Search results for "ta112"
showing 10 items of 69 documents
Optimal selection of individuals for repeated covariate measurements in follow-up studies
2016
Repeated covariate measurements bring important information on the time-varying risk factors in long epidemiological follow-up studies. However, due to budget limitations, it may be possible to carry out the repeated measurements only for a subset of the cohort. We study cost-efficient alternatives for the simple random sampling in the selection of the individuals to be remeasured. The proposed selection criteria are based on forms of the D-optimality. The selection methods are compared with the simulation studies and illustrated with the data from the East–West study carried out in Finland from 1959 to 1999. The results indicate that cost savings can be achieved if the selection is focuse…
Everyday Appropriations of Information Technology: A Study of Creative Uses of Digital Cameras
2011
Repurposive appropriation is a creative everyday act in which a user invents a novel use for information technology (IT) and adopts it. This study is the first to address its prevalence and predictability in the consumer IT context. In all, 2,379 respondents filled in an online questionnaire on creative uses of digital cameras, such as using them as scanners, periscopes, and storage media. The data reveal that such creative uses are adopted by about half of the users, on average, across different demographic backgrounds. Discovery of a creative use on one's own is slightly more common than is learning it from others. Most users discover the creative uses either completely on their own or wh…
The effect of automated taxa identification errors on biological indices
2017
In benthic macroinvertebrate biomonitoring systems, the target is to determine the status of ecosystems based on several biological indices. To increase cost-efficiency, computer-based taxa identification for image data has recently been developed. Taxa identification errors can, however, have strong effects on the indices and thus on the determination of the ecological status. In order to shift the biomonitoring process towards automated expert systems, we need a clear understanding on the bias caused by automation. In this paper, we examine eleven classification methods in the case of macroinvertebrate image data and show how their classification errors propagate into different biological…
Register data in sample allocations for small-area estimation
2018
The inadequate control of sample sizes in surveys using stratified sampling and area estimation may occur when the overall sample size is small or auxiliary information is insufficiently used. Very small sample sizes are possible for some areas. The proposed allocation based on multi-objective optimization uses a small-area model and estimation method and semi-collected empirical data annually collected empirical data. The assessment of its performance at the area and at the population levels is based on design-based sample simulations. Five previously developed allocations serve as references. The model-based estimator is more accurate than the design-based Horvitz–Thompson estimator and t…
Convergence of Markovian Stochastic Approximation with discontinuous dynamics
2016
This paper is devoted to the convergence analysis of stochastic approximation algorithms of the form $\theta_{n+1} = \theta_n + \gamma_{n+1} H_{\theta_n}({X_{n+1}})$, where ${\left\{ {\theta}_n, n \in {\mathbb{N}} \right\}}$ is an ${\mathbb{R}}^d$-valued sequence, ${\left\{ {\gamma}_n, n \in {\mathbb{N}} \right\}}$ is a deterministic stepsize sequence, and ${\left\{ {X}_n, n \in {\mathbb{N}} \right\}}$ is a controlled Markov chain. We study the convergence under weak assumptions on smoothness-in-$\theta$ of the function $\theta \mapsto H_{\theta}({x})$. It is usually assumed that this function is continuous for any $x$; in this work, we relax this condition. Our results are illustrated by c…
Advantages of the Rasch measurement model in analysing educational tests:an applicator's reflection
2011
Educational achievement is a very important issue for parents, teachers, and the government. An accurate measurement plays a very important role in evaluating achievement fairly, and, therefore, analysis methods have been developed considerably in recent years. Education based on long-time learning processes forms a fruitful base for item tests, as it opens up possibilities to design a nearly unlimited number of items. There are several methods available to analyse such tests, but which method is the most useful and in which situation? The Rasch measurement from the Institute for Object Measurement (IOM) has pointed out to be the most useful in evaluating individual items and their function…
Mixture Hidden Markov Models for Sequence Data: The seqHMM Package in R
2019
Sequence analysis is being more and more widely used for the analysis of social sequences and other multivariate categorical time series data. However, it is often complex to describe, visualize, and compare large sequence data, especially when there are multiple parallel sequences per subject. Hidden (latent) Markov models (HMMs) are able to detect underlying latent structures and they can be used in various longitudinal settings: to account for measurement error, to detect unobservable states, or to compress information across several types of observations. Extending to mixture hidden Markov models (MHMMs) allows clustering data into homogeneous subsets, with or without external covariate…
KFAS : Exponential Family State Space Models in R
2017
State space modelling is an efficient and flexible method for statistical inference of a broad class of time series and other data. This paper describes an R package KFAS for state space modelling with the observations from an exponential family, namely Gaussian, Poisson, binomial, negative binomial and gamma distributions. After introducing the basic theory behind Gaussian and non-Gaussian state space models, an illustrative example of Poisson time series forecasting is provided. Finally, a comparison to alternative R packages suitable for non-Gaussian time series modelling is presented.
Surrogate outcomes and transportability
2019
Identification of causal effects is one of the most fundamental tasks of causal inference. We consider an identifiability problem where some experimental and observational data are available but neither data alone is sufficient for the identification of the causal effect of interest. Instead of the outcome of interest, surrogate outcomes are measured in the experiments. This problem is a generalization of identifiability using surrogate experiments and we label it as surrogate outcome identifiability. We show that the concept of transportability provides a sufficient criteria for determining surrogate outcome identifiability for a large class of queries.
Fast Estimation of Diffusion Tensors under Rician noise by the EM algorithm
2016
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is widely used to characterize, in vivo, the white matter of the central nerve system (CNS). This biological tissue contains much anatomic, structural and orientational information of fibers in human brain. Spectral data from the displacement distribution of water molecules located in the brain tissue are collected by a magnetic resonance scanner and acquired in the Fourier domain. After the Fourier inversion, the noise distribution is Gaussian in both real and imaginary parts and, as a consequence, the recorded magnitude data are corrupted by Rician noise. Statistical estimation of diffusion leads a non-linear regression problem. In this paper, we present a f…