arXiv subjects

George Michailidis

Publications and source records attributed to George Michailidis.

107 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Two-Stage Plans for Estimating a Threshold Value of a Regression Function

This study investigates two-stage plans based on nonparametric procedures for estimating an inverse regression function at a given point. Specifically, isotonic regression is used at stage one to obtain an initial estimate followed by another round of isotonic regression in the vicinity of this estimate at stage two. It is shown that such two stage plans accelerate the convergence rate of one-stage procedures and are superior to existing two-stage procedures that use local parametric approximations at stage two when the available budget is moderate and/or the regression function is 'ill-behaved'. Both Wald and Likelihood Ratio type confidence intervals for the threshold value of interest are investigated and the latter are recommended in applications due to their simplicity and robustness. The developed plans are illustrated through a comprehensive simulation study and an application to car fuel efficiency data.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2013

Socially optimal charging strategies for electric vehicles

Electric vehicles represent a promising technology for reducing emissions and dependence on fossil fuels and have started entering different automotive markets. In order to bolster their adoption by consumers and hence enhance their penetration rate, a charging station infrastructure needs to be deployed. This paper studies decentralized policies that assign electric vehicles to a network of charging stations with the goal to achieve little to no queueing. This objective is especially important for electric vehicles, whose charging times are fairly long. The social optimality of the proposed policies is established in the many-server regime, where each station is equipped with multiple charging slots. Further, convergence issues of the algorithm that achieves the optimal policy are examined. Finally, the results provide insight on how to address questions related to the optimal location deployment of the infrastructure.

math.OC↗

arXiv2011

Threshold estimation based on a p-value framework in dose-response and regression settings

We use p-values to identify the threshold level at which a regression function takes off from its baseline value, a problem motivated by applications in toxicological and pharmacological dose-response studies and environmental statistics. We study the problem in two sampling settings: one where multiple responses can be obtained at a number of different covariate-levels and the other the standard regression setting involving limited number of response values at each covariate. Our procedure involves testing the hypothesis that the regression function is at its baseline at each covariate value and then computing the potentially approximate p-value of the test. An estimate of the threshold is obtained by fitting a piecewise constant function with a single jump discontinuity, otherwise known as a stump, to these observed p-values, as they behave in markedly different ways on the two sides of the threshold. The estimate is shown to be consistent and its finite sample properties are studied through simulations. Our approach is computationally simple and extends to the estimation of the baseline value of the regression function, heteroscedastic errors and to time-series. It is illustrated on some real data applications.

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arXiv2011

A two-stage hybrid procedure for estimating an inverse regression function

We consider a two-stage procedure (TSP) for estimating an inverse regression function at a given point, where isotonic regression is used at stage one to obtain an initial estimate and a local linear approximation in the vicinity of this estimate is used at stage two. We establish that the convergence rate of the second-stage estimate can attain the parametric $n^{1/2}$ rate. Furthermore, a bootstrapped variant of TSP (BTSP) is introduced and its consistency properties studied. This variant manages to overcome the slow speed of the convergence in distribution and the estimation of the derivative of the regression function at the unknown target quantity. Finally, the finite sample performance of BTSP is studied through simulations and the method is illustrated on a data set.

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arXiv2011

Cone Schedules for Processing Systems in Fluctuating Environments

We consider a generalized processing system having several queues, where the available service rate combinations are fluctuating over time due to reliability and availability variations. The objective is to allocate the available resources, and corresponding service rates, in response to both workload and service capacity considerations, in order to maintain the long term stability of the system. The service configurations are completely arbitrary, including negative service rates which represent forwarding and service-induced cross traffic. We employ a trace-based trajectory asymptotic technique, which requires minimal assumptions about the arrival dynamics of the system. We prove that cone schedules, which leverage the geometry of the queueing dynamics, maximize the system throughput for a broad class of processing systems, even under adversarial arrival processes. We study the impact of fluctuating service availability, where resources are available only some of the time, and the schedule must dynamically respond to the changing available service rates, establishing both the capacity of such systems and the class of schedules which will stabilize the system at full capacity. The rich geometry of the system dynamics leads to important insights for stability, performance and scalability, and substantially generalizes previous findings. The processing system studied here models a broad variety of computer, communication and service networks, including varying channel conditions and cross-traffic in wireless networking, and call centers with fluctuating capacity. The findings have implications for bandwidth and processor allocation in communication networks and workforce scheduling in congested call centers.

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arXiv2010

Optimal experiment design in a filtering context with application to sampled network data

We examine the problem of optimal design in the context of filtering multiple random walks. Specifically, we define the steady state E-optimal design criterion and show that the underlying optimization problem leads to a second order cone program. The developed methodology is applied to tracking network flow volumes using sampled data, where the design variable corresponds to controlling the sampling rate. The optimal design is numerically compared to a myopic and a naive strategy. Finally, we relate our work to the general problem of steady state optimal design for state space models.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2010

Discovering Graphical Granger Causality Using the Truncating Lasso Penalty

Components of biological systems interact with each other in order to carry out vital cell functions. Such information can be used to improve estimation and inference, and to obtain better insights into the underlying cellular mechanisms. Discovering regulatory interactions among genes is therefore an important problem in systems biology. Whole-genome expression data over time provides an opportunity to determine how the expression levels of genes are affected by changes in transcription levels of other genes, and can therefore be used to discover regulatory interactions among genes. In this paper, we propose a novel penalization method, called truncating lasso, for estimation of causal relationships from time-course gene expression data. The proposed penalty can correctly determine the order of the underlying time series, and improves the performance of the lasso-type estimators. Moreover, the resulting estimate provides information on the time lag between activation of transcription factors and their effects on regulated genes. We provide an efficient algorithm for estimation of model parameters, and show that the proposed method can consistently discover causal relationships in the large $p$, small $n$ setting. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated favorably in simulated, as well as real, data examples. The proposed truncating lasso method is implemented in the R-package grangerTlasso and is available at http://www.stat.lsa.umich.edu/~shojaie.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2010

Network-wide Statistical Modeling and Prediction of Computer Traffic

In order to maintain consistent quality of service, computer network engineers face the task of monitoring the traffic fluctuations on the individual links making up the network. However, due to resource constraints and limited access, it is not possible to directly measure all the links. Starting with a physically interpretable probabilistic model of network-wide traffic, we demonstrate how an expensively obtained set of measurements may be used to develop a network-specific model of the traffic across the network. This model may then be used in conjunction with easily obtainable measurements to provide more accurate prediction than is possible with only the inexpensive measurements. We show that the model, once learned may be used for the same network for many different periods of traffic. Finally, we show an application of the prediction technique to create relevant control charts for detection and isolation of shifts in network traffic.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2010

Global Modeling and Prediction of Computer Network Traffic

We develop a probabilistic framework for global modeling of the traffic over a computer network. This model integrates existing single-link (-flow) traffic models with the routing over the network to capture the global traffic behavior. It arises from a limit approximation of the traffic fluctuations as the time--scale and the number of users sharing the network grow. The resulting probability model is comprised of a Gaussian and/or a stable, infinite variance components. They can be succinctly described and handled by certain 'space-time' random fields. The model is validated against simulated and real data. It is then applied to predict traffic fluctuations over unobserved links from a limited set of observed links. Further, applications to anomaly detection and network management are briefly discussed.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2010

On the estimation of the extremal index based on scaling and resampling

The extremal index parameter theta characterizes the degree of local dependence in the extremes of a stationary time series and has important applications in a number of areas, such as hydrology, telecommunications, finance and environmental studies. In this study, a novel estimator for theta based on the asymptotic scaling of block-maxima and resampling is introduced. It is shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal for a large class of m-dependent time series. Further, a procedure for the automatic selection of its tuning parameter is developed and different types of confidence intervals that prove useful in practice proposed. The performance of the estimator is examined through simulations, which show its highly competitive behavior. Finally, the estimator is applied to three real data sets of daily crude oil prices, daily returns of the S&P 500 stock index, and high-frequency, intra-day traded volumes of a stock. These applications demonstrate additional diagnostic features of statistical plots based on the new estimator.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2010

On the Estimation of the Heavy-Tail Exponent in Time Series using the Max-Spectrum

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the tail index of distributions with heavy, Pareto-type tails for dependent data, that is of interest in the areas of finance, insurance, environmental monitoring and teletraffic analysis. A novel approach based on the max self-similarity scaling behavior of block maxima is introduced. The method exploits the increasing lack of dependence of maxima over large size blocks, which proves useful for time series data. We establish the consistency and asymptotic normality of the proposed max-spectrum estimator for a large class of m-dependent time series, in the regime of intermediate block-maxima. In the regime of large block-maxima, we demonstrate the distributional consistency of the estimator for a broad range of time series models including linear processes. The max-spectrum estimator is a robust and computationally efficient tool, which provides a novel time-scale perspective to the estimation of the tail--exponents. Its performance is illustrated over synthetic and real data sets.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2009

Penalized Likelihood Methods for Estimation of Sparse High Dimensional Directed Acyclic Graphs

Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are commonly used to represent causal relationships among random variables in graphical models. Applications of these models arise in the study of physical, as well as biological systems, where directed edges between nodes represent the influence of components of the system on each other. The general problem of estimating DAGs from observed data is computationally NP-hard, Moreover two directed graphs may be observationally equivalent. When the nodes exhibit a natural ordering, the problem of estimating directed graphs reduces to the problem of estimating the structure of the network. In this paper, we propose a penalized likelihood approach that directly estimates the adjacency matrix of DAGs. Both lasso and adaptive lasso penalties are considered and an efficient algorithm is proposed for estimation of high dimensional DAGs. We study variable selection consistency of the two penalties when the number of variables grows to infinity with the sample size. We show that although lasso can only consistently estimate the true network under stringent assumptions, adaptive lasso achieves this task under mild regularity conditions. The performance of the proposed methods is compared to alternative methods in simulated, as well as real, data examples.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2009

Change-point estimation under adaptive sampling

We consider the problem of locating a jump discontinuity (change-point) in a smooth parametric regression model with a bounded covariate. It is assumed that one can sample the covariate at different values and measure the corresponding responses. Budget constraints dictate that a total of $n$ such measurements can be obtained. A multistage adaptive procedure is proposed, where at each stage an estimate of the change point is obtained and new points are sampled from its appropriately chosen neighborhood. It is shown that such procedures accelerate the rate of convergence of the least squares estimate of the change-point. Further, the asymptotic distribution of the estimate is derived using empirical processes techniques. The latter result provides guidelines on how to choose the tuning parameters of the multistage procedure in practice. The improved efficiency of the procedure is demonstrated using real and synthetic data. This problem is primarily motivated by applications in engineering systems.

math.ST↗

arXiv2009

On multi-view learning with additive models

In many scientific settings data can be naturally partitioned into variable groupings called views. Common examples include environmental (1st view) and genetic information (2nd view) in ecological applications, chemical (1st view) and biological (2nd view) data in drug discovery. Multi-view data also occur in text analysis and proteomics applications where one view consists of a graph with observations as the vertices and a weighted measure of pairwise similarity between observations as the edges. Further, in several of these applications the observations can be partitioned into two sets, one where the response is observed (labeled) and the other where the response is not (unlabeled). The problem for simultaneously addressing viewed data and incorporating unlabeled observations in training is referred to as multi-view transductive learning. In this work we introduce and study a comprehensive generalized fixed point additive modeling framework for multi-view transductive learning, where any view is represented by a linear smoother. The problem of view selection is discussed using a generalized Akaike Information Criterion, which provides an approach for testing the contribution of each view. An efficient implementation is provided for fitting these models with both backfitting and local-scoring type algorithms adjusted to semi-supervised graph-based learning. The proposed technique is assessed on both synthetic and real data sets and is shown to be competitive to state-of-the-art co-training and graph-based techniques.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2007

Statistical inverse problems in active network tomography

The analysis of computer and communication networks gives rise to some interesting inverse problems. This paper is concerned with active network tomography where the goal is to recover information about quality-of-service (QoS) parameters at the link level from aggregate data measured on end-to-end network paths. The estimation and monitoring of QoS parameters, such as loss rates and delays, are of considerable interest to network engineers and Internet service providers. The paper provides a review of the inverse problems and recent research on inference for loss rates and delay distributions. Some new results on parametric inference for delay distributions are also developed. In addition, a real application on Internet telephony is discussed.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2007

Comment: Monitoring Networked Applications With Incremental Quantile Estimation

Our comments are in two parts. First, we make some observations regarding the methodology in Chambers et al. [arXiv:0708.0302]. Second, we briefly describe another interesting network monitoring problem that arises in the context of assessing quality of service, such as loss rates and delay distributions, in packet-switched networks.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2006

Estimating heavy-tail exponents through max self-similarity

In this paper, a novel approach to the problem of estimating the heavy-tail exponent alpha>0 of a distribution is proposed. It is based on the fact that block-maxima of size m of the independent and identically distributed data scale at a rate of m^{1/alpha}. This scaling rate can be captured well by the max-spectrum plot of the data that leads to regression based estimators. Consistency and asymptotic normality of these estimators is established under mild conditions on the behavior of the tail of the distribution. The results are obtained by establishing bounds on the rate of convergence of moment-type functionals of heavy-tailed maxima. Such bounds often yield exact rates of convergence and are of independent interest. Practical issues on the automatic selection of tuning parameters for the estimators and corresponding confidence intervals are also addressed. Extensive numerical simulations show that the proposed method proves competitive for both small and large sample sizes and for a large range of tail exponents. The method is shown to be more robust than the classical Hill plot and is illustrated on two data sets of insurance claims and natural gas field sizes.

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