Assuming an exponential power distribution is one way to deal with outliers in regression and clustering, which can increase the robustness of the analysis. Gaussian distribution is a special case of an exponential distribution. And an exponential power distribution can be viewed as a scale mixture of normal distributions. Thus, model selection methods developed for the Gaussian mixture model can be easily extended for the exponential power mixture model. Moreover, Gaussian mixture models tend to select more components than exponential power mixture models in real-world cases, which means exponential power mixture models are easier to interpret. In this paper, We develop analyses for mixture regression models when the errors are assumed to follow an exponential power distribution. It will be robust to outliers, and model selection for it is easy to implement.
We present an extension of the functional data analysis framework for univariate functions to the analysis of surfaces: functions of two variables. The spatial spline regression (SSR) approach developed can be used to model surfaces that are sampled over a rectangular domain. Furthermore, combining SSR with linear mixed effects models (LMM) allows for the analysis of populations of surfaces, and combining the joint SSR-LMM method with finite mixture models allows for the analysis of populations of surfaces with sub-family structures. Through the mixtures of spatial splines regressions (MSSR) a…
Normalized compound random measures are flexible nonparametric priors for related distributions. We consider building general nonparametric regression models using normalized compound random measure mixture models. Posterior inference is made using a novel pseudo-marginal Metropolis-Hastings sampler for normalized compound random measure mixture models. The algorithm makes use of a new general approach to the unbiased estimation of Laplace functionals of compound random measures (which includes completely random measures as a special case). The approach is illustrated on problems of density re…
This article introduces a k-Inflated Negative Binomial mixture distribution/regression model as a more flexible alternative to zero-inflated Poisson distribution/regression model. An EM algorithm has been employed to estimate the model's parameters. Then, such new model along with a Pareto mixture model have been employed to design an optimal rate--making system. Namely, this article employs number/size of reported claims of Iranian third party insurance dataset. Then, it employs the k-Inflated Negative Binomial mixture distribution/regression model as well as other well developed counting mod…
PReMiuM is a recently developed R package for Bayesian clustering using a Dirichlet process mixture model. This model is an alternative to regression models, non-parametrically linking a response vector to covariate data through cluster membership. The package allows Bernoulli, Binomial, Poisson, Normal and categorical response, as well as Normal and discrete covariates. Additionally, predictions may be made for the response, and missing values for the covariates are handled. Several samplers and label switching moves are implemented along with diagnostic tools to assess convergence. A number …
We present neural mixture distributional regression (NMDR), a holistic framework to estimate complex finite mixtures of distributional regressions defined by flexible additive predictors. Our framework is able to handle a large number of mixtures of potentially different distributions in high-dimensional settings, allows for efficient and scalable optimization and can be applied to recent concepts that combine structured regression models with deep neural networks. While many existing approaches for mixture models address challenges in optimization of such and provide results for convergence u…
Ensembles of networks arise in various fields where multiple independent networks are observed on the same set of nodes, for example, a collection of brain networks constructed on the same brain regions for different individuals. However, there are few models that describe both the variations and characteristics of networks in an ensemble at the same time. In this paper, we propose to model the ensemble of networks using a Dirichlet Process Mixture of Exponential Random Graph Models (DPM-ERGMs), which divides the ensemble into different clusters and models each cluster of networks using a sepa…
In this paper we present a novel methodology to perform Bayesian model selection in linear models with heavy-tailed distributions. We consider a finite mixture of distributions to model a latent variable where each component of the mixture corresponds to one possible model within the symmetrical class of normal independent distributions. Naturally, the Gaussian model is one of the possibilities. This allows for a simultaneous analysis based on the posterior probability of each model. Inference is performed via Markov chain Monte Carlo - a Gibbs sampler with Metropolis-Hastings steps for a clas…
Linear regression with the classical normality assumption for the error distribution may lead to an undesirable posterior inference of regression coefficients due to the potential outliers. This paper considers the finite mixture of two components with thin and heavy tails as the error distribution, which has been routinely employed in applied statistics. For the heavily-tailed component, we introduce the novel class of distributions; their densities are log-regularly varying and have heavier tails than those of Cauchy distribution, yet they are expressed as a scale mixture of normal distribut…
We present a new mixture model-based discriminant analysis approach for functional data using a specific hidden process regression model. The approach allows for fitting flexible curve-models to each class of complex-shaped curves presenting regime changes. The model parameters are learned by maximizing the observed-data log-likelihood for each class by using a dedicated expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. Comparisons on simulated data with alternative approaches show that the proposed approach provides better results.
The exponential and the Lomax distributions are widely used in life testing experiments in mixture models. A mixture model of exponential distribution and Lomax distribution is proposed. Parameters of the proposed model are estimated using classical and Bayesian procedures under type-I right censoring. Expressions for Bayes estimators are derived assuming noninformative (uniform and Jeffreys) priors under symmetric and asymmetric loss functions. Posterior predictive distributions of a future observation are derived and predictive estimates are obtained. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are ca…
Bayesian computation of high dimensional linear regression models with a popular Gaussian scale mixture prior distribution using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or its variants can be extremely slow or completely prohibitive due to the heavy computational cost that grows in the cubic order of p, with p as the number of features. Although a few recently developed algorithms make the computation efficient in presence of a small to moderately large sample size (with the complexity growing in the cubic order of n), the computation becomes intractable when sample size n is also large. In this artic…
A nonparametric and locally adaptive Bayesian estimator is proposed for estimating a binary regression. Flexibility is obtained by modeling the binary regression as a mixture of probit regressions with the argument of each probit regression having a thin plate spline prior with its own smoothing parameter and with the mixture weights depending on the covariates. The estimator is compared to a single spline estimator and to a recently proposed locally adaptive estimator. The methodology is illustrated by applying it to both simulated and real examples.
We propose a practical and scalable Gaussian process model for large-scale nonlinear probabilistic regression. Our mixture-of-experts model is conceptually simple and hierarchically recombines computations for an overall approximation of a full Gaussian process. Closed-form and distributed computations allow for efficient and massive parallelisation while keeping the memory consumption small. Given sufficient computing resources, our model can handle arbitrarily large data sets, without explicit sparse approximations. We provide strong experimental evidence that our model can be applied to lar…
University of Ljubljana（卢布尔雅那大学）；Slovenian Environment Agency（斯洛文尼亚环境署）；Tampere University（坦佩雷大学）
We investigate a novel non-parametric regression-based clustering algorithm for longitudinal data analysis. Combining natural cubic splines with Gaussian mixture models (GMM), the algorithm can produce smooth cluster means that describe the underlying data well. However, there are some shortcomings in the algorithm: high computational complexity in the parameter estimation procedure and a numerically unstable variance estimator. Therefore, to further increase the usability of the method, we incorporated approaches to reduce its computational complexity, we developed a new, more stable variance…
We study uniform consistency in nonparametric mixture models as well as closely related mixture of regression (also known as mixed regression) models, where the regression functions are allowed to be nonparametric and the error distributions are assumed to be convolutions of a Gaussian density. We construct uniformly consistent estimators under general conditions while simultaneously highlighting several pain points in extending existing pointwise consistency results to uniform results. The resulting analysis turns out to be nontrivial, and several novel technical tools are developed along the…
Discriminative latent-variable models are typically learned using EM or gradient-based optimization, which suffer from local optima. In this paper, we develop a new computationally efficient and provably consistent estimator for a mixture of linear regressions, a simple instance of a discriminative latent-variable model. Our approach relies on a low-rank linear regression to recover a symmetric tensor, which can be factorized into the parameters using a tensor power method. We prove rates of convergence for our estimator and provide an empirical evaluation illustrating its strengths relative t…
Mini-batch algorithms have become increasingly popular due to the requirement for solving optimization problems, based on large-scale data sets. Using an existing online expectation-{}-maximization (EM) algorithm framework, we demonstrate how mini-batch (MB) algorithms may be constructed, and propose a scheme for the stochastic stabilization of the constructed mini-batch algorithms. Theoretical results regarding the convergence of the mini-batch EM algorithms are presented. We then demonstrate how the mini-batch framework may be applied to conduct maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of mixtures…
Université de Toulon（土伦大学）；Aix Marseille Université（艾克斯-马赛大学）；ENSAM（国立高等工程技术学院）；Institut Universitaire de France（法国大学研究院）；IFSTTAR（法国交通与安全科学技术研究所）
In this paper, we study the modeling and the classification of functional data presenting regime changes over time. We propose a new model-based functional mixture discriminant analysis approach based on a specific hidden process regression model that governs the regime changes over time. Our approach is particularly adapted to handle the problem of complex-shaped classes of curves, where each class is potentially composed of several sub-classes, and to deal with the regime changes within each homogeneous sub-class. The proposed model explicitly integrates the heterogeneity of each class of cu…
Humans are routinely exposed to mixtures of chemical and other environmental factors, making the quantification of health effects associated with environmental mixtures a critical goal for establishing environmental policy sufficiently protective of human health. The quantification of the effects of exposure to an environmental mixture poses several statistical challenges. It is often the case that exposure to multiple pollutants interact with each other to affect an outcome. Further, the exposure-response relationship between an outcome and some exposures, such as some metals, can exhibit com…
We propose a kernel mixture of polynomials prior for Bayesian nonparametric regression. The regression function is modeled by local averages of polynomials with kernel mixture weights. We obtain the minimax-optimal rate of contraction of the full posterior distribution up to a logarithmic factor that adapts to the smoothness level of the true function by estimating metric entropies of certain function classes. We also provide a frequentist sieve maximum likelihood estimator with a near-optimal convergence rate. We further investigate the application of the kernel mixture of polynomials to the …
Regularized regression models are well studied and, under appropriate conditions, offer fast and statistically interpretable results. However, large data in many applications are heterogeneous in the sense of harboring distributional differences between latent groups. Then, the assumption that the conditional distribution of response Y given features X is the same for all samples may not hold. Furthermore, in scientific applications, the covariance structure of the features may contain important signals and its learning is also affected by latent group structure. We propose a class of mixture …
Aix Marseille Université（艾克斯-马赛大学）；Université de Toulon（土伦大学）
This paper introduces a novel mixture model-based approach for simultaneous clustering and optimal segmentation of functional data which are curves presenting regime changes. The proposed model consists in a finite mixture of piecewise polynomial regression models. Each piecewise polynomial regression model is associated with a cluster, and within each cluster, each piecewise polynomial component is associated with a regime (i.e., a segment). We derive two approaches for learning the model parameters. The former is an estimation approach and consists in maximizing the observed-data likelihood …
When constructing a Bayesian Machine Learning model, we might be faced with multiple different prior distributions and thus are required to properly consider them in a sensible manner in our model. While this situation is reasonably well explored for classical Bayesian Statistics, it appears useful to develop a corresponding method for complex Machine Learning problems. Given their underlying Bayesian framework and their widespread popularity, Gaussian Processes are a good candidate to tackle this task. We therefore extend the idea of Mixture models for Gaussian Process regression in order to …
Consider a set of categorical variables where at least one of them is binary. The log-linear model that describes the counts in the resulting contingency table implies a specific logistic regression model, with the binary variable as the outcome. Within the Bayesian framework, the $g$-prior and mixtures of $g$-priors are commonly assigned to the parameters of a generalized linear model. We prove that assigning a $g$-prior (or a mixture of $g$-priors) to the parameters of a certain log-linear model designates a $g$-prior (or a mixture of $g$-priors) on the parameters of the corresponding logist…
Recently, a very attractive logistic regression inference method for exponential family Gibbs spatial point processes was introduced. We combined it with the technique of quadratic tangential variational approximation and derived a new Bayesian technique for analysing spatial point patterns. The technique is described in detail, and demonstrated on numerical examples.
We propose Dirichlet Process mixtures of Generalized Linear Models (DP-GLM), a new method of nonparametric regression that accommodates continuous and categorical inputs, and responses that can be modeled by a generalized linear model. We prove conditions for the asymptotic unbiasedness of the DP-GLM regression mean function estimate. We also give examples for when those conditions hold, including models for compactly supported continuous distributions and a model with continuous covariates and categorical response. We empirically analyze the properties of the DP-GLM and why it provides better…
There is wide interest in studying how the distribution of a continuous response changes with a predictor. We are motivated by environmental applications in which the predictor is the dose of an exposure and the response is a health outcome. A main focus in these studies is inference on dose levels associated with a given increase in risk relative to a baseline. Popular methods either dichotomize the continuous response or focus on modeling changes with the dose in the expectation of the outcome. Such choices may lead to information loss and provide inaccurate inference on dose-response relati…
This paper considers the problem of mismeasured categorical covariates in the context of regression modeling; if unaccounted for, such misclassification is known to result in misestimation of model parameters. Here, we exploit the fact that explicitly modeling covariate misclassification leads to a mixture representation. Assuming common parametric families for the mixture components, and assuming that the misclassification occurrence is independent of the response variable, the mixture representation permits model parameters to be identified even when misclassification probabilities are unkno…
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…
Massive informations about individual (household, small and medium enterprise) consumption are now provided with new metering technologies and the smart grid. Two major exploitations of these data are load profiling and forecasting at different scales on the grid. Customer segmentation based on load classification is a natural approach for these purposes. We propose here a new methodology based on mixture of high-dimensional regression models. The novelty of our approach is that we focus on uncovering classes or clusters corresponding to different regression models. As a consequence, these cla…
New results and improvements in the study of nonparametric exponential and mixture models are proposed. In particular, different equivalent characterizations of maximal exponential models, in terms of open exponential arcs and Orlicz spaces, are given. Our theoretical results are supported by several examples and counterexamples and provide an answer to some open questions in the literature.
This paper shows that large nonparametric classes of conditional multivariate densities can be approximated in the Kullback--Leibler distance by different specifications of finite mixtures of normal regressions in which normal means and variances and mixing probabilities can depend on variables in the conditioning set (covariates). These models are a special case of models known as "mixtures of experts" in statistics and computer science literature. Flexible specifications include models in which only mixing probabilities, modeled by multinomial logit, depend on the covariates and, in the univ…
Consider semi-supervised learning for classification, where both labeled and unlabeled data are available for training. The goal is to exploit both datasets to achieve higher prediction accuracy than just using labeled data alone. We develop a semi-supervised logistic learning method based on exponential tilt mixture models, by extending a statistical equivalence between logistic regression and exponential tilt modeling. We study maximum nonparametric likelihood estimation and derive novel objective functions which are shown to be Fisher consistent. We also propose regularized estimation and c…
We investigate the geometry of the maximal a posteriori (MAP) partition in the Bayesian Mixture Model where the component and the base distributions are chosen from conjugate exponential families. We prove that in this case the clusters are separated by the contour lines of a linear functional of the sufficient statistic. As a particular example, we describe Bayesian Mixture of Normals with Normal-inverse-Wishart prior on the component mean and covariance, in which the clusters in any MAP partition are separated by a quadratic surface. In connection with results of Rajkowski (2018), where the …
Exponential families are the workhorses of parametric modelling theory. One reason for their popularity is their associated inference theory, which is very clean, both from a theoretical and a computational point of view. One way in which this set of tools can be enriched in a natural and interpretable way is through mixing. This paper develops and applies the idea of local mixture modelling to exponential families. It shows that the highly interpretable and flexible models which result have enough structure to retain the attractive inferential properties of exponential families. In particular…
Cornell University（康奈尔大学）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）
We propose a novel exponentially-modified Gaussian (EMG) mixture residual model. The EMG mixture is well suited to model residuals that are contaminated by a distribution with positive support. This is in contrast to commonly used robust residual models, like the Huber loss or $\ell_1$, which assume a symmetric contaminating distribution and are otherwise asymptotically biased. We propose an expectation-maximization algorithm to optimize an arbitrary model with respect to the EMG mixture. We apply the approach to linear regression and probabilistic matrix factorization (PMF). We compare agains…
We study location-scale mixture priors for nonparametric statistical problems, including multivariate regression, density estimation and classification. We show that a rate-adaptive procedure can be obtained if the prior is properly constructed. In particular, we show that adaptation is achieved if a kernel mixture prior on a regression function is constructed using a Gaussian kernel, an inverse gamma bandwidth, and Gaussian mixing weights.
We use the theory of normal variance-mean mixtures to derive a data-augmentation scheme for a class of common regularization problems. This generalizes existing theory on normal variance mixtures for priors in regression and classification. It also allows variants of the expectation-maximization algorithm to be brought to bear on a wider range of models than previously appreciated. We demonstrate the method on several examples, including sparse quantile regression and binary logistic regression. We also show that quasi-Newton acceleration can substantially improve the speed of the algorithm wi…
