We show that iterative methods for maximizing the likelihood in a mixture of exponentials model depend strongly on their particular implementation. Different starting strategies and stopping rules yield completely different estimators of the parameters. This is demonstrated for the likelihood ratio test of homogeneity against two-component exponential mixtures, when the test statistic is calculated by the EM algorithm.

We consider the problem of parametric inference from continuous sample paths of the diffusion processes {x(t)} generated by the system of possibly nonstationary and/or nonlinear Ito stochastic differential equations. We propose a new instrumental variable estimator of the parameter whose pivotal statistic has a Gaussian distribution for all possible values of parameter. The new estimator enables us to construct exact level-α confidence intervals and tests for the parameter in the possibly non-stationary and/or nonlinear diffusion processes. Applications to several non-stationary and/or nonlinear diffusion processes are considered as examples.

In this paper, we study the robust estimation of generalized partially linear models (GPLMs) for longitudinal data with dropouts. We aim at achieving robustness against outliers. To this end, a weighted likelihood method is first proposed to obtain the robust estimation of the parameters involved in the dropout model for describing the missing process. Then, a robust inverse probability-weighted generalized estimating equation is developed to achieve robust estimation of the mean model. To approximate the nonparametric function in the GPLM, a regression spline smoothing method is adopted which can linearize the nonparametric function such that statistical inference can be conducted operationally as if a generalized linear model was used. The asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator are established under some regularity conditions, and simulation studies show the robustness of the proposed estimator. In the end, the proposed method is applied to analyze a real data set.

When model the heteroscedasticity in a broad class of partially linear models, we allow the variance function to be a partial linear model as well and the parameters in the variance function to be different from those in the mean function. We develop a two-step estimation procedure, where in the first step some initial estimates of the parameters in both the mean and variance functions are obtained and then in the second step the estimates are updated using the weights calculated based on the initial estimates. The resulting weighted estimators of the linear coefficients in both the mean and variance functions are shown to be asymptotically normal, more efficient than the initial un-weighted estimators, and most efficient in the sense of semiparametric efficiency for some special cases. Simulation experiments are conducted to examine the numerical performance of the proposed procedure, which is also applied to data from an air pollution study in Mexico City.

The marginal distributions of the number of rises and the number of falls have been used successfully in various areas of statistics, especially in non-parametric statistical inference. Carlitz (1972, Duke Math. J.39, 268–269) showed that the generating function of the joint distribution for the numbers of rises and falls satisfies certain complex combinatorial equations, and pointed out that he had been unable to derive the explicit formula for the joint distribution from these equations. After more than two decades, this latter problem remains unsolved. In this article, the joint distribution is obtained via the probabilistic method of finite Markov chain imbedding for random permutations. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the theoretical results and the corresponding computational procedures.

In this paper the Bayesian approach for nonlinear multivariate calibration will be illustrated. This goal will be achieved by applying the Gibbs sampler to the rhinoceros data given by Clarke (1992, Biometrics, 48(4), 1081–1094). It will be shown that the point estimates obtained from the profile likelihoods and those calculated from the marginal posterior densities using improper priors will in most cases be similar.

The paper considers statistical models with real-valued observations i.i.d. by F(x, θ₀) from a family of distribution functions (F(x, θ); θ ε Θ), Θ ⊂ R^s, s ≥ 1. For random quantizations defined by sample quantiles (F_n⁻¹ (λ₁),θ, F_n⁻¹ (λ_m−1)) of arbitrary fixed orders 0 < λ₁ θ < λ_m-1 < 1, there are studied estimators θ_φ,n of θ₀ which minimize φ-divergences of the theoretical and empirical probabilities. Under an appropriate regularity, all these estimators are shown to be as efficient (first order, in the sense of Rao) as the MLE in the model quantified nonrandomly by (F⁻¹ (λ₁,θ₀),θ, F⁻¹ (λ_m−1, θ₀)). Moreover, the Fisher information matrix I_m (θ₀, λ) of the latter model with the equidistant orders λ = (λ_j = j/m : 1 ≤ j ≤ m − 1) arbitrarily closely approximates the Fisher information J(θ₀) of the original model when m is appropriately large. Thus the random binning by a large number of quantiles of equidistant orders leads to appropriate estimates of the above considered type.

For two independent nonnegative random variablesX andY we say thatX is ageless relative toY if the conditional probability P[X> Y+x|X>Y] is defined and is equal to P[X>x] for allx>0. Suppose thatX is ageless relative to a nonlatticeY with P[Y=0]<P [Y<X]. We show that the only suchX is the exponential variable. As a corollary it follows that exponential variable is the only one which possesses the ageless property relative to a continuous variable.