Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods for Complex Data

A variety of complex data has broadened in many research fields such as epidemiology, genomics, and analytical chemistry with the development of science, technologies, and design scheme over the past few decades. For example, in epidemiology, the matched case-crossover study design is used to investigate the association between the clustered binary outcomes of disease and a measurement error in covariate within a certain period by stratifying subjects' conditions. In genomics, high-correlated and high-dimensional(HCHD) data are required to identify important genes and their interaction effect over diseases. In analytical chemistry, multiple time series data are generated to recognize the complex patterns among multiple classes. Due to the great diversity, we encounter three problems in analyzing those complex data in this dissertation. We have then provided several contributions to semiparametric and nonparametric methods for dealing with the following problems: the first is to propose a method for testing the significance of a functional association under the matched study; the second is to develop a method to simultaneously identify important variables and build a network in HDHC data; the third is to propose a multi-class dynamic model for recognizing a pattern in the time-trend analysis.

For the first topic, we propose a semiparametric omnibus test for testing the significance of a functional association between the clustered binary outcomes and covariates with measurement error by taking into account the effect modification of matching covariates. We develop a flexible omnibus test for testing purposes without a specific alternative form of a hypothesis. The advantages of our omnibus test are demonstrated through simulation studies and 1-4 bidirectional matched data analyses from an epidemiology study.

For the second topic, we propose a joint semiparametric kernel machine network approach to provide a connection between variable selection and network estimation. Our approach is a unified and integrated method that can simultaneously identify important variables and build a network among them. We develop our approach under a semiparametric kernel machine regression framework, which can allow for the possibility that each variable might be nonlinear and is likely to interact with each other in a complicated way. We demonstrate our approach using simulation studies and real application on genetic pathway analysis.

Lastly, for the third project, we propose a Bayesian focal-area detection method for a multi-class dynamic model under a Bayesian hierarchical framework. Two-step Bayesian sequential procedures are developed to estimate patterns and detect focal intervals, which can be used for gas chromatography. We demonstrate the performance of our proposed method using a simulation study and real application on gas chromatography on Fast Odor Chromatographic Sniffer (FOX) system.