High resolution geospatial data are challenging because standard geostatistical models based on Gaussian processes are known to not scale to large data sizes. While progress has been made towards methods that can be computed more efficiently, considerably less attention has been devoted to big data methods that allow the description of complex relationships between several outcomes recorded at high resolutions by different sensors. Our Bayesian multivariate regression models based on spatial multivariate trees (SpamTrees) achieve scalability via conditional independence assumptions on latent random effects following a treed directed acyclic graph. Information-theoretic arguments and considerations on computational efficiency guide the construction of the tree and the related efficient sampling algorithms in imbalanced multivariate settings. In addition to simulated data examples, we illustrate SpamTrees using a large climate data set which combines satellite data with land-based station data. Source code is available at https://github.com/mkln/spamtree
Univariate or multivariate ordinal responses are often assumed to arise from a latent continuous parametric distribution, with covariate effects which enter linearly. We introduce a Bayesian nonparametric modeling approach for univariate and multivariate ordinal regression, which is based on mixture modeling for the joint distribution of latent responses and covariates. The modeling framework enables highly flexible inference for ordinal regression relationships, avoiding assumptions of linearity or additivity in the covariate effects. In standard parametric ordinal regression models, computat…
The Dirichlet-multinomial (DM) distribution plays a fundamental role in modern statistical methodology development and application. Recently, the DM distribution and its variants have been used extensively to model multivariate count data generated by high-throughput sequencing technology in omics research due to its ability to accommodate the compositional structure of the data as well as overdispersion. A major limitation of the DM distribution is that it is unable to handle excess zeros typically found in practice which may bias inference. To fill this gap, we propose a novel Bayesian zero-…
This paper describes a method for a model-based analysis of clinical safety data called multivariate Bayesian logistic regression (MBLR). Parallel logistic regression models are fit to a set of medically related issues, or response variables, and MBLR allows information from the different issues to "borrow strength" from each other. The method is especially suited to sparse response data, as often occurs when fine-grained adverse events are collected from subjects in studies sized more for efficacy than for safety investigations. A combined analysis of data from multiple studies can be perform…
We develop Bayesian models for density regression with emphasis on discrete outcomes. The problem of density regression is approached by considering methods for multivariate density estimation of mixed scale variables, and obtaining conditional densities from the multivariate ones. The approach to multivariate mixed scale outcome density estimation that we describe represents discrete variables, either responses or covariates, as discretised versions of continuous latent variables. We present and compare several models for obtaining these thresholds in the challenging context of count data ana…
We present a multivariate Gaussian process regression approach for parameter field reconstruction based on the field's measurements collected at two different scales, the coarse and fine scales. The proposed approach treats the parameter field defined at fine and coarse scales as a bivariate Gaussian process with a parameterized multiscale covariance model. We employ a full bivariate Matérn kernel as multiscale covariance model, with shape and smoothness hyperparameters that account for the coarsening relation between fine and coarse fields. In contrast to similar multiscale kriging approaches…
In this article, we consider a non-parametric Bayesian approach to multivariate quantile regression. The collection of related conditional distributions of a response vector Y given a univariate covariate X is modeled using a Dependent Dirichlet Process (DDP) prior. The DDP is used to introduce dependence across x. As the realizations from a Dirichlet process prior are almost surely discrete, we need to convolve it with a kernel. To model the error distribution as flexibly as possible, we use a countable mixture of multidimensional normal distributions as our kernel. For posterior computations…
In many applications, such as economics, operations research and reinforcement learning, one often needs to estimate a multivariate regression function f subject to a convexity constraint. For example, in sequential decision processes the value of a state under optimal subsequent decisions may be known to be convex or concave. We propose a new Bayesian nonparametric multivariate approach based on characterizing the unknown regression function as the max of a random collection of unknown hyperplanes. This specification induces a prior with large support in a Kullback-Leibler sense on the space …
Research on Poisson regression analysis for dependent data has been developed rapidly in the last decade. One of difficult problems in a multivariate case is how to construct a cross-correlation structure and at the meantime make sure that the covariance matrix is positive definite. To address the issue, we propose to use convolved Gaussian process (CGP) in this paper. The approach provides a semi-parametric model and offers a natural framework for modeling common mean structure and covariance structure simultaneously. The CGP enables the model to define different covariance structure for each…
Gaussian mixtures are commonly used for modeling heavy-tailed error distributions in robust linear regression. Combining the likelihood of a multivariate robust linear regression model with a standard improper prior distribution yields an analytically intractable posterior distribution that can be sampled using a data augmentation algorithm. When the response matrix has missing entries, there are unique challenges to the application and analysis of the convergence properties of the algorithm. Conditions for geometric ergodicity are provided when the incomplete data have a "monotone" structure.…
Let $π$ denote the intractable posterior density that results when the likelihood from a multivariate linear regression model with errors from a scale mixture of normals is combined with the standard non-informative prior. There is a simple data augmentation algorithm (based on latent data from the mixing density) that can be used to explore $π$. Hobert et al. (2015) [arXiv:1506.03113v1] recently performed a convergence rate analysis of the Markov chain underlying this MCMC algorithm in the special case where the regression model is univariate. These authors provide simple sufficient condition…
This paper describes a method to estimate a production frontier that satisfies the axioms of monotonicity and concavity in a non-parametric Bayesian setting. An inefficiency term that allows for significant departure from prior distributional assumptions is jointly estimated in a single stage with parametric prior assumptions. We introduce heteroscedasticity into the inefficiency terms by local hyperplane-specific shrinkage hyperparameters and impose monotonicity using bound-constrained local nonlinear regression. Our minimum-of-hyperplanes estimator imposes concavity. Our Monte Carlo simulati…
We consider the nonparametric regression problem with multiple predictors and an additive error, where the regression function is assumed to be coordinatewise nondecreasing. We propose a Bayesian approach to make an inference on the multivariate monotone regression function, obtain the posterior contraction rate, and construct a universally consistent Bayesian testing procedure for multivariate monotonicity. To facilitate posterior analysis, we set aside the shape restrictions temporarily, and endow a prior on blockwise constant regression functions with heights independently normally distribu…
In the problem of selecting variables in a multivariate linear regression model, we derive new Bayesian information criteria based on a prior mixing a smooth distribution and a delta distribution. Each of them can be interpreted as a fusion of the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). Inheriting their asymptotic properties, our information criteria are consistent in variable selection in both the large-sample and the high-dimensional asymptotic frameworks. In numerical simulations, variable selection methods based on our information criteria choose th…
German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心）；Institute for Simulation Intelligence（模拟智能研究所）
There is significant need for principled uncertainty reasoning in machine learning systems as they are increasingly deployed in safety-critical domains. A new approach with uncertainty-aware neural networks (NNs), based on learning evidential distributions for aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties, shows promise over traditional deterministic methods and typical Bayesian NNs, yet several important gaps in the theory and implementation of these networks remain. We discuss three issues with a proposed solution to extract aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties from regression-based neural networks…
We study frequentist properties of a Bayesian high-dimensional multivariate linear regression model with correlated responses. The predictors are separated into many groups and the group structure is pre-determined. Two features of the model are unique: (i) group sparsity is imposed on the predictors. (ii) the covariance matrix is unknown and its dimensions can also be high. We choose a product of independent spike-and-slab priors on the regression coefficients and a new prior on the covariance matrix based on its eigendecomposition. Each spike-and-slab prior is a mixture of a point mass at ze…
Bayesian spatial modeling of heavy-tailed distributions has become increasingly popular in various areas of science in recent decades. We propose a Weibull regression model with spatial random effects for analyzing extreme economic loss. Model estimation is facilitated by a computationally efficient Bayesian sampling algorithm utilizing the multivariate Log-Gamma distribution. Simulation studies are carried out to demonstrate better empirical performances of the proposed model than the generalized linear mixed effects model. An earthquake data obtained from Yunnan Seismological Bureau, China i…
Gaussian process model for vector-valued function has been shown to be useful for multi-output prediction. The existing method for this model is to re-formulate the matrix-variate Gaussian distribution as a multivariate normal distribution. Although it is effective in many cases, re-formulation is not always workable and is difficult to apply to other distributions because not all matrix-variate distributions can be transformed to respective multivariate distributions, such as the case for matrix-variate Student$-t$ distribution. In this paper, we propose a unified framework which is used not …
In the setting of nonparametric multivariate regression with unknown error variance, we study asymptotic properties of a Bayesian method for estimating a regression function f and its mixed partial derivatives. We use a random series of tensor product of B-splines with normal basis coefficients as a prior for f, and the error variance is either estimated using the empirical Bayes approach or is endowed with a suitable prior in a hierarchical Bayes approach. We establish pointwise, L2 and supremum norm posterior contraction rates for f and its mixed partial derivatives, and show that they coinc…
Women in Colombia face difficulties related to the patriarchal traits of their societies and well-known conflict afflicting the country since 1948. In this critical context, our aim is to study the relationship between baseline socio-demographic factors and variables associated to fertility, partnership patterns, and work activity. To best exploit the explanatory structure, we propose a Bayesian multivariate density regression model, which can accommodate mixed responses with censored, constrained, and binary traits. The flexible nature of the models allows for nonlinear regression functions a…
Bayesian methods are developed for the multivariate nonparametric regression problem where the domain is taken to be a compact Riemannian manifold. In terms of the latter, the underlying geometry of the manifold induces certain symmetries on the multivariate nonparametric regression function. The Bayesian approach then allows one to incorporate hierarchical Bayesian methods directly into the spectral structure, thus providing a symmetry-adaptive multivariate Bayesian function estimator. One can also diffuse away some prior information in which the limiting case is a smoothing spline on the man…
We review sufficient dimension reduction (SDR) estimators with multivariate response in this paper. A wide range of SDR methods are characterized as inverse regression SDR estimators or forward regression SDR estimators. The inverse regression family include pooled marginal estimators, projective resampling estimators, and distance-based estimators. Ordinary least squares, partial least squares, and semiparametric SDR estimators, on the other hand, are discussed as estimators from the forward regression family.
Convex Reparameterization and Self-Concordant Algorithms for Multivariate Regression with Covariance Estimation
School of Statistics, University of Minnesota Twin Cities（明尼苏达大学双城分校统计学院）；Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Stony Brook University（石溪大学应用数学与统计系）
We propose a penalized likelihood method to fit the bivariate categorical response regression model. Our method allows practitioners to estimate which predictors are irrelevant, which predictors only affect the marginal distributions of the bivariate response, and which predictors affect both the marginal distributions and log odds ratios. To compute our estimator, we propose an efficient first order algorithm which we extend to settings where some subjects have only one response variable measured, i.e., the semi-supervised setting. We derive an asymptotic error bound which illustrates the per…
We propose a new method for multivariate response regression and covariance estimation when elements of the response vector are of mixed types, for example some continuous and some discrete. Our method is based on a model which assumes the observable mixed-type response vector is connected to a latent multivariate normal response linear regression through a link function. We explore the properties of this model and show its parameters are identifiable under reasonable conditions. We impose no parametric restrictions on the covariance of the latent normal other than positive definiteness, there…
When it comes to datasets with a tremendous amount of predictors, variable reduction techniques such as PCA or FA are often used. In this paper, the elastic net, which lies in between the LASSO method and ridge regression, is used as a variable reduction technique followed by further analysis with multivariate regression. Specifically, a messy only dataset is used to show how it can be 'tidied' up and broken down into sensible subsets using the aforementioned method.
In this paper, we study convex optimization methods for computing the trace norm regularized least squares estimate in multivariate linear regression. The so-called factor estimation and selection (FES) method, recently proposed by Yuan et al. [22], conducts parameter estimation and factor selection simultaneously and have been shown to enjoy nice properties in both large and finite samples. To compute the estimates, however, can be very challenging in practice because of the high dimensionality and the trace norm constraint. In this paper, we explore a variant of Nesterov's smooth method [20]…
RE-EM tree is a tree-based method that combines the regression tree and the linear mixed effects model for modeling univariate response longitudinal or clustered data. In this paper, we generalize the RE-EM tree method to multivariate response data, by adopting the Multivariate Regression Tree method proposed by De'Ath [2002]. The Multivariate RE-EM tree method estimates a population-level single tree structure that is driven by the multiple responses simultaneously and object-level random effects for each response variable, where correlation between the response variables and between the asso…
We propose a new class of estimators of the multivariate response linear regression coefficient matrix that exploits the assumption that the response and predictors have a joint multivariate Normal distribution. This allows us to indirectly estimate the regression coefficient matrix through shrinkage estimation of the parameters of the inverse regression, or the conditional distribution of the predictors given the responses. We establish a convergence rate bound for estimators in our class and we study two examples. The first example estimator exploits an assumption that the inverse regression…
We propose a goodness-of-fit test for the distribution of errors from a multivariate indirect regression model. The test statistic is based on the Khmaladze transformation of the empirical process of standardized residuals. This goodness-of-fit test is consistent at the root-n rate of convergence, and the test can maintain power against local alternatives converging to the null at a root-n rate.
Much of the research on multiple comparison and simultaneous inference in the past sixty years or so has been for the comparisons of several population means. Spurrier (1999) seems to be the first to study the multiple comparison of several simple linear regression lines by using simultaneous confidence bands. In this paper, the work of Liu et al. (2004) for finite comparisons of several univariate linear regression models by using simultaneous confidence bands has been extended to finite comparison of several multivariate linear regression models by using simultaneous confidence tubes. We sho…
In the multivariate regression, also referred to as multi-task learning in machine learning, the goal is to recover a vector-valued function based on noisy observations. The vector-valued function is often assumed to be of low rank. Although the multivariate linear regression is extensively studied in the literature, a theoretical study on the multivariate nonlinear regression is lacking. In this paper, we study reduced rank multivariate kernel ridge regression, proposed by \cite{mukherjee2011reduced}. We prove the consistency of the function predictor and provide the convergence rate. An algo…
The multivariate linear regression model is an important tool for investigating relationships between several response variables and several predictor variables. The primary interest is in inference about the unknown regression coefficient matrix. We propose multivariate bootstrap techniques as a means for making inferences about the unknown regression coefficient matrix. These bootstrapping techniques are extensions of those developed in Freedman (1981), which are only appropriate for univariate responses. Extensions to the multivariate linear regression model are made without proof. We forma…
We propose a new prediction method for multivariate linear regression problems where the number of features is less than the sample size but the number of outcomes is extremely large. Many popular procedures, such as penalized regression procedures, require parameter tuning that is computationally untenable in such large-scale problems. We take a different approach, motivated by ideas from simultaneous estimation problems, that performs linear shrinkage on ordinary least squares parameter estimates. Our approach is extremely computationally efficient and tuning-free. We show that it can asympt…
We develop a new method to fit the multivariate response linear regression model that exploits a parametric link between the regression coefficient matrix and the error covariance matrix. Specifically, we assume that the correlations between entries in the multivariate error random vector are proportional to the cosines of the angles between their corresponding regression coefficient matrix columns, so as the angle between two regression coefficient matrix columns decreases, the correlation between the corresponding errors increases. We highlight two models under which this parameterization ar…
Nonparametric estimators of a regression function with circular response and Rd-valued predictor are considered in this work. Local polynomial type estimators are proposed and studied. Expressions for their asymptotic biases and variances are derived, and some guidelines to select asymptotically local optimal bandwidth matrices are also given. The finite sample behavior of the proposed estimators is assessed through simulations and their performance is also illustrated with a real data set.
Groupwise Predictor Envelope Models for Multivariate Linear Regression
The Institute of Statistical Mathematics（统计数学研究所）；Graduate School of Mathematics, Kyushu University（九州大学大学院数理学府）；Faculty of Mathematics, Kyushu University（九州大学数学部）
We propose a new, nonparametric method for multivariate regression subject to convexity or concavity constraints on the response function. Convexity constraints are common in economics, statistics, operations research, financial engineering and optimization, but there is currently no multivariate method that is computationally feasible for more than a few hundred observations. We introduce Convex Adaptive Partitioning (CAP), which creates a globally convex regression model from locally linear estimates fit on adaptively selected covariate partitions. CAP is computationally efficient, in stark …
This paper proposes a maximum-likelihood approach to jointly estimate marginal conditional quantiles of multivariate response variables in a linear regression framework. We consider a slight reparameterization of the Multivariate Asymmetric Laplace distribution proposed by Kotz et al (2001) and exploit its location-scale mixture representation to implement a new EM algorithm for estimating model parameters. The idea is to extend the link between the Asymmetric Laplace distribution and the well-known univariate quantile regression model to a multivariate context, i.e. when a multivariate depend…
In this paper, we develop a systematic theory for high dimensional analysis of variance in multivariate linear regression, where the dimension and the number of coefficients can both grow with the sample size. We propose a new \emph{U}~type test statistic to test linear hypotheses and establish a high dimensional Gaussian approximation result under fairly mild moment assumptions. Our general framework and theory can be applied to deal with the classical one-way multivariate ANOVA and the nonparametric one-way MANOVA in high dimensions. To implement the test procedure in practice, we introduce …
In this paper, we propose the use of geodesic distances in conjunction with multivariate distance matrix regression, called geometric-MDMR, as a powerful first step analysis method for manifold-valued data. Manifold-valued data is appearing more frequently in the literature from analyses of earthquake to analysing brain patterns. Accounting for the structure of this data increases the complexity of your analysis, but allows for much more interpretable results in terms of the data. To test geometric-MDMR, we develop a method to simulate functional connectivity matrices for fMRI data to perform …
This paper presents a practical and simple fully nonparametric multivariate smoothing procedure that adapts to the underlying smoothness of the true regression function. Our estimator is easily computed by successive application of existing base smoothers (without the need of selecting an optimal smoothing parameter), such as thin-plate spline or kernel smoothers. The resulting smoother has better out of sample predictive capabilities than the underlying base smoother, or competing structurally constrained models (GAM) for small dimension (3 < d < 8) and moderate sample size (n < 800). Moreove…
In this paper, a nonparametric estimator is proposed for estimating the L1-median for multivariate conditional distribution when the covariates take values in an infinite dimensional space. The multivariate case is more appropriate to predict the components of a vector of random variables simultaneously rather than predicting each of them separately. While estimating the conditional L1-median function using the well-known Nadarya-Waston estimator, we establish the strong consistency of this estimator as well as the asymptotic normality. We also present some simulations and provide how to built…
