## variational Bayes for variable selection

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , on March 30, 2016 by xi'an

Xichen Huang, Jin Wang and Feng Liang have recently arXived a paper where they rely on variational Bayes in conjunction with a spike-and-slab prior modelling. This actually stems from an earlier paper by Carbonetto and Stephens (2012), the difference being in the implementation of the method, which is less Gibbs-like for the current paper. The approach is not fully Bayesian in that, not only an approximate (variational) representation is used for the parameters of interest (regression coefficient and presence-absence indicators) but also the nuisance parameters are replaced with MAPs. The variational approximation on the regression parameters is an independent product of spike-and-slab distributions. The authors show the approximate approach is consistent in both frequentist and Bayesian terms (under identifiability assumptions). The method is undoubtedly faster than MCMC since it shares many features with EM but I still wonder at the Bayesian interpretability of the outcome, which writes out as a product of estimated spike-and-slab mixtures. First, the weights in the mixtures are estimated by EM, hence fixed. Second, the fact that the variational approximation is a product is confusing in that the posterior distribution on the regression coefficients is unlikely to produce posterior independence.

## at CIRM [#2]

Posted in Mountains, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2016 by xi'an

Sylvia Richardson gave a great talk yesterday on clustering applied to variable selection, which first raised [in me] a usual worry of the lack of background model for clustering. But the way she used this notion meant there was an infinite Dirichlet process mixture model behind. This is quite novel [at least for me!] in that it addresses the covariates and not the observations themselves. I still wonder at the meaning of the cluster as, if I understood properly, the dependent variable is not involved in the clustering. Check her R package PReMiuM for a practical implementation of the approach. Later, Adeline Samson showed us the results of using pMCM versus particle Gibbs for diffusion processes where (a) pMCMC was behaving much worse than particle Gibbs and (b) EM required very few particles and Metropolis-Hastings steps to achieve convergence, when compared with posterior approximations.

Today Pierre Druilhet explained to the audience of the summer school his measure theoretic approach [I discussed a while ago] to the limit of proper priors via q-vague convergence, with the paradoxical phenomenon that a Be(n⁻¹,n⁻¹) converges to a sum of two Dirac masses when the parameter space is [0,1] but to Haldane’s prior when the space is (0,1)! He also explained why the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox vanishes when considering different measures [with an illustration that came from my Statistica Sinica 1993 paper]. Pierre concluded with the above opposition between two Bayesian paradigms, a [sort of] tale of two sigma [fields]! Not that I necessarily agree with the first paradigm that priors are supposed to have generated the actual parameter. If only because it mechanistically excludes all improper priors…

Darren Wilkinson talked about yeast, which is orders of magnitude more exciting than it sounds, because this is Bayesian big data analysis in action! With significant (and hence impressive) results based on stochastic dynamic models. And massive variable selection techniques. Scala, Haskell, Frege, OCaml were [functional] languages he mentioned that I had never heard of before! And Daniel Rudolf concluded the [intense] second day of this Bayesian week at CIRM with a description of his convergence results for (rather controlled) noisy MCMC algorithms.

## maximum likelihood on negative binomial

Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , on October 7, 2015 by xi'an

Estimating both parameters of a negative binomial distribution NB(N,p) by maximum likelihood sounds like an obvious exercise. But it is not because some samples lead to degenerate solutions, namely p=0 and N=∞… This occurs when the mean of the sample is larger than its empirical variance, s²>x̄, not an impossible instance: I discovered this when reading a Cross Validated question asking about the action to take in such a case. A first remark of interest is that this only happens when the negative binomial distribution is defined in terms of failures (since else the number of successes is bounded). A major difference I never realised till now, for estimating N is not a straightforward exercise. A second remark is that a negative binomial NB(N,p) is a Poisson compound of an LSD variate with parameter p, the Poisson being with parameter η=-N log(1-p). And the LSD being a power distribution pk/k rather than a psychedelic drug. Since this is not an easy framework, Adamidis (1999) introduces an extra auxiliary variable that is a truncated exponential on (0,1) with parameter -log(1-p). A very neat trick that removes the nasty normalising constant on the LSD variate.

“Convergence was achieved in all cases, even when the starting values were poor and this emphasizes the numerical stability of the EM algorithm.” K. Adamidis

Adamidis then constructs an EM algorithm on the completed set of auxiliary variables with a closed form update on both parameters. Unfortunately, the algorithm only works when s²>x̄. Otherwise, it gets stuck at the boundary p=0 and N=∞. I was hoping for a replica of the mixture case where local maxima are more interesting than the degenerate global maximum… (Of course, there is always the alternative of using a Bayesian noninformative approach.)

## Bayesian filtering and smoothing [book review]

Posted in Books, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2015 by xi'an

When in Warwick last October, I met Simo Särkkä, who told me he had published an IMS monograph on Bayesian filtering and smoothing the year before. I thought it would be an appropriate book to review for CHANCE and tried to get a copy from Oxford University Press, unsuccessfully. I thus bought my own book that I received two weeks ago and took the opportunity of my Czech vacations to read it… [A warning pre-empting accusations of self-plagiarism: this is a preliminary draft for a review to appear in CHANCE under my true name!]

“From the Bayesian estimation point of view both the states and the static parameters are unknown (random) parameters of the system.” (p.20)

Bayesian filtering and smoothing is an introduction to the topic that essentially starts from ground zero. Chapter 1 motivates the use of filtering and smoothing through examples and highlights the naturally Bayesian approach to the problem(s). Two graphs illustrate the difference between filtering and smoothing by plotting for the same series of observations the successive confidence bands. The performances are obviously poorer with filtering but the fact that those intervals are point-wise rather than joint, i.e., that the graphs do not provide a confidence band. (The exercise section of that chapter is superfluous in that it suggests re-reading Kalman’s original paper and rephrases the Monty Hall paradox in a story unconnected with filtering!) Chapter 2 gives an introduction to Bayesian statistics in general, with a few pages on Bayesian computational methods. A first remark is that the above quote is both correct and mildly confusing in that the parameters can be consistently estimated, while the latent states cannot. A second remark is that justifying the MAP as associated with the 0-1 loss is incorrect in continuous settings.  The third chapter deals with the batch updating of the posterior distribution, i.e., that the posterior at time t is the prior at time t+1. With applications to state-space systems including the Kalman filter. The fourth to sixth chapters concentrate on this Kalman filter and its extension, and I find it somewhat unsatisfactory in that the collection of such filters is overwhelming for a neophyte. And no assessment of the estimation error when the model is misspecified appears at this stage. And, as usual, I find the unscented Kalman filter hard to fathom! The same feeling applies to the smoothing chapters, from Chapter 8 to Chapter 10. Which mimic the earlier ones. Continue reading

## how many modes in a normal mixture?

Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , on January 7, 2015 by xi'an

An interesting question I spotted on Cross Validated today: How to tell if a mixture of Gaussians will be multimodal? Indeed, there is no known analytical condition on the parameters of a fully specified k-component mixture for the modes to number k or less than k… Googling around, I immediately came upon this webpage by Miguel Carrera-Perpinan, who studied the issue with Chris Williams when writing his PhD in Edinburgh. And upon this paper, which not only shows that

1. unidimensional Gaussian mixtures with k components have at most k modes;
2. unidimensional non-Gaussian mixtures with k components may have more than k modes;
3. multidimensional mixtures with k components may have more than k modes.

but also provides ways of finding all the modes. Ways which seem to reduce to using EM from a wide variety of starting points (an EM algorithm set in the sampling rather than in the parameter space since all parameters are set!). Maybe starting EM from each mean would be sufficient.  I still wonder if there are better ways, from letting the variances decrease down to zero until a local mode appear, to using some sort of simulated annealing…

Edit: Following comments, let me stress this is not a statistical issue in that the parameters of the mixture are set and known and there is no observation(s) from this mixture from which to estimate the number of modes. The mathematical problem is to determine how many local maxima there are for the function

$f(x)\,:\,x \longrightarrow \sum_{i=1}^k p_i \varphi(x;\mu_i,\sigma_i)$

## Statistics slides (4)

Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2014 by xi'an

Here is the fourth set of slides for my third year statistics course, trying to build intuition about the likelihood surface and why on Earth would one want to find its maximum?!, through graphs. I am yet uncertain whether or not I will reach the point where I can teach more asymptotics so maybe I will also include asymptotic normality of the MLE under regularity conditions in this chapter…

## Nonlinear Time Series just appeared

Posted in Books, R, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2014 by xi'an

My friends Randal Douc and Éric Moulines just published this new time series book with David Stoffer. (David also wrote Time Series Analysis and its Applications with Robert Shumway a year ago.) The books reflects well on the research of Randal and Éric over the past decade, namely convergence results on Markov chains for validating both inference in nonlinear time series and algorithms applied to those objects. The later includes MCMC, pMCMC, sequential Monte Carlo, particle filters, and the EM algorithm. While I am too close to the authors to write a balanced review for CHANCE (the book is under review by another researcher, before you ask!), I think this is an important book that reflects the state of the art in the rigorous study of those models. Obviously, the mathematical rigour advocated by the authors makes Nonlinear Time Series a rather advanced book (despite the authors’ reassuring statement that “nothing excessively deep is used”) more adequate for PhD students and researchers than starting graduates (and definitely not advised for self-study), but the availability of the R code (on the highly personal page of David Stoffer) comes to balance the mathematical bent of the book in the first and third parts. A great reference book!