How to estimate heterogeneity, e.g. the effect of some variable differing across observations, is a key question in political science. Methods for doing so make simplifying assumptions about the underlying nature of the heterogeneity to draw reliable inferences. This paper allows a common way of simplifying complex phenomenon (placing observations with similar effects into discrete groups) to be integrated into regression analysis. The framework allows researchers to (i) use their prior knowledge to guide which groups are permissible and (ii) appropriately quantify uncertainty. The paper does this by extending work on "structured sparsity" from a traditional penalized likelihood approach to a Bayesian one by deriving new theoretical results and inferential techniques. It shows that this method outperforms state-of-the-art methods for estimating heterogeneous effects when the underlying heterogeneity is grouped and more effectively identifies groups of observations with different effects in observational data.
Detection heterogeneity is inherent to ecological data, arising from factors such as varied terrain or weather conditions, inconsistent sampling effort, or heterogeneity of individuals themselves. Incorporating additional covariates into a statistical model is one approach for addressing heterogeneity, but is no guarantee that any set of measurable covariates will adequately address the heterogeneity, and the presence of unmodelled heterogeneity has been shown to produce biases in the resulting inferences. Other approaches for addressing heterogeneity include the use of random effects, or fini…
We propose a novel way of modelling time-varying networks, by inducing two-way sparsity on local models of node connectivity. This two-way sparsity separately promotes sparsity across time and sparsity across variables (within time). Separation of these two types of sparsity is achieved through a novel prior structure, which draws on ideas from the Bayesian lasso and from copula modelling. We provide an efficient implementation of the proposed model via a Gibbs sampler, and we apply the model to data from neural development. In doing so, we demonstrate that the proposed model is able to identi…
Next-generation sequencing technologies now constitute a method of choice to measure gene expression. Data to analyze are read counts, commonly modeled using Negative Binomial distributions. A relevant issue associated with this probabilistic framework is the reliable estimation of the overdispersion parameter, reinforced by the limited number of replicates generally observable for each gene. Many strategies have been proposed to estimate this parameter, but when differential analysis is the purpose, they often result in procedures based on plug-in estimates, and we show here that this discrep…
Many methods for modelling spatial processes assume global smoothness properties; such assumptions are often violated in practice. We introduce a method for modelling spatial processes that display heterogeneity or contain discontinuities. The problem of non-stationarity is dealt with by using a combination of Voronoi tessellation to partition the input space, and a separate Gaussian process to model the data on each region of the partitioned space. Our method is highly flexible because we allow the Voronoi cells to form relationships with each other, which can enable non-convex and disconnect…
Spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models are now widely used for estimating density from repeated individual spatial encounters. SCR accounts for the inherent spatial autocorrelation in individual detections by modelling detection probabilities as a function of distance between the detectors and individual activity centres. However, additional spatial heterogeneity in detection probability may still creep in due to environmental or sampling characteristics. if unaccounted for, such variation can lead to pronounced bias in population size estimates. Using simulations, we describe and test three B…
The field of retail analytics has been transformed by the availability of rich data which can be used to perform tasks such as demand forecasting and inventory management. However, one task which has proved more challenging is the forecasting of demand for products which exhibit very few sales. The sparsity of the resulting data limits the degree to which traditional analytics can be deployed. To combat this, we represent sales data as a structured sparse multivariate point process which allows for features such as auto-correlation, cross-correlation, and temporal clustering, known to be prese…
Graphical models are commonly used to discover associations within gene or protein networks for complex diseases such as cancer. Most existing methods estimate a single graph for a population, while in many cases, researchers are interested in characterizing the heterogeneity of individual networks across subjects with respect to subject-level covariates. Examples include assessments of how the network varies with patient-specific prognostic scores or comparisons of tumor and normal graphs while accounting for tumor purity as a continuous predictor. In this paper, we propose a novel edge regre…
Quantile regression is a powerful data analysis tool that accommodates heterogeneous covariate-response relationships. We find that by coupling the asymmetric Laplace working likelihood with appropriate shrinkage priors, we can deliver posterior inference that automatically adapts to possible sparsity in quantile regression analysis. After a suitable adjustment on the posterior variance, the posterior inference provides asymptotically valid inference under heterogeneity. Furthermore, the proposed approach leads to oracle asymptotic efficiency for the active (nonzero) quantile regression coeffi…
Sparsity-promoting priors have become increasingly popular over recent years due to an increased number of regression and classification applications involving a large number of predictors. In time series applications where observations are collected over time, it is often unrealistic to assume that the underlying sparsity pattern is fixed. We propose here an original class of flexible Bayesian linear models for dynamic sparsity modelling. The proposed class of models expands upon the existing Bayesian literature on sparse regression using generalized multivariate hyperbolic distributions. The…
We propose the use of finite mixtures of continuous distributions in modelling the process by which new individuals, that arrive in groups, become part of a wildlife population. We demonstrate this approach using a data set of migrating semipalmated sandpipers (Calidris pussila) for which we extend existing stopover models to allow for individuals to have different behaviour in terms of their stopover duration at the site. We demonstrate the use of reversible jump MCMC methods to derive posterior distributions for the model parameters and the models, simultaneously. The algorithm moves between…
Mixtures of experts models provide a framework in which covariates may be included in mixture models. This is achieved by modelling the parameters of the mixture model as functions of the concomitant covariates. Given their mixture model foundation, mixtures of experts models possess a diverse range of analytic uses, from clustering observations to capturing parameter heterogeneity in cross-sectional data. This chapter focuses on delineating the mixture of experts modelling framework and demonstrates the utility and flexibility of mixtures of experts models as an analytic tool.
Spatio-temporal processes in environmental applications are often assumed to follow a Gaussian model, possibly after some transformation. However, heterogeneity in space and time might have a pattern that will not be accommodated by transforming the data. In this scenario, modelling the variance laws is an appealing alternative. This work adds flexibility to the usual Multivariate Dynamic Gaussian model by defining the process as a scale mixture between a Gaussian and log-Gaussian processes. The scale is represented by a process varying smoothly over space and time which is allowed to depend o…
Matrix and tensor completion are frameworks for a wide range of problems, including collaborative filtering, missing data, and image reconstruction. Missing entries are estimated by leveraging an assumption that the matrix or tensor is low-rank. Most existing Bayesian techniques encourage rank-sparsity by modelling factorized matrices and tensors with Normal-Gamma priors. However, the Horseshoe prior and other "global-local" formulations provide tuning-parameter-free solutions which may better achieve simultaneous rank-sparsity and missing-value recovery. We find these global-local priors outp…
Multidimensional network data can have different levels of complexity, as nodes may be characterized by heterogeneous individual-specific features, which may vary across the networks. This paper introduces a class of models for multidimensional network data, where different levels of heterogeneity within and between networks can be considered. The proposed framework is developed in the family of latent space models, and it aims to distinguish symmetric relations between the nodes and node-specific features. Model parameters are estimated via a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. Simulated data…
University of South Australia（南澳大学）；Consilium Technology（康西里姆科技公司）
In personalised decision making, evidence is required to determine whether an action (treatment) is suitable for an individual. Such evidence can be obtained by modelling treatment effect heterogeneity in subgroups. The existing interpretable modelling methods take a top-down approach to search for subgroups with heterogeneous treatment effects and they may miss the most specific and relevant context for an individual. In this paper, we design a \emph{Treatment effect pattern (TEP)} to represent treatment effect heterogeneity in data. To achieve an interpretable presentation of TEPs, we use a …
Disaggregation modelling, or downscaling, has become an important discipline in epidemiology. Surveillance data, aggregated over large regions, is becoming more common, leading to an increasing demand for modelling frameworks that can deal with this data to understand spatial patterns. Disaggregation regression models use response data aggregated over large heterogenous regions to make predictions at fine-scale over the region by using fine-scale covariates to inform the heterogeneity. This paper presents the R package disaggregation, which provides functionality to streamline the process of r…
