Comparing Two Contaminated Samples

We consider the problem of testing whether two samples of contaminated data, possibly paired, are from the same distribution. Is is assumed that the contaminations are additive noises with known moments of all orders. The test statistic is based on the polynomials moments of the difference between observations and noises. . A data driven selection is proposed to choose automatically the number of involved polynomials. We present a simulation study in order to investigate the power of the proposed test within discrete and continuous cases. A real-data example is presented to demonstrate the method

Estimation de la probabilité d'avoir une donnée manquante

International audienceEn présence d'une variable de loi connue dont les données manquantes ne sont pas dues au hasard (No Missing At Random) nous proposons une méthode pour estimer les probabilités d'avoir une donnée manquante suivant les valeurs observées de la variable. Nous en déduisons une statistique pour tester si les données manquent au hasard ou non

Likelihood-Free Parallel Tempering

Approximate Bayesian Computational (ABC) methods (or likelihood-free methods) have appeared in the past fifteen years as useful methods to perform Bayesian analyses when the likelihood is analytically or computationally intractable. Several ABC methods have been proposed: Monte Carlo Markov Chains (MCMC) methods have been developped by Marjoramet al. (2003) and by Bortotet al. (2007) for instance, and sequential methods have been proposed among others by Sissonet al. (2007), Beaumont et al. (2009) and Del Moral et al. (2009). Until now, while ABC-MCMC methods remain the reference, sequential ABC methods have appeared to outperforms them (see for example McKinley et al. (2009) or Sisson et al. (2007)). In this paper a new algorithm combining population-based MCMC methods with ABC requirements is proposed, using an analogy with the Parallel Tempering algorithm (Geyer, 1991). Performances are compared with existing ABC algorithms on simulations and on a real example

Parallel Tempering with Equi-Energy Moves

The Equi-Energy Sampler (EES) introduced by Kou et al [2006] is based on a population of chains which are updated by local moves and global moves, also called equi-energy jumps. The state space is partitioned into energy rings, and the current state of a chain can jump to a past state of an adjacent chain that has energy level close to its level. This algorithm has been developed to facilitate global moves between different chains, resulting in a good exploration of the state space by the target chain. This method seems to be more efficient than the classical Parallel Tempering (PT) algorithm. However it is difficult to use in combination with a Gibbs sampler and it necessitates increased storage. In this paper we propose an adaptation of this EES that combines PT with the principle of swapping between chains with same levels of energy. This adaptation, that we shall call Parallel Tempering with Equi-Energy Moves (PTEEM), keeps the original idea of the EES method while ensuring good theoretical properties, and practical implementation even if combined with a Gibbs sampler. Performances of the PTEEM algorithm are compared with those of the EES and of the standard PT algorithms in the context of mixture models, and in a problem of identification of gene regulatory binding motifs

Imputation by PLS regression for linear mixed models

The problem of handling missing data for a linear mixed model in presence of correlation between covariates is considered. The missing mechanism concerns both dependent variable and design matrix. We propose an imputation algorithm combining multiple imputation and Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis methods. Our method relies on two steps: removing random effects, fixed effects are first imputed and PLS components are constructed on the corresponding complete case. The dependent variable is then imputed inside the linear mixed model built by adding the random effects to PLS components. The method is applied on simulations and on real data

Testing for equality between two transformations of random variables

Consider two random variables contaminated by two unknown transformations. The aim of this paper is to test the equality of those transformations. Two cases are distinguished: first, the two random variables have known distributions. Second, they are unknown but observed before contaminations. We propose a nonparametric test statistic based on empirical cumulative distribution functions. Monte Carlo studies are performed to analyze the level and the power of the test. An illustration is presented through a real data set.Comment: 15 page

Nonparametric estimation of copulas and copula densities by orthogonal projections

In this paper we study nonparametric estimators of copulas and copula densities. We first focus our study on a density copula estimator based on a polynomial orthogonal projection of the joint density. A new copula estimator is then deduced. Its asymptotic properties are studied: we provide a large functional class for which this construction is optimal in the minimax and maxiset sense and we propose a method selection for the smoothing parameter. An intensive simulation study shows the very good performance of both copulas and copula densities estimators which we compare to a large panel of competitors. A real dataset in actuarial science illustrates this approach.Comment: 42 pages, 6 figures, 11 table

A polynomial expansion to approximate the ultimate ruin probability in the compound Poisson ruin model

International audienceA numerical method to approximate ruin probabilities is proposed within the frame of a compound Poisson ruin model. The defective density function associated to the ruin probability is projected in an orthogonal polynomial system. These polynomials are orthogonal with respect to a probability measure that belongs to Natural Exponential Family with Quadratic Variance Function (NEF-QVF). The method is convenient in at least four ways. Firstly, it leads to a simple analytical expression of the ultimate ruin probability. Secondly, the implementation does not require strong computer skills. Thirdly, our approximation method does not necessitate any preliminary discretisation step of the claim sizes distribution. Finally, the coefficients of our formula do not depend on initial reserves

A Class of Random Field Memory Models for Mortality Forecasting

International audienceThis article proposes a parsimonious alternative approach for modeling the stochastic dynamics of mortality rates. Instead of the commonly used factor-based decomposition framework , we consider modeling mortality improvements using a random field specification with a given causal structure. Such a class of models introduces dependencies among adjacent cohorts aiming at capturing, among others, the cohort effects and cross generations correlations. It also describes the conditional heteroskedasticity of mortality. The proposed model is a generalization of the now widely used AR-ARCH models for random processes. For such class of models, we propose an estimation procedure for the parameters. Formally, we use the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) and show its statistical consistency and the asymptotic normality of the estimated parameters. The framework being general, we investigate and illustrate a simple variant, called the three-level memory model, in order to fully understand and assess the effectiveness of the approach for modeling mortality dynamics