The autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model is one of the most important models in time series analysis.We consider the Bayesian estimation of an unknown spectral density in the ARMA model.In the i.i.d. cases, Komaki showed that Bayesian predictive densities based on a superharmonic prior asymptotically dominate those based on the Jeffreys prior.It is shown by using the asymptotic expansion of the risk difference.We obtain the corresponding result in the ARMA model.
CHD Castelluccio（卡斯泰卢乔医院）；University of Corsica（科西嘉大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）
It is essential to find solar predictive methods to massively insert renewable energies on the electrical distribution grid. The goal of this study is to find the best methodology allowing predicting with high accuracy the hourly global radiation. The knowledge of this quantity is essential for the grid manager or the private PV producer in order to anticipate fluctuations related to clouds occurrences and to stabilize the injected PV power. In this paper, we test both methodologies: single and hybrid predictors. In the first class, we include the multi-layer perceptron (MLP), auto-regressive …
Generalized autoregressive moving average (GARMA) models are a class of models that was developed for extending the univariate Gaussian ARMA time series model to a flexible observation-driven model for non-Gaussian time series data. This work presents Bayesian approach for GARMA models with Poisson, binomial and negative binomial distributions. A simulation study was carried out to investigate the performance of Bayesian estimation and Bayesian model selection criteria. Also three real datasets were analysed using the Bayesian approach on GARMA models.
In this article, we consider two forms of shrinkage estimators of the mean $θ$ of a multivariate normal distribution $X\sim N_{p}\left(θ, σ^{2}I_{p}\right)$ where $σ^{2}$ is unknown. We take the prior law $θ\sim N_{p}\left(\upsilon, τ^{2}I_{p}\right)$ and we constuct a Modified Bayes estimator $δ_{B}^{\ast}$ and an Empirical Modified Bayes estimator $δ_{EB}^{\ast}$. We are interested in studying the minimaxity and the limits of risks ratios of these estimators, to the maximum likelihood estimator $X$, when $n$ and $p$ tend to infinity.
The aim of this paper is to generalize the PAC-Bayesian theorems proved by Catoni in the classification setting to more general problems of statistical inference. We show how to control the deviations of the risk of randomized estimators. A particular attention is paid to randomized estimators drawn in a small neighborhood of classical estimators, whose study leads to control the risk of the latter. These results allow to bound the risk of very general estimation procedures, as well as to perform model selection.
This paper presents three objective Bayesian methods for analyzing bilateral data under Dallal's model and the saturated model. Three parameters are of interest, namely, the risk difference, the risk ratio, and the odds ratio. We derive Jeffreys' prior and Bernardo's reference prior associated with the three parameters that characterize Dallal's model. We derive the functional forms of the posterior distributions of the risk difference and the risk ratio and discuss how to sample from their posterior distributions. We demonstrate the use of the proposed methodology with two real data examples.…
We study data-driven decision-making problems in the Bayesian framework, where the expectation in the Bayes risk is replaced by a risk-sensitive entropic risk measure. We focus on problems where calculating the posterior distribution is intractable, a typical situation in modern applications with large datasets and complex data generating models. We leverage a dual representation of the entropic risk measure to introduce a novel risk-sensitive variational Bayesian (RSVB) framework for jointly computing a risk-sensitive posterior approximation and the corresponding decision rule. The proposed R…
Swansea University（斯旺西大学）；University of Sheffield（谢菲尔德大学）
Estimating hidden processes from non-linear noisy observations is particularly difficult when the parameters of these processes are not known. This paper adopts a machine learning approach to devise variational Bayesian inference for such scenarios. In particular, a random process generated by the autoregressive moving average (ARMA) linear model is inferred from non-linearity noise observations. The posterior distribution of hidden states are approximated by a set of weighted particles generated by the sequential Monte carlo (SMC) algorithm involving sampling with importance sampling resampli…
A general class of Bayesian lower bounds when the underlying loss function is a Bregman divergence is demonstrated. This class can be considered as an extension of the Weinstein--Weiss family of bounds for the mean squared error and relies on finding a variational characterization of Bayesian risk. The approach allows for the derivation of a version of the Cramér--Rao bound that is specific to a given Bregman divergence. The new generalization of the Cramér--Rao bound reduces to the classical one when the loss function is taken to be the Euclidean norm. The effectiveness of the new bound is ev…
We consider the problem of predicting as well as the best linear combination of d given functions in least squares regression, and variants of this problem including constraints on the parameters of the linear combination. When the input distribution is known, there already exists an algorithm having an expected excess risk of order d/n, where n is the size of the training data. Without this strong assumption, standard results often contain a multiplicative log n factor, and require some additional assumptions like uniform boundedness of the d-dimensional input representation and exponential m…
University of La Reunion（留尼汪大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；University of Corsica（科西嘉大学）
This paper proposes to use a rather new modelling approach in the realm of solar radiation forecasting. In this work, two forecasting models: Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) and Neural Network (NN) models are combined to form a model committee. The Bayesian inference is used to affect a probability to each model in the committee. Hence, each model's predictions are weighted by their respective probability. The models are fitted to one year of hourly Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) measurements. Another year (the test set) is used for making genuine one hour ahead (h+1) out-of-sample fo…
We consider the problem of parameter estimation in a Bayesian setting and propose a general lower-bound that includes part of the family of $f$-Divergences. The results are then applied to specific settings of interest and compared to other notable results in the literature. In particular, we show that the known bounds using Mutual Information can be improved by using, for example, Maximal Leakage, Hellinger divergence, or generalizations of the Hockey-Stick divergence.
The release of synthetic data generated from a model estimated on the data helps statistical agencies disseminate respondent-level data with high utility and privacy protection. Motivated by the challenge of disseminating sensitive variables containing geographic information in the Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, we propose two non-parametric Bayesian models as data synthesizers for the county identifier of each data record: a Bayesian latent class model and a Bayesian areal model. Both data synthesizers use Dirichlet Process priors to cluster observat…
The Bayesian posterior minimizes the "inferential risk" which itself bounds the "predictive risk". This bound is tight when the likelihood and prior are well-specified. However since misspecification induces a gap, the Bayesian posterior predictive distribution may have poor generalization performance. This work develops a multi-sample loss (PAC$^m$) which can close the gap by spanning a trade-off between the two risks. The loss is computationally favorable and offers PAC generalization guarantees. Empirical study demonstrates improvement to the predictive distribution.
The synthetic data approach to data confidentiality has been actively researched on, and for the past decade or so, a good number of high quality work on developing innovative synthesizers, creating appropriate utility measures and risk measures, among others, have been published. Comparing to a large volume of work on synthesizers development and utility measures creation, measuring risks has overall received less attention. This paper focuses on the detailed construction of some Bayesian methods proposed for estimating disclosure risks in synthetic data. In the processes of presenting attrib…
In this paper we study bayesian analysis of Modified Weibull distribution under progressively censored competing risk model. This study is made for progressively censored data. We use deterministic scan Gibbs sampling combined with slice sampling to generate from the posterior distribution. Posterior distribution is formed by taking prior distribution as reference prior. A real life data analysis is shown for illustrative purpose.
We analyze the best achievable performance of Bayesian learning under generative models by defining and upper-bounding the minimum excess risk (MER): the gap between the minimum expected loss attainable by learning from data and the minimum expected loss that could be achieved if the model realization were known. The definition of MER provides a principled way to define different notions of uncertainties in Bayesian learning, including the aleatoric uncertainty and the minimum epistemic uncertainty. Two methods for deriving upper bounds for the MER are presented. The first method, generally su…
We present a Bayesian view of counterfactual risk minimization (CRM) for offline learning from logged bandit feedback. Using PAC-Bayesian analysis, we derive a new generalization bound for the truncated inverse propensity score estimator. We apply the bound to a class of Bayesian policies, which motivates a novel, potentially data-dependent, regularization technique for CRM. Experimental results indicate that this technique outperforms standard $L_2$ regularization, and that it is competitive with variance regularization while being both simpler to implement and more computationally efficient.
Insurance risks data typically exhibit skewed behaviour. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian approach to capture the main features of these datasets. This work extends the methodology introduced in Villa and Walker (2014a) by considering an extra parameter which captures the skewness of the data. In particular, a skewed Student-t distribution is considered. Two datasets are analysed: the Danish fire losses and the US indemnity loss. The analysis is carried with an objective Bayesian approach. For the discrete parameter representing the number of the degrees of freedom, we adopt a novel prior …
Synthetic data is a promising approach to privacy protection in many contexts. A Bayesian synthesis model, also known as a synthesizer, simulates synthetic values of sensitive variables from their posterior predictive distributions. The resulting synthetic data can then be released in place of the confidential data. An important evaluation prior to synthetic data release is its level of privacy protection, which is often in the form of disclosure risks evaluation. Attribute disclosure, referring to an intruder correctly inferring the confidential values of synthetic records, is one type of dis…
We propose a Bayesian network model to make inferences and predictions about cardiovascular risk. Both the structure and the probability tables in the underlying model are built using a large dataset collected in Spain from annual work health assessments, with uncertainty characterized through posterior distributions. We illustrate its use for public health practice, policy and research purposes. A freely available version of the software is included in an Appendix.
Catastrophe (CAT) bond markets are incomplete and hence carry uncertainty in instrument pricing. As such various pricing approaches have been proposed, but none treat the uncertainty in catastrophe occurrences and interest rates in a sufficiently flexible and statistically reliable way within a unifying asset pricing framework. Consequently, little is known empirically about the expected risk-premia of CAT bonds. The primary contribution of this paper is to present a unified Bayesian CAT bond pricing framework based on uncertainty quantification of catastrophes and interest rates. Our framewor…
The present article is focused on the problem of prediction of student failures with the purpose of their possible prevention by timely introducing supportive measures. We propose a concept for building a predictive model based on Bayesian networks for an academic course or module taught in a blended learning format. Our empirical studies confirm that the proposed approach is perspective for the development of an early warning system for various stakeholders of the educational process.
We build on the work in Fackler and King 1990, and propose a more general calibration model for implied risk neutral densities. Our model allows for the joint calibration of a set of densities at different maturities and dates through a Bayesian dynamic Beta Markov Random Field. Our approach allows for possible time dependence between densities with the same maturity, and for dependence across maturities at the same point in time. This approach to the problem encompasses model flexibility, parameter parsimony and, more importantly, information pooling across densities.
In this paper, we aim to solve Bayesian Risk Optimization (BRO), which is a recently proposed framework that formulates simulation optimization under input uncertainty. In order to efficiently solve the BRO problem, we derive nested stochastic gradient estimators and propose corresponding stochastic approximation algorithms. We show that our gradient estimators are asymptotically unbiased and consistent, and that the algorithms converge asymptotically. We demonstrate the empirical performance of the algorithms on a two-sided market model. Our estimators are of independent interest in extending…
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 …
Analysis of competing risks data plays an important role in the lifetime data analysis. Recently Feizjavadian and Hashemi (Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, vol. 82, 19-34, 2015) provided a classical inference of a competing risks data set using four-parameter Marshall-Olkin bivariate Weibull distribution when the failure of an unit at a particular time point can happen due to more than one cause. The aim of this paper is to provide the Bayesian analysis of the same model based on a very flexible Gamma-Dirichlet prior on the scale parameters. It is observed that the Bayesian inferenc…
Timely characterizations of risks in economic and financial systems play an essential role in both economic policy and private sector decisions. However, the informational content of low-frequency variables and the results from conditional mean models provide only limited evidence to investigate this problem. We propose a novel mixed-frequency quantile vector autoregression (MF-QVAR) model to address this issue. Inspired by the univariate Bayesian quantile regression literature, the multivariate asymmetric Laplace distribution is exploited under the Bayesian framework to form the likelihood. A…
Managing risk at the aggregate level is crucial for banks and financial institutions as required by the Basel III framework. In this paper, we introduce discrete time Bayesian state space models with Poisson measurements to model aggregate mortgage default rate. We discuss parameter updating, filtering, smoothing, forecasting and estimation using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. In addition, we investigate the dynamic behavior of the default rate and the effects of macroeconomic variables. We illustrate the use of the proposed models using actual U.S. residential mortgage data and discuss ins…
The Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学）；Data61；Inria（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）
Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is a family of "coherent risk measures" which generalize the traditional mathematical expectation. Widely used in mathematical finance, it is garnering increasing interest in machine learning, e.g., as an alternate approach to regularization, and as a means for ensuring fairness. This paper presents a generalization bound for learning algorithms that minimize the CVaR of the empirical loss. The bound is of PAC-Bayesian type and is guaranteed to be small when the empirical CVaR is small. We achieve this by reducing the problem of estimating CVaR to that of merel…
In cargo logistics, a key performance measure is transport risk, defined as the deviation of the actual arrival time from the planned arrival time. Neither earliness nor tardiness is desirable for customer and freight forwarders. In this paper, we investigate ways to assess and forecast transport risks using a half-year of air cargo data, provided by a leading forwarder on 1336 routes served by 20 airlines. Interestingly, our preliminary data analysis shows a strong multimodal feature in the transport risks, driven by unobserved events, such as cargo missing flights. To accommodate this featur…
In this paper we propose a novel Bayesian methodology for Value-at-Risk computation based on parametric Product Partition Models. Value-at-Risk is a standard tool to measure and control the market risk of an asset or a portfolio, and it is also required for regulatory purposes. Its popularity is partly due to the fact that it is an easily understood measure of risk. The use of Product Partition Models allows us to remain in a Normal setting even in presence of outlying points, and to obtain a closed-form expression for Value-at-Risk computation. We present and compare two different scenarios: …
Many time-to-event studies are complicated by the presence of competing risks. Such data are often analyzed using Cox models for the cause specific hazard function or Fine-Gray models for the subdistribution hazard. In practice regression relationships in competing risks data with either strategy are often complex and may include nonlinear functions of covariates, interactions, high-dimensional parameter spaces and nonproportional cause specific or subdistribution hazards. Model misspecification can lead to poor predictive performance. To address these issues, we propose a novel approach to fl…
The collective risk model (CRM) for frequency and severity is an important tool for retail insurance ratemaking, macro-level catastrophic risk forecasting, as well as operational risk in banking regulation. This model, which is initially designed for cross-sectional data, has recently been adapted to a longitudinal context to conduct both a priori and a posteriori ratemaking, through the introduction of random effects. However, so far, the random effect(s) is usually assumed static due to computational concerns, leading to predictive premium that omit the seniority of the claims. In this paper…
Siemens AG（西门子股份公司）；TU Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）
Bayesian neural networks with latent variables are scalable and flexible probabilistic models: They account for uncertainty in the estimation of the network weights and, by making use of latent variables, can capture complex noise patterns in the data. We show how to extract and decompose uncertainty into epistemic and aleatoric components for decision-making purposes. This allows us to successfully identify informative points for active learning of functions with heteroscedastic and bimodal noise. Using the decomposition we further define a novel risk-sensitive criterion for reinforcement lea…
Statistical agencies utilize models to synthesize respondent-level data for release to the public for privacy protection. In this work, we efficiently induce privacy protection into any Bayesian synthesis model by employing a pseudo likelihood that exponentiates each likelihood contribution by an observation record-indexed weight in [0, 1], defined to be inversely proportional to the identification risk for that record. We start with the marginal probability of identification risk for a record, which is composed as the probability that the identity of the record may be disclosed. Our applicati…
The large number of publicly available survey datasets of wide variety, albeit useful, raise respondent-level privacy concerns. The synthetic data approach to data privacy and confidentiality has been shown useful in terms of privacy protection and utility preservation. This paper aims at illustrating how synthetic data can facilitate the dissemination of highly sensitive information about youth risk behavior by presenting a case study of synthetic data for a sample of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). Given the categorical nature of almost all variables in YRBS, the Dirichlet Process mix…
Risk assessment instruments are used across the criminal justice system to estimate the probability of some future behavior given covariates. The estimated probabilities are then used in making decisions at the individual level. In the past, there has been controversy about whether the probabilities derived from group-level calculations can meaningfully be applied to individuals. Using Bayesian hierarchical models applied to a large longitudinal dataset from the court system in the state of Kentucky, we analyze variation in individual-level probabilities of failing to appear for court and the …
School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院工业与系统工程学院）；School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University（康奈尔大学运筹学与信息工程学院）
We consider Bayesian optimization of objective functions of the form $ρ[ F(x, W) ]$, where $F$ is a black-box expensive-to-evaluate function and $ρ$ denotes either the VaR or CVaR risk measure, computed with respect to the randomness induced by the environmental random variable $W$. Such problems arise in decision making under uncertainty, such as in portfolio optimization and robust systems design. We propose a family of novel Bayesian optimization algorithms that exploit the structure of the objective function to substantially improve sampling efficiency. Instead of modeling the objective fu…
We develop quantile regression models in order to derive risk margin and to evaluate capital in non-life insurance applications. By utilizing the entire range of conditional quantile functions, especially higher quantile levels, we detail how quantile regression is capable of providing an accurate estimation of risk margin and an overview of implied capital based on the historical volatility of a general insurers loss portfolio. Two modelling frameworks are considered based around parametric and nonparametric quantile regression models which we develop specifically in this insurance setting. I…
Most conventional risk analysis methods rely on a single best estimate of exposure per person which does not allow for adjustment for exposure-related uncertainty. Here, we propose a Bayesian model averaging method to properly quantify the relationship between radiation dose and disease outcomes by accounting for shared and unshared uncertainty in estimated dose. Our Bayesian risk analysis method utilizes multiple realizations of sets (vectors) of doses generated by a two-dimensional Monte Carlo simulation method that properly separates shared and unshared errors in dose estimation. The exposu…
Shifting from traditional hazard-based food safety management toward risk-based management requires statistical methods for evaluating intermediate targets in food production, such as microbiological criteria (MC), in terms of their effects on human risk of illness. A fully risk-based evaluation of MC involves several uncertainties that are related to both the underlying Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment (QMRA) model and the production-specific sample data on the prevalence and concentrations of microbes in production batches. We used Bayesian modeling for statistical inference and …
