BAYESIAN SEMIPARAMETRIC LONG MEMORY MODELS FOR DISCRETIZED EVENT DATA.

We introduce a new class of semiparametric latent variable models for long memory discretized event data. The proposed methodology is motivated by a study of bird vocalizations in the Amazon rain forest; the timings of vocalizations exhibit self-similarity and long range dependence. This rules out Poisson process based models where the rate function itself is not long range dependent. The proposed class of FRActional Probit (FRAP) models is based on thresholding, a latent process. This latent process is modeled by a smooth Gaussian process and a fractional Brownian motion by assuming an additive structure. We develop a Bayesian approach to inference using Markov chain Monte Carlo and show good performance in simulation studies. Applying the methods to the Amazon bird vocalization data, we find substantial evidence for self-similarity and non-Markovian/Poisson dynamics. To accommodate the bird vocalization data in which there are many different species of birds exhibiting their own vocalization dynamics, a hierarchical expansion of FRAP is provided in the Supplementary Material.

Bayesian sparse multiple regression for simultaneous rank reduction and variable selection.

We develop a Bayesian methodology aimed at simultaneously estimating low-rank and row-sparse matrices in a high-dimensional multiple-response linear regression model. We consider a carefully devised shrinkage prior on the matrix of regression coefficients which obviates the need to specify a prior on the rank, and shrinks the regression matrix towards low-rank and row-sparse structures. We provide theoretical support to the proposed methodology by proving minimax optimality of the posterior mean under the prediction risk in ultra-high dimensional settings where the number of predictors can grow sub-exponentially relative to the sample size. A one-step post-processing scheme induced by group lasso penalties on the rows of the estimated coefficient matrix is proposed for variable selection, with default choices of tuning parameters. We additionally provide an estimate of the rank using a novel optimization function achieving dimension reduction in the covariate space. We exhibit the performance of the proposed methodology in an extensive simulation study and a real data example.

Bayesian Semiparametric Multivariate Density Deconvolution.

We consider the problem of multivariate density deconvolution when interest lies in estimating the distribution of a vector valued random variable X but precise measurements on X are not available, observations being contaminated by measurement errors U. The existing sparse literature on the problem assumes the density of the measurement errors to be completely known. We propose robust Bayesian semiparametric multivariate deconvolution approaches when the measurement error density of U is not known but replicated proxies are available for at least some individuals. Additionally, we allow the variability of U to depend on the associated unobserved values of X through unknown relationships, which also automatically includes the case of multivariate multiplicative measurement errors. Basic properties of finite mixture models, multivariate normal kernels and exchangeable priors are exploited in novel ways to meet modeling and computational challenges. Theoretical results showing the flexibility of the proposed methods in capturing a wide variety of data generating processes are provided. We illustrate the efficiency of the proposed methods in recovering the density of X through simulation experiments. The methodology is applied to estimate the joint consumption pattern of different dietary components from contaminated 24 hour recalls. Supplementary Material presents substantive additional details.

Fast sampling with Gaussian scale-mixture priors in high-dimensional regression.

We propose an efficient way to sample from a class of structured multivariate Gaussian distributions. The proposed algorithm only requires matrix multiplications and linear system solutions. Its computational complexity grows linearly with the dimension, unlike existing algorithms that rely on Cholesky factorizations with cubic complexity. The algorithm is broadly applicable in settings where Gaussian scale mixture priors are used on high-dimensional parameters. Its effectiveness is illustrated through a high-dimensional regression problem with a horseshoe prior on the regression coefficients. Other potential applications are outlined.