Cross-validatory Model Comparison and Divergent Regions Detection using iIS and iWAIC for Disease Mapping
Date
2015-04-02
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
The well-documented problems associated with mapping raw rates of disease have resulted in an increased use of Bayesian hierarchical models to produce maps of "smoothed'' estimates of disease rates. Two statistical problems arise in using Bayesian hierarchical models for disease mapping. The first problem is in comparing goodness of fit of various models, which can be used to test different hypotheses. The second problem is in identifying outliers/divergent regions with unusually high or low residual risk of disease, or those whose disease rates are not well fitted. The results of outlier detection may generate further hypotheses as to what additional covariates might be necessary for explaining the disease. Leave-one-out cross-validatory (LOOCV) model assessment has been used for these two problems. However, actual LOOCV is time-consuming. This thesis introduces two methods, namely iIS and iWAIC, for approximating LOOCV, using only Markov chain samples simulated from a posterior distribution based on a full data set. In iIS and iWAIC, we first integrate the latent variables without reference to holdout observation, then apply IS and WAIC approximations to the integrated predictive density and evaluation function. We apply iIS and iWAIC to two real data sets. Our empirical results show that iIS and iWAIC can provide significantly better estimation of LOOCV model assessment than existing methods including DIC, Importance Sampling, WAIC, posterior checking and Ghosting methods.
Description
Keywords
cross-validation, disease mapping, importance sampling, WAIC
Citation
Degree
Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Department
Mathematics and Statistics
Program
Mathematics