Several studies on heritability in twins aim at understanding the different contribution of environmental and genetic factors to specific traits. Considering the National Merit Twin Study, our purpose is to correctly analyse the influence of the socioeconomic status on the relationship between twins' cognitive abilities. Our methodology is based on conditional copulas, which allow us to model the effect of a covariate driving the strength of dependence between the main variables. We propose a flexible Bayesian nonparametric approach for the estimation of conditional copulas, which can model any conditional copula density. Our methodology extends the work of Wu et al (2015) by introducing dependence from a covariate in an infinite mixture model. Our results suggest that environmental factors are more influential in families with lower socio-economic position.
Cardiovascular disease lead the cause of death world wide and several studies have been carried out to understand and explore cardiovascular risk markers in normoglycemic and diabetic populations. In this work, we explore the association structure between hyperglycemic markers and cardiovascular risk markers controlled by triglycerides, body mass index, age and gender, for the normoglycemic population in The Mexico City Diabetes Study. Understanding the association structure could contribute to the assessment of additional cardiovascular risk markers in this low income urban population with a …
We propose a novel Dirichlet-based Pólya tree (D-P tree) prior on the copula and based on the D-P tree prior, a nonparametric Bayesian inference procedure. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, we are able to show that the flexibility of the D-P tree prior ensures its consistency in copula estimation, thus able to detect more subtle and complex copula structures than earlier nonparametric Bayesian models, such as a Gaussian copula mixture. Further, the continuity of the imposed D-P tree prior leads to a more favorable smoothing effect in copula estimation over classic frequentist metho…
In recent years, conditional copulas, that allow dependence between variables to vary according to the values of one or more covariates, have attracted increasing attention. In high dimension, vine copulas offer greater flexibility compared to multivariate copulas, since they are constructed using bivariate copulas as building blocks. In this paper we present a novel inferential approach for multivariate distributions, which combines the flexibility of vine constructions with the advantages of Bayesian nonparametrics, not requiring the specification of parametric families for each pair copula.…
In this manuscript, we consider a finite multivariate nonparametric mixture model where the dependence between the marginal densities is modeled using the copula device. Pseudo EM stochastic algorithms were recently proposed to estimate all of the components of this model under a location-scale constraint on the marginals. Here, we introduce a deterministic algorithm that seeks to maximize a smoothed semiparametric likelihood. No location-scale assumption is made about the marginals. The algorithm is monotonic in one special case, and, in another, leads to ``approximate monotonicity'' -- where…
We propose a copula-based measure of asymmetry between the lower and upper tail probabilities of bivariate distributions. The proposed measure has a simple form and possesses some desirable properties as a measure of asymmetry. The limit of the proposed measure as the index goes to the boundary of its domain can be expressed in a simple form under certain conditions on copulas. A sample analogue of the proposed measure for a sample from a copula is presented and its weak convergence to a Gaussian process is shown. Another sample analogue of the presented measure, which is based on a sample fro…
Copula-based methods provide a flexible approach to build missing data imputation models of multivariate data of mixed types. However, the choice of copula function is an open question. We consider a Bayesian nonparametric approach by using an infinite mixture of elliptical copulas induced by a Dirichlet process mixture to build a flexible copula function. A slice sampling algorithm is used to sample from the infinite dimensional parameter space. We extend the work on prior parallel tempering used in finite mixture models to the Dirichlet process mixture model to overcome the mixing issue in m…
Lévy copulas are an important tool which can be used to build dependent Lévy processes. In a classical setting, they have been used to model financial applications. In a Bayesian framework they have been employed to introduce dependent nonparametric priors which allow to model heterogeneous data. This paper focuses on introducing a new class of Lévy copulas based on a class of subordinators recently appeared in the literature, called \textit{Compound Random Measures}. The well-known Clayton Lévy copula is a special case of this new class. Furthermore, we provide some novel results about the un…
In many real problems, dependence structures more general than exchangeability are required. For instance, in some settings partial exchangeability is a more reasonable assumption. For this reason, vectors of dependent Bayesian nonparametric priors have recently gained popularity. They provide flexible models which are tractable from a computational and theoretical point of view. In this paper, we focus on their use for estimating survival functions with multiple-samples information. Our methodology allows to model the dependence among survival times of different groups of observations and ext…
We utilize copulas to constitute a unified framework for constructing and optimizing variational proposals in hierarchical Bayesian models. For models with continuous and non-Gaussian hidden variables, we propose a semiparametric and automated variational Gaussian copula approach, in which the parametric Gaussian copula family is able to preserve multivariate posterior dependence, and the nonparametric transformations based on Bernstein polynomials provide ample flexibility in characterizing the univariate marginal posteriors.
Copula models are flexible tools to represent complex structures of dependence for multivariate random variables. According to Sklar's theorem (Sklar, 1959), any d-dimensional absolutely continuous density can be uniquely represented as the product of the marginal distributions and a copula function which captures the dependence structure among the vector components. In real data applications, the interest of the analyses often lies on specific functionals of the dependence, which quantify aspects of it in a few numerical values. A broad literature exists on such functionals, however extension…
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Novo Nordisk（诺和诺德）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）
Bayesian methods are a popular choice for statistical inference in small-data regimes due to the regularization effect induced by the prior. In the context of density estimation, the standard nonparametric Bayesian approach is to target the posterior predictive of the Dirichlet process mixture model. In general, direct estimation of the posterior predictive is intractable and so methods typically resort to approximating the posterior distribution as an intermediate step. The recent development of quasi-Bayesian predictive copula updates, however, has made it possible to perform tractable predi…
The increasing penetration of renewable energy along with the variations of the loads bring large uncertainties in the power system states that are threatening the security of power system planning and operation. Facing these challenges, this paper proposes a cost-effective, nonparametric method to quantify the impact of uncertain power injections on the load margins. First, we propose to generate system uncertain inputs via a novel vine copula due to its capability in simulating complex multivariate highly dependent model inputs. Furthermore, to reduce the prohibitive computational time requi…
A new class of dependent random measures which we call {\it compound random measures} are proposed and the use of normalized versions of these random measures as priors in Bayesian nonparametric mixture models is considered. Their tractability allows the properties of both compound random measures and normalized compound random measures to be derived. In particular, we show how compound random measures can be constructed with gamma, $σ$-stable and generalized gamma process marginals. We also derive several forms of the Laplace exponent and characterize dependence through both the Lévy copula a…
A pair-copula construction is a decomposition of a multivariate copula into a structured system, called regular vine, of bivariate copulae or pair-copulae. The standard practice is to model these pair-copulae parametrically, which comes at the cost of a large model risk, with errors propagating throughout the vine structure. The empirical pair-copula proposed in the paper provides a nonparametric alternative still achieving the parametric convergence rate. It can be used as a basis for inference on dependence measures, for selecting and pruning the vine structure, and for hypothesis tests conc…
In this paper we consider the problem of dynamic clustering, where cluster memberships may change over time and clusters may split and merge over time, thus creating new clusters and destroying existing ones. We propose a Bayesian nonparametric approach to dynamic clustering via mixture modeling. Our approach relies on a novel time-dependent nonparametric prior defined by combining: i) a copula-based transformation of a Gaussian autoregressive process; ii) the stick-breaking construction of the Dirichlet process. Posterior inference is performed through a particle Markov chain Monte Carlo algo…
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 c…
We propose a copula density estimator that can include information on bivariate marginals when the information is available. We use B-splines for copula density approximation and include information on bivariate marginals via a penalty term. Our estimator satisfies the constraints for a copula density. Under mild conditions, the proposed estimator is consistent.
To handle the ubiquitous problem of "dependence learning," copulas are quickly becoming a pervasive tool across a wide range of data-driven disciplines encompassing neuroscience, finance, econometrics, genomics, social science, machine learning, healthcare and many more. Copula (or connection) functions were invented in 1959 by Abe Sklar in response to a query of Maurice Frechet. After 60 years, where do we stand now? This article provides a history of the key developments and offers a unified perspective.
Bayesian nonparametric modeling of dynamic pollution clusters through an autoregressive logistic-beta Stirling-gamma process
Research School of Finance, Actuarial Studies and Statistics, Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学金融、精算与统计研究学院）；Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Virginia Commonwealth University（弗吉尼亚联邦大学数学与统计学系）
Value-at-Risk and its conditional allegory, which takes into account the available information about the economic environment, form the centrepiece of the Basel framework for the evaluation of market risk in the banking sector. In this paper, a new nonparametric framework for estimating this conditional Value-at-Risk is presented. A nonparametric approach is particularly pertinent as the traditionally used parametric distributions have been shown to be insufficiently robust and flexible in most of the equity-return data sets observed in practice. The method extracts the quantile of the conditi…
In the last decade, simplified vine copula models have been an active area of research. They build a high dimensional probability density from the product of marginals densities and bivariate copula densities. Besides parametric models, several approaches to nonparametric estimation of vine copulas have been proposed. In this article, we extend these approaches and compare them in an extensive simulation study and a real data application. We identify several factors driving the relative performance of the estimators. The most important one is the strength of dependence. No method was found to …
In the field of finance, insurance, and system reliability, etc., it is often of interest to measure the dependence among variables by modeling a multivariate distribution using a copula. The copula models with parametric assumptions are easy to estimate but can be highly biased when such assumptions are false, while the empirical copulas are non-smooth and often not genuine copula making the inference about dependence challenging in practice. As a compromise, the empirical Bernstein copula provides a smooth estimator but the estimation of tuning parameters remains elusive. In this paper, by u…
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) refers to a family of inference methods used in the Bayesian analysis of complex models where evaluation of the likelihood is difficult. Conventional ABC methods often suffer from the curse of dimensionality, and a marginal adjustment strategy was recently introduced in the literature to improve the performance of ABC algorithms in high-dimensional problems. The marginal adjustment approach is extended using a Gaussian copula approximation. The method first estimates the bivariate posterior for each pair of parameters separately using a 2-dimensional Gaus…
One of the features inherent in nested Archimedean copulas, also called hierarchical Archimedean copulas, is their rooted tree structure. A nonparametric, rank-based method to estimate this structure is presented. The idea is to represent the target structure as a set of trivariate structures, each of which can be estimated individually with ease. Indeed, for any three variables there are only four possible rooted tree structures and, based on a sample, a choice can be made by performing comparisons between the three bivariate margins of the empirical distribution of the three variables. The s…
Prognostics of Multisensor Systems with Unknown and Unlabeled Failure Modes via Bayesian Nonparametric Process Mixtures
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida（工业与系统工程系，佛罗里达大学）；School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, University of Florida（森林、渔业与地理科学学院，佛罗里达大学）
Practical applications of nonparametric density estimators in more than three dimensions suffer a great deal from the well-known curse of dimensionality: convergence slows down as dimension increases. We show that one can evade the curse of dimensionality by assuming a simplified vine copula model for the dependence between variables. We formulate a general nonparametric estimator for such a model and show under high-level assumptions that the speed of convergence is independent of dimension. We further discuss a particular implementation for which we validate the high-level assumptions and es…
Extreme-value copulas arise in the asymptotic theory for componentwise maxima of independent random samples. An extreme-value copula is determined by its Pickands dependence function, which is a function on the unit simplex subject to certain shape constraints that arise from an integral transform of an underlying measure called spectral measure. Multivariate extensions are provided of certain rank-based nonparametric estimators of the Pickands dependence function. The shape constraint that the estimator should itself be a Pickands dependence function is enforced by replacing an initial estima…
A Bayesian framework is attractive in the context of prediction, but a fast recursive update of the predictive distribution has apparently been out of reach, in part because Monte Carlo methods are generally used to compute the predictive. This paper shows that online Bayesian prediction is possible by characterizing the Bayesian predictive update in terms of a bivariate copula, making it unnecessary to pass through the posterior to update the predictive. In standard models, the Bayesian predictive update corresponds to familiar choices of copula but, in nonparametric problems, the appropriate…
Copula modelling has become ubiquitous in modern statistics. Here, the problem of nonparametrically estimating a copula density is addressed. Arguably the most popular nonparametric density estimator, the kernel estimator is not suitable for the unit-square-supported copula densities, mainly because it is heavily affected by boundary bias issues. In addition, most common copulas admit unbounded densities, and kernel methods are not consistent in that case. In this paper, a kernel-type copula density estimator is proposed. It is based on the idea of transforming the uniform marginals of the cop…
Any nested Archimedean copula is defined starting from a rooted phylogenetic tree, for which a new class of nonparametric estimators is presented. An estimator from this new class relies on a two-step procedure where first a binary tree is built and second is collapsed if necessary to give an estimate of the target tree structure. Several examples of estimators from this class are given and the performance of each of these estimators, as well as of the only known comparable estimator, is assessed by means of a simulation study involving target structures in various dimensions, showing that the…
This paper is concerned with modeling the dependence structure of two (or more) time-series in the presence of a (possible multivariate) covariate which may include past values of the time series. We assume that the covariate influences only the conditional mean and the conditional variance of each of the time series but the distribution of the standardized innovations is not influenced by the covariate and is stable in time. The joint distribution of the time series is then determined by the conditional means, the conditional variances and the marginal distributions of the innovations, which …
We propose a scalable semiparametric Bayesian model to capture dependencies among multiple neurons by detecting their co-firing (possibly with some lag time) patterns over time. After discretizing time so there is at most one spike at each interval, the resulting sequence of 1's (spike) and 0's (silence) for each neuron is modeled using the logistic function of a continuous latent variable with a Gaussian process prior. For multiple neurons, the corresponding marginal distributions are coupled to their joint probability distribution using a parametric copula model. The advantages of our approa…
The study of dependence between random variables is the core of theoretical and applied statistics. Static and dynamic copula models are useful for describing the dependence structure, which is fully encrypted in the copula probability density function. However, these models are not always able to describe the temporal change of the dependence patterns, which is a key characteristic of financial data. We propose a novel nonparametric framework for modelling a time series of copula probability density functions, which allows to forecast the entire function without the need of post-processing pr…
We propose a new semiparametric approach for modelling nonlinear univariate diffusions, where the observed process is a nonparametric transformation of an underlying parametric diffusion (UPD). This modelling strategy yields a general class of semiparametric Markov diffusion models with parametric dynamic copulas and nonparametric marginal distributions. We provide primitive conditions for the identification of the UPD parameters together with the unknown transformations from discrete samples. Likelihood-based estimators of both parametric and nonparametric components are developed and we anal…
Based on recent progress in research on copula based dependence measures, we review the original Renyi's axioms on symmetric measures and propose a new set of axioms that applies to nonsymmetric measures. We show that nonsymmetric measures can actually better characterize the relationship between a pair of random variables including both independence and complete dependence. The new measures also satisfy the Data Processing Inequality (DPI) on the * product on copulas, which leads to nice features including the invariance of dependence measure under bijective transformation on one of the rando…
An overview of existing nonparametric tests of extreme-value dependence is presented. Given an i.i.d.\ sample of random vectors from a continuous distribution, such tests aim at assessing whether the underlying unknown copula is of the {\em extreme-value} type or not. The existing approaches available in the literature are summarized according to how departure from extreme-value dependence is assessed. Related statistical procedures useful when modeling data with this type of dependence are briefly described next. Two illustrations on real data sets are then carried out using some of the stati…
Estimation of mutual information between random variables has become crucial in a range of fields, from physics to neuroscience to finance. Estimating information accurately over a wide range of conditions relies on the development of flexible methods to describe statistical dependencies among variables, without imposing potentially invalid assumptions on the data. Such methods are needed in cases that lack prior knowledge of their statistical properties and that have limited sample numbers. Here we propose a powerful and generally applicable information estimator based on non-parametric copul…
We present a new non-parametric estimator of the conditional density of the kernel type. It is based on an efficient transformation of the data by quantile transform. By use of the copula representation, it turns out to have a remarkable product form. We study its asymptotic properties and compare its bias and variance to competitors based on nonparametric regression.
In conditional copula models, the copula parameter is deterministically linked to a covariate via the calibration function. The latter is of central interest for inference and is usually estimated nonparametrically. However, when a parametric model for the calibration function is appropriate, the resulting estimator exhibits significant gains in statistical efficiency and requires smaller computational costs. We develop methodology for testing a parametric formulation of the calibration function against a general alternative and propose a generalized likelihood ratio-type test that enables con…
Extreme-value copulas arise as the limiting dependence structure of component-wise maxima. Defined in terms of a functional parameter, they are one of the most widespread copula families due to their flexibility and ability to capture asymmetry. Despite this, meeting the complex analytical properties of this parameter in an unconstrained setting remains a challenge, restricting most uses to models with very few parameters or nonparametric models. Focusing on the bivariate case, we propose a novel semiparametric approach. Our procedure relies on a series of transformations, including Williamson…
Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；Cyprus University of Technology（塞浦路斯理工大学）
Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models have long been considered as one of the most successful families of approaches for volatility modeling in financial return series. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach based on methodologies widely used in the field of statistical machine learning. Specifically, we propose a novel nonparametric Bayesian mixture of Gaussian process regression models, each component of which models the noise variance process that contaminates the observed data as a separate latent Gaussian process driven by the observed data. T…
Quantile regression is a field with steadily growing importance in statistical modeling. It is a complementary method to linear regression, since computing a range of conditional quantile functions provides a more accurate modelling of the stochastic relationship among variables, especially in the tails. We introduce a non-restrictive and highly flexible nonparametric quantile regression approach based on C- and D-vine copulas. Vine copulas allow for separate modeling of marginal distributions and the dependence structure in the data, and can be expressed through a graph theoretical model give…
New nonparametric tests of copula exchangeability and radial symmetry are proposed. The novel aspect of the tests is a resampling procedure that exploits group invariance conditions associated with the relevant symmetry hypothesis. They may be viewed as feasible versions of randomization tests of symmetry, the latter being inapplicable due to the unobservability of margins. Our tests are simple to compute, control size asymptotically, consistently detect arbitrary forms of asymmetry, and do not require the specification of a tuning parameter. Simulations indicate excellent small sample propert…
A new nonparametric model of maximum-entropy (MaxEnt) copula density function is proposed, which offers the following advantages: (i) it is valid for mixed random vector. By `mixed' we mean the method works for any combination of discrete or continuous variables in a fully automated manner; (ii) it yields a bonafide density estimate with intepretable parameters. By `bonafide' we mean the estimate guarantees to be a non-negative function, integrates to 1; and (iii) it plays a unifying role in our understanding of a large class of statistical methods. Our approach utilizes modern machinery of no…
