Search results for "Machine Learning"

S36.4: Control of false discovery rate in adaptive designs

2004

Methods and Tools for Bayesian Variable Selection and Model Averaging in Normal Linear Regression

2018

In this paper, we briefly review the main methodological aspects concerned with the application of the Bayesian approach to model choice and model averaging in the context of variable selection in regression models. This includes prior elicitation, summaries of the posterior distribution and computational strategies. We then examine and compare various publicly available R-packages, summarizing and explaining the differences between packages and giving recommendations for applied users. We find that all packages reviewed (can) lead to very similar results, but there are potentially important differences in flexibility and efficiency of the packages.

On the convenience of heteroscedasticity in highly multivariate disease mapping

2019

Highly multivariate disease mapping has recently been proposed as an enhancement of traditional multivariate studies, making it possible to perform the joint analysis of a large number of diseases. This line of research has an important potential since it integrates the information of many diseases into a single model yielding richer and more accurate risk maps. In this paper we show how some of the proposals already put forward in this area display some particular problems when applied to small regions of study. Specifically, the homoscedasticity of these proposals may produce evident misfits and distorted risk maps. In this paper we propose two new models to deal with the variance-adaptiv…

Bayesian assessment of times to diagnosis in breast cancer screening

2008

Breast cancer is one of the diseases with the most profound impact on health in developed countries and mammography is the most popular method for detecting breast cancer at a very early stage. This paper focuses on the waiting period from a positive mammogram until a confirmatory diagnosis is carried out in hospital. Generalized linear mixed models are used to perform the statistical analysis, always within the Bayesian reasoning. Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are applied for estimation by simulating the posterior distribution of the parameters and hyperparameters of the model through the free software WinBUGS.

Sparse kernel methods for high-dimensional survival data

2008

Abstract Sparse kernel methods like support vector machines (SVM) have been applied with great success to classification and (standard) regression settings. Existing support vector classification and regression techniques however are not suitable for partly censored survival data, which are typically analysed using Cox's proportional hazards model. As the partial likelihood of the proportional hazards model only depends on the covariates through inner products, it can be ‘kernelized’. The kernelized proportional hazards model however yields a solution that is dense, i.e. the solution depends on all observations. One of the key features of an SVM is that it yields a sparse solution, dependin…

Coupled variable selection for regression modeling of complex treatment patterns in a clinical cancer registry.

2013

For determining a manageable set of covariates potentially influential with respect to a time-to-event endpoint, Cox proportional hazards models can be combined with variable selection techniques, such as stepwise forward selection or backward elimination based on p-values, or regularized regression techniques such as component-wise boosting. Cox regression models have also been adapted for dealing with more complex event patterns, for example, for competing risks settings with separate, cause-specific hazard models for each event type, or for determining the prognostic effect pattern of a variable over different landmark times, with one conditional survival model for each landmark. Motivat…

Model comparison and selection for stationary space–time models

2007

An intensive simulation study to compare the spatio-temporal prediction performances among various space-time models is presented. The models having separable spatio-temporal covariance functions and nonseparable ones, under various scenarios, are also considered. The computational performance among the various selected models are compared. The issue of how to select an appropriate space-time model by accounting for the tradeoff between goodness-of-fit and model complexity is addressed. Performances of the two commonly used model-selection criteria, Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion are examined. Furthermore, a practical application based on the statistical ana…

Rejoinder: Bayesian Checking of the Second Levels of Hierarchical Models

2008

Rejoinder: Bayesian Checking of the Second Levels of Hierarchical Models [arXiv:0802.0743]

Classification trees for multivariate ordinal response: an application to Student Evaluation Teaching

2016

Data from multiple items on an ordinal scale are commonly collected when qualitative variables, such as feelings, attitudes and many other behavioral and health-related variables are observed. In this paper we introduce a method to derive a distance-based tree for multivariate ordinal response that allows, when subject-specific characteristics are available, to derive common profiles for respondents giving the same/similar multivariate ratings. Special attention will be paid to the performance comparison in terms of AUC, for three different distances used as splitting criteria. Simulated data an a dataset from a Student Evaluation of Teaching survey will be used as illustrative examples. Th…

A Hooke's law-based approach to protein folding rate

2014

Kinetics is a key aspect of the renowned protein folding problem. Here, we propose a comprehensive approach to folding kinetics where a polypeptide chain is assumed to behave as an elastic material described by the Hooke[U+05F3]s law. A novel parameter called elastic-folding constant results from our model and is suggested to distinguish between protein with two-state and multi-state folding pathways. A contact-free descriptor, named folding degree, is introduced as a suitable structural feature to study protein-folding kinetics. This approach generalizes the observed correlations between varieties of structural descriptors with the folding rate constant. Additionally several comparisons am…