Michael Hornstein | Searcharxiv

arXiv2018

Tensor models for linguistics pitch curve data of native speakers of Afrikaans

We use tensor analysis techniques for high-dimensional data to gain insight into pitch curves, which play an important role in linguistics research. In particular, we propose that demeaned phonetics pitch curve data can be modeled as having a Kronecker product inverse covariance structure with sparse factors corresponding to words and time. Using data from a study of native Afrikaans speakers, we show that by targeting conditional independence through a graphical model, we reveal relationships associated with natural properties of words as studied by linguists. We find that words with long vowels cluster based on whether the vowel is pronounced at the front or back of the mouth, and words with short vowels have strong edges associated with the initial consonant.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2018

Joint mean and covariance estimation with unreplicated matrix-variate data

It has been proposed that complex populations, such as those that arise in genomics studies, may exhibit dependencies among observations as well as among variables. This gives rise to the challenging problem of analyzing unreplicated high-dimensional data with unknown mean and dependence structures. Matrix-variate approaches that impose various forms of (inverse) covariance sparsity allow flexible dependence structures to be estimated, but cannot directly be applied when the mean and covariance matrices are estimated jointly. We present a practical method utilizing generalized least squares and penalized (inverse) covariance estimation to address this challenge. We establish consistency and obtain rates of convergence for estimating the mean parameters and covariance matrices. The advantages of our approaches are: (i) dependence graphs and covariance structures can be estimated in the presence of unknown mean structure, (ii) the mean structure becomes more efficiently estimated when accounting for the dependence structure among observations; and (iii) inferences about the mean parameters become correctly calibrated. We use simulation studies and analysis of genomic data from a twin study of ulcerative colitis to illustrate the statistical convergence and the performance of our methods in practical settings. Several lines of evidence show that the test statistics for differential gene expression produced by our methods are correctly calibrated and improve power over conventional methods.

stat.ML↗