Search results for " Methods"
showing 10 items of 4102 documents
Parasite infracommunities as predictors of harvest location of bogue (Boops boops L.): a pilot study using statistical classifiers
2005
The accuracy of classifying bogue (Boops boops) according to the fishery from which it was harvested was evaluated by applying several statistical classification techniques to fish parasite abundances. Bogue captured in 2001 in two fisheries off the Atlantic coast of Spain were compared with one off the Spanish Mediterranean coast. One hundred bogue were classified to each harvest location (fishery) using different numbers of parasite species chosen as predictors by a best subset method. Two parametric methods of classification (linear and quadratic discriminant analysis) were compared with two non-parametric approaches (k-nearest neighbour classification and feed-forward neural network) an…
Elasticity as a measure for online determination of remission points in ongoing epidemics.
2020
The correct identification of change-points during ongoing outbreak investigations of infectious diseases is a matter of paramount importance in epidemiology, with major implications for the management of health care resources, public health and, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, social live. Onsets, peaks, and inflexion points are some of them. An onset is the moment when the epidemic starts. A "peak" indicates a moment at which the incorporated values, both before and after, are lower: a maximum. The inflexion points identify moments in which the rate of growth of the incorporation of new cases changes intensity. In this study, after interpreting the concept of elasticity of a random va…
Detection of spatial disease clusters with LISA functions.
2011
Detection of disease clusters is an important tool in epidemiology that can help to identify risk factors associated with the disease and in understanding its etiology. In this article we propose a method for the detection of spatial clusters where the locations of a set of cases and a set of controls are available. The method is based on local indicators of spatial association functions (LISA functions), particularly on the development of a local version of the product density, which is a second-order characteristic of spatial point processes. The behavior of the method is evaluated and compared with Kulldorff's spatial scan statistic by means of a simulation study. It is shown that the LI…
A network agent-based model of ethnocentrism and intergroup cooperation
2019
We present a network agent-based model of ethnocentrism and intergroup cooperation in which agents from two groups (majority and minority) change their communality (feeling of group solidarity), cooperation strategy and social ties, depending on a barrier of “likeness” (affinity). Our purpose was to study the model’s capability for describing how the mechanisms of preexisting markers (or “tags”) that can work as cues for inducing in-group bias, imitation, and reaction to non-cooperating agents, lead to ethnocentrism or intergroup cooperation and influence the formation of the network of mixed ties between agents of different groups. We explored the model’s behavior via four experiments in w…
A Comparison of Formulae for Calculating Cost-Efficient Sample Sizes of Case-Control Studies with an Internal Validation Scheme
2000
When a case-control study is planned to include an internal validation study, the sample size of the study and the proportion of validated observations has to be calculated. There are a variety of alternative methods to accomplish this. In this article some possible procedures will be compared in order to clarify whether considerable differences in the suggested optimal designs occur, dependent on the used method.
Testing for homogeneity in meta-analysis I. The one-parameter case: standardized mean difference.
2010
Meta-analysis seeks to combine the results of several experiments in order to improve the accuracy of decisions. It is common to use a test for homogeneity to determine if the results of the several experiments are sufficiently similar to warrant their combination into an overall result. Cochran's Q statistic is frequently used for this homogeneity test. It is often assumed that Q follows a chi-square distribution under the null hypothesis of homogeneity, but it has long been known that this asymptotic distribution for Q is not accurate for moderate sample sizes. Here, we present an expansion for the mean of Q under the null hypothesis that is valid when the effect and the weight for each s…
Online Principal Component Analysis in High Dimension: Which Algorithm to Choose?
2017
Summary Principal component analysis (PCA) is a method of choice for dimension reduction. In the current context of data explosion, online techniques that do not require storing all data in memory are indispensable to perform the PCA of streaming data and/or massive data. Despite the wide availability of recursive algorithms that can efficiently update the PCA when new data are observed, the literature offers little guidance on how to select a suitable algorithm for a given application. This paper reviews the main approaches to online PCA, namely, perturbation techniques, incremental methods and stochastic optimisation, and compares the most widely employed techniques in terms statistical a…
Sequential Monte Carlo methods in Bayesian joint models for longitudinal and time-to-event data
2020
The statistical analysis of the information generated by medical follow-up is a very important challenge in the field of personalized medicine. As the evolutionary course of a patient's disease progresses, his/her medical follow-up generates more and more information that should be processed immediately in order to review and update his/her prognosis and treatment. Hence, we focus on this update process through sequential inference methods for joint models of longitudinal and time-to-event data from a Bayesian perspective. More specifically, we propose the use of sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods for static parameter joint models with the intention of reducing computational time in each…
Weighted distance-based trees for ranking data
2017
Within the framework of preference rankings, the interest can lie in finding which predictors and which interactions are able to explain the observed preference structures, because preference decisions will usually depend on the characteristics of both the judges and the objects being judged. This work proposes the use of a univariate decision tree for ranking data based on the weighted distances for complete and incomplete rankings, and considers the area under the ROC curve both for pruning and model assessment. Two real and well-known datasets, the SUSHI preference data and the University ranking data, are used to display the performance of the methodology.
Second-order diagnostics for space-time point processes with application to seismic events
2008
A diagnostic method for space-time point process is introduced and used to interpret and assess the goodness of fit of particular models to real data such as the seismic ones. The proposed method is founded on the definition of a weighted process and allows to detect second-order features of data, like long-range dependence and fractal behavior, that are not accounted for by the fitted model. Applications to earthquake data are provided. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.