arXiv subjects

Lexin Li

Publications and source records attributed to Lexin Li.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Estimation and Inference for High-dimensional Multi-response Growth Curve Model

A growth curve model (GCM) aims to characterize how an outcome variable evolves, develops and grows as a function of time, along with other predictors. It provides a particularly useful framework to model growth trend in longitudinal data. However, the estimation and inference of GCM with a large number of response variables faces numerous challenges, and remains underdeveloped. In this article, we study the high-dimensional multivariate-response linear GCM, and develop the corresponding estimation and inference procedures. Our proposal is far from a straightforward extension, and involves several innovative components. Specifically, we introduce a Kronecker product structure, which allows us to effectively decompose a very large covariance matrix, and to pool the correlated samples to improve the estimation accuracy. We devise a highly non-trivial multi-step estimation approach to estimate the individual covariance components separately and effectively. We also develop rigorous statistical inference procedures to test both the global effects and the individual effects, and establish the size and power properties, as well as the proper false discovery control. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the new method through both intensive simulations, and the analysis of a longitudinal neuroimaging data for Alzheimer's disease.

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arXiv2023

NAPA: Neighborhood-Assisted and Posterior-Adjusted Two-sample Inference

Two-sample multiple testing problems of sparse spatial data are frequently arising in a variety of scientific applications. In this article, we develop a novel neighborhood-assisted and posterior-adjusted (NAPA) approach to incorporate both the spatial smoothness and sparsity type side information to improve the power of the test while controlling the false discovery of multiple testing. We translate the side information into a set of weights to adjust the $p$-values, where the spatial pattern is encoded by the ordering of the locations, and the sparsity structure is encoded by a set of auxiliary covariates. We establish the theoretical properties of the proposed test, including the guaranteed power improvement over some state-of-the-art alternative tests, and the asymptotic false discovery control. We demonstrate the efficacy of the test through intensive simulations and two neuroimaging applications.

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arXiv2023

Testing for the Markov Property in Time Series via Deep Conditional Generative Learning

The Markov property is widely imposed in analysis of time series data. Correspondingly, testing the Markov property, and relatedly, inferring the order of a Markov model, are of paramount importance. In this article, we propose a nonparametric test for the Markov property in high-dimensional time series via deep conditional generative learning. We also apply the test sequentially to determine the order of the Markov model. We show that the test controls the type-I error asymptotically, and has the power approaching one. Our proposal makes novel contributions in several ways. We utilize and extend state-of-the-art deep generative learning to estimate the conditional density functions, and establish a sharp upper bound on the approximation error of the estimators. We derive a doubly robust test statistic, which employs a nonparametric estimation but achieves a parametric convergence rate. We further adopt sample splitting and cross-fitting to minimize the conditions required to ensure the consistency of the test. We demonstrate the efficacy of the test through both simulations and the three data applications.

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arXiv2023

High-dimensional Response Growth Curve Modeling for Longitudinal Neuroimaging Analysis

There is increasing interest in modeling high-dimensional longitudinal outcomes in applications such as developmental neuroimaging research. Growth curve model offers a useful tool to capture both the mean growth pattern across individuals, as well as the dynamic changes of outcomes over time within each individual. However, when the number of outcomes is large, it becomes challenging and often infeasible to tackle the large covariance matrix of the random effects involved in the model. In this article, we propose a high-dimensional response growth curve model, with three novel components: a low-rank factor model structure that substantially reduces the number of parameters in the large covariance matrix, a re-parameterization formulation coupled with a sparsity penalty that selects important fixed and random effect terms, and a computational trick that turns the inversion of a large matrix into the inversion of a stack of small matrices and thus considerably speeds up the computation. We develop an efficient expectation-maximization type estimation algorithm, and demonstrate the competitive performance of the proposed method through both simulations and a longitudinal study of brain structural connectivity in association with human immunodeficiency virus.

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arXiv2023

Testing Directed Acyclic Graph via Structural, Supervised and Generative Adversarial Learning

In this article, we propose a new hypothesis testing method for directed acyclic graph (DAG). While there is a rich class of DAG estimation methods, there is a relative paucity of DAG inference solutions. Moreover, the existing methods often impose some specific model structures such as linear models or additive models, and assume independent data observations. Our proposed test instead allows the associations among the random variables to be nonlinear and the data to be time-dependent. We build the test based on some highly flexible neural networks learners. We establish the asymptotic guarantees of the test, while allowing either the number of subjects or the number of time points for each subject to diverge to infinity. We demonstrate the efficacy of the test through simulations and a brain connectivity network analysis.

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arXiv2023

Sequential Best-Arm Identification with Application to Brain-Computer Interface

A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a technology that enables direct communication between the brain and an external device or computer system. It allows individuals to interact with the device using only their thoughts, and holds immense potential for a wide range of applications in medicine, rehabilitation, and human augmentation. An electroencephalogram (EEG) and event-related potential (ERP)-based speller system is a type of BCI that allows users to spell words without using a physical keyboard, but instead by recording and interpreting brain signals under different stimulus presentation paradigms. Conventional non-adaptive paradigms treat each word selection independently, leading to a lengthy learning process. To improve the sampling efficiency, we cast the problem as a sequence of best-arm identification tasks in multi-armed bandits. Leveraging pre-trained large language models (LLMs), we utilize the prior knowledge learned from previous tasks to inform and facilitate subsequent tasks. To do so in a coherent way, we propose a sequential top-two Thompson sampling (STTS) algorithm under the fixed-confidence setting and the fixed-budget setting. We study the theoretical property of the proposed algorithm, and demonstrate its substantial empirical improvement through both synthetic data analysis as well as a P300 BCI speller simulator example.

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arXiv2023

Optimizing Pessimism in Dynamic Treatment Regimes: A Bayesian Learning Approach

In this article, we propose a novel pessimism-based Bayesian learning method for optimal dynamic treatment regimes in the offline setting. When the coverage condition does not hold, which is common for offline data, the existing solutions would produce sub-optimal policies. The pessimism principle addresses this issue by discouraging recommendation of actions that are less explored conditioning on the state. However, nearly all pessimism-based methods rely on a key hyper-parameter that quantifies the degree of pessimism, and the performance of the methods can be highly sensitive to the choice of this parameter. We propose to integrate the pessimism principle with Thompson sampling and Bayesian machine learning for optimizing the degree of pessimism. We derive a credible set whose boundary uniformly lower bounds the optimal Q-function, and thus we do not require additional tuning of the degree of pessimism. We develop a general Bayesian learning method that works with a range of models, from Bayesian linear basis model to Bayesian neural network model. We develop the computational algorithm based on variational inference, which is highly efficient and scalable. We establish the theoretical guarantees of the proposed method, and show empirically that it outperforms the existing state-of-the-art solutions through both simulations and a real data example.

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arXiv2022

Sliced Inverse Regression in Metric Spaces

In this article, we propose a general nonlinear sufficient dimension reduction (SDR) framework when both the predictor and response lie in some general metric spaces. We construct reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces whose kernels are fully determined by the distance functions of the metric spaces, then leverage the inherent structures of these spaces to define a nonlinear SDR framework. We adapt the classical sliced inverse regression of \citet{Li:1991} within this framework for the metric space data. We build the estimator based on the corresponding linear operators, and show it recovers the regression information unbiasedly. We derive the estimator at both the operator level and under a coordinate system, and also establish its convergence rate. We illustrate the proposed method with both synthetic and real datasets exhibiting non-Euclidean geometry.

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arXiv2022

Image Response Regression via Deep Neural Networks

Delineating the associations between images and a vector of covariates is of central interest in medical imaging studies. To tackle this problem of image response regression, we propose a novel nonparametric approach in the framework of spatially varying coefficient models, where the spatially varying functions are estimated through deep neural networks. Compared to existing solutions, the proposed method explicitly accounts for spatial smoothness and subject heterogeneity, has straightforward interpretations, and is highly flexible and accurate in capturing complex association patterns. A key idea in our approach is to treat the image voxels as the effective samples, which not only alleviates the limited sample size issue that haunts the majority of medical imaging studies, but also leads to more robust and reproducible results. Focusing on a broad family of piecewise smooth functions, we establish the estimation and selection consistency, and derive the asymptotic error bounds. We demonstrate the efficacy of the method through intensive simulations, and further illustrate its advantages with analyses of two functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets.

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arXiv2022

Kernel Knockoffs Selection for Nonparametric Additive Models

Thanks to its fine balance between model flexibility and interpretability, the nonparametric additive model has been widely used, and variable selection for this type of model has been frequently studied. However, none of the existing solutions can control the false discovery rate (FDR) unless the sample size tends to infinity. The knockoff framework is a recent proposal that can address this issue, but few knockoff solutions are directly applicable to nonparametric models. In this article, we propose a novel kernel knockoffs selection procedure for the nonparametric additive model. We integrate three key components: the knockoffs, the subsampling for stability, and the random feature mapping for nonparametric function approximation. We show that the proposed method is guaranteed to control the FDR for any sample size, and achieves a power that approaches one as the sample size tends to infinity. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method through intensive simulations and comparisons with the alternative solutions. Our proposal thus makes useful contributions to the methodology of nonparametric variable selection, FDR-based inference, as well as knockoffs.

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arXiv2021

Orthogonalized Kernel Debiased Machine Learning for Multimodal Data Analysis

Multimodal imaging has transformed neuroscience research. While it presents unprecedented opportunities, it also imposes serious challenges. Particularly, it is difficult to combine the merits of the interpretability attributed to a simple association model with the flexibility achieved by a highly adaptive nonlinear model. In this article, we propose an orthogonalized kernel debiased machine learning approach, which is built upon the Neyman orthogonality and a form of decomposition orthogonality, for multimodal data analysis. We target the setting that naturally arises in almost all multimodal studies, where there is a primary modality of interest, plus additional auxiliary modalities. We establish the root-$N$-consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimated primary parameter, the semi-parametric estimation efficiency, and the asymptotic validity of the confidence band of the predicted primary modality effect. Our proposal enjoys, to a good extent, both model interpretability and model flexibility. It is also considerably different from the existing statistical methods for multimodal data integration, as well as the orthogonality-based methods for high-dimensional inferences. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method through both simulations and an application to a multimodal neuroimaging study of Alzheimer's disease.

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arXiv2021

Double Generative Adversarial Networks for Conditional Independence Testing

In this article, we study the problem of high-dimensional conditional independence testing, a key building block in statistics and machine learning. We propose an inferential procedure based on double generative adversarial networks (GANs). Specifically, we first introduce a double GANs framework to learn two generators of the conditional distributions. We then integrate the two generators to construct a test statistic, which takes the form of the maximum of generalized covariance measures of multiple transformation functions. We also employ data-splitting and cross-fitting to minimize the conditions on the generators to achieve the desired asymptotic properties, and employ multiplier bootstrap to obtain the corresponding $p$-value. We show that the constructed test statistic is doubly robust, and the resulting test both controls type-I error and has the power approaching one asymptotically. Also notably, we establish those theoretical guarantees under much weaker and practically more feasible conditions compared to the existing tests, and our proposal gives a concrete example of how to utilize some state-of-the-art deep learning tools, such as GANs, to help address a classical but challenging statistical problem. We demonstrate the efficacy of our test through both simulations and an application to an anti-cancer drug dataset. A Python implementation of the proposed procedure is available at https://github.com/tianlinxu312/dgcit.

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arXiv2021

Kernel Ordinary Differential Equations

Ordinary differential equation (ODE) is widely used in modeling biological and physical processes in science. In this article, we propose a new reproducing kernel-based approach for estimation and inference of ODE given noisy observations. We do not assume the functional forms in ODE to be known, or restrict them to be linear or additive, and we allow pairwise interactions. We perform sparse estimation to select individual functionals, and construct confidence intervals for the estimated signal trajectories. We establish the estimation optimality and selection consistency of kernel ODE under both the low-dimensional and high-dimensional settings, where the number of unknown functionals can be smaller or larger than the sample size. Our proposal builds upon the smoothing spline analysis of variance (SS-ANOVA) framework, but tackles several important problems that are not yet fully addressed, and thus extends the scope of existing SS-ANOVA too. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method through numerous ODE examples.

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arXiv2021

Partially Observed Dynamic Tensor Response Regression

In modern data science, dynamic tensor data is prevailing in numerous applications. An important task is to characterize the relationship between such dynamic tensor and external covariates. However, the tensor data is often only partially observed, rendering many existing methods inapplicable. In this article, we develop a regression model with partially observed dynamic tensor as the response and external covariates as the predictor. We introduce the low-rank, sparsity and fusion structures on the regression coefficient tensor, and consider a loss function projected over the observed entries. We develop an efficient non-convex alternating updating algorithm, and derive the finite-sample error bound of the actual estimator from each step of our optimization algorithm. Unobserved entries in tensor response have imposed serious challenges. As a result, our proposal differs considerably in terms of estimation algorithm, regularity conditions, as well as theoretical properties, compared to the existing tensor completion or tensor response regression solutions. We illustrate the efficacy of our proposed method using simulations, and two real applications, a neuroimaging dementia study and a digital advertising study.

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arXiv2021

Nonparametric Trace Regression in High Dimensions via Sign Series Representation

Learning of matrix-valued data has recently surged in a range of scientific and business applications. Trace regression is a widely used method to model effects of matrix predictors and has shown great success in matrix learning. However, nearly all existing trace regression solutions rely on two assumptions: (i) a known functional form of the conditional mean, and (ii) a global low-rank structure in the entire range of the regression function, both of which may be violated in practice. In this article, we relax these assumptions by developing a general framework for nonparametric trace regression models via structured sign series representations of high dimensional functions. The new model embraces both linear and nonlinear trace effects, and enjoys rank invariance to order-preserving transformations of the response. In the context of matrix completion, our framework leads to a substantially richer model based on what we coin as the "sign rank" of a matrix. We show that the sign series can be statistically characterized by weighted classification tasks. Based on this connection, we propose a learning reduction approach to learn the regression model via a series of classifiers, and develop a parallelable computation algorithm to implement sign series aggregations. We establish the excess risk bounds, estimation error rates, and sample complexities. Our proposal provides a broad nonparametric paradigm to many important matrix learning problems, including matrix regression, matrix completion, multi-task learning, and compressed sensing. We demonstrate the advantages of our method through simulations and two applications, one on brain connectivity study and the other on high-rank image completion.

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arXiv2021

Generalized Liquid Association Analysis for Multimodal Data Integration

Multimodal data are now prevailing in scientific research. A central question in multimodal integrative analysis is to understand how two data modalities associate and interact with each other given another modality or demographic variables. The problem can be formulated as studying the associations among three sets of random variables, a question that has received relatively less attention in the literature. In this article, we propose a novel generalized liquid association analysis method, which offers a new and unique angle to this important class of problems of studying three-way associations. We extend the notion of liquid association of \citet{li2002LA} from the univariate setting to the sparse, multivariate, and high-dimensional setting. We establish a population dimension reduction model, transform the problem to sparse Tucker decomposition of a three-way tensor, and develop a higher-order orthogonal iteration algorithm for parameter estimation. We derive the non-asymptotic error bound and asymptotic consistency of the proposed estimator, while allowing the variable dimensions to be larger than and diverge with the sample size. We demonstrate the efficacy of the method through both simulations and a multimodal neuroimaging application for Alzheimer's disease research.

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arXiv2021

Integrative Factor Regression and Its Inference for Multimodal Data Analysis

Multimodal data, where different types of data are collected from the same subjects, are fast emerging in a large variety of scientific applications. Factor analysis is commonly used in integrative analysis of multimodal data, and is particularly useful to overcome the curse of high dimensionality and high correlations. However, there is little work on statistical inference for factor analysis based supervised modeling of multimodal data. In this article, we consider an integrative linear regression model that is built upon the latent factors extracted from multimodal data. We address three important questions: how to infer the significance of one data modality given the other modalities in the model; how to infer the significance of a combination of variables from one modality or across different modalities; and how to quantify the contribution, measured by the goodness-of-fit, of one data modality given the others. When answering each question, we explicitly characterize both the benefit and the extra cost of factor analysis. Those questions, to our knowledge, have not yet been addressed despite wide use of factor analysis in integrative multimodal analysis, and our proposal bridges an important gap. We study the empirical performance of our methods through simulations, and further illustrate with a multimodal neuroimaging analysis.

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arXiv2021

Multimodal Data Integration via Mediation Analysis with High-Dimensional Exposures and Mediators

Motivated by an imaging proteomics study for Alzheimer's disease (AD), in this article, we propose a mediation analysis approach with high-dimensional exposures and high-dimensional mediators to integrate data collected from multiple platforms. The proposed method combines principal component analysis with penalized least squares estimation for a set of linear structural equation models. The former reduces the dimensionality and produces uncorrelated linear combinations of the exposure variables, whereas the latter achieves simultaneous path selection and effect estimation while allowing the mediators to be correlated. Applying the method to the AD data identifies numerous interesting protein peptides, brain regions, and protein-structure-memory paths, which are in accordance with and also supplement existing findings of AD research. Additional simulations further demonstrate the effective empirical performance of the method.

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