions of all models
belonging to the first two of these classes. More precisely, we show that the
critical probability for percolation on is for all models in the critical class, and that it is
for all models in the supercritical class.
The results in this paper are the first of any kind on bootstrap percolation
considered in this level of generality, and in particular they are the first
that make no assumptions of symmetry. It is the hope of the authors that this
work will initiate a new, unified theory of bootstrap percolation on
.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figure
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