Statistics for Spatial Data.

Convergence of Probability Measures. By P. Billingsley. Chichester, Sussex, Wiley, 1968. xii, 253 p. 9 1/4“. 117s.

Convergence of Probability Measures

The author's preface gives an outline: "This book is about weakconvergence methods in metric spaces, with applications sufficient to show their power and utility. The Introduction motivates the definitions and indicates how the theory will yield solutions to problems arising outside it. Chapter 1 sets out the basic general theorems, which are then specialized in Chapter 2 to the space C[0, l ] of continuous functions on the unit interval and in Chapter 3 to the space D [0, 1 ] of functions with discontinuities of the first kind. The results of the first three chapters are used in Chapter 4 to derive a variety of limit theorems for dependent sequences of random variables. " The book develops and expands on Donsker's 1951 and 1952 papers on the invariance principle and empirical distributions. The basic random variables remain real-valued although, of course, measures on C[0, l ] and D[0, l ] are vitally used. Within this framework, there are various possibilities for a different and apparently better treatment of the material. More of the general theory of weak convergence of probabilities on separable metric spaces would be useful. Metrizability of the convergence is not brought up until late in the Appendix. The close relation of the Prokhorov metric and a metric for convergence in probability is (hence) not mentioned (see V. Strassen, Ann. Math. Statist. 36 (1965), 423-439; the reviewer, ibid. 39 (1968), 1563-1572). This relation would illuminate and organize such results as Theorems 4.1, 4.2 and 4.4 which give isolated, ad hoc connections between weak convergence of measures and nearness in probability. In the middle of p. 16, it should be noted that C*(S) consists of signed measures which need only be finitely additive if 5 is not compact. On p. 239, where the author twice speaks of separable subsets having nonmeasurable cardinal, he means "discrete" rather than "separable." Theorem 1.4 is Ulam's theorem that a Borel probability on a complete separable metric space is tight. Theorem 1 of Appendix 3 weakens completeness to topological completeness. After mentioning that probabilities on the rationals are tight, the author says it is an

Convergence of probability measures

A geometric program (GP) is a type of mathematical optimization problem characterized by objective and constraint functions that have a special form. Recently developed solution methods can solve even large-scale GPs extremely efficiently and reliably; at the same time a number of practical problems, particularly in circuit design, have been found to be equivalent to (or well approximated by) GPs. Putting these two together, we get effective solutions for the practical problems. The basic approach in GP modeling is to attempt to express a practical problem, such as an engineering analysis or design problem, in GP format. In the best case, this formulation is exact; when this is not possible, we settle for an approximate formulation. This tutorial paper collects together in one place the basic background material needed to do GP modeling. We start with the basic definitions and facts, and some methods used to transform problems into GP format. We show how to recognize functions and problems compatible with GP, and how to approximate functions or data in a form compatible with GP (when this is possible). We give some simple and representative examples, and also describe some common extensions of GP, along with methods for solving (or approximately solving) them.

/pdf/a-tutorial-on-geometric-programming-47sdznbzxw.pdf

A tutorial on geometric programming

The Bootstrap and Edgeworth Expansion

Peakedness and peakedness ordering

This article studies the problem of testing and locating changepoints in likelihood ratios of two multinomial probability vectors. We propose a binary search procedure to detect the changepoints in the sequence of the ratios of probabilities and obtain the maximum likelihood estimators of two multinomial probability vectors under the assumption that the probability ratio sequence has a changepoint. We also give a strongly consistent estimator for the changepoint location. An information theoretic approach is used to test the equality of two discrete probability distributions against the alternative that their ratios have a changepoint. Approximate critical values of the test statistics are provided by simulation for several choices of model parameters. Finally, we examine a real life data set pertaining to average daily insulin dose from the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program and locate the changepoints in the probability ratios.

https://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/outgoing/threshold_articles/Xiong_Barmi2002.pdf

On detecting change in likelihood ratio ordering

In two-sample comparison problems it is often of interest to examine whether one distribution function majorises the other, that is, for the presence of stochastic ordering. This paper develops a nonparametric test for stochastic ordering from size-biased data, allowing the pattern of the size bias to differ between the two samples. The test is formulated in terms of a maximally selected local empirical likelihood statistic. A Gaussian multiplier bootstrap is devised to calibrate the test. Simulation results show that the proposed test outperforms an analogous Wald-type test, and that it provides substantially greater power over ignoring the size bias. The approach is illustrated using data on blood alcohol concentration of drivers involved in car accidents, where the size bias is due to drunker drivers being more likely to be involved in accidents. Further, younger drivers tend to be more affected by alcohol, so in making comparisons with older drivers the analysis is adjusted for differences in ...

/pdf/tests-for-stochastic-ordering-under-biased-sampling-5bnllo0eiz.pdf

Tests for stochastic ordering under biased sampling

A note on estimating a non-increasing density in the presence of selection bias

Second-order stochastic ordering plays a fundamental role in many scientific areas including economics and finance. This article is concerned with the estimation of two continuous distribution functions, F 1 and F 2, when F 1 is smaller than F 2 according to this ordering. In the one-sample case, we assume that F 1 is known and provide a uniformly consistent estimator for F 2. The problem of estimating F 1 when F 2 is known was considered in Rojo and El Barmi [J. Rojo and H. El Barmi, Estimation of distribution functions under second order stochastic dominance, Statist. Sinica 13 (2003), pp. 903–926]. For this case, we show that their estimator continues to be uniformly strongly consistent without the restrictive conditions that they impose on F 1. In the two-sample case, we propose a new class of uniformly strongly consistent estimators for the two distribution functions, where n 1 and n 2 are the sample sizes. An extensive simulation study shows that for α = n 1/(n 1+n 2), the new estimators outperform ...

Hammou El Barmi

Papers

Peakedness and peakedness ordering

On detecting change in likelihood ratio ordering

Tests for stochastic ordering under biased sampling

A note on estimating a non-increasing density in the presence of selection bias

New and improved estimators of distribution functions under second-order stochastic dominance