2012/03/27 by Shuyuan He, He, Shuyuan, Wei Liang +6
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Mathematics · #FOS: Mathematics #Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock #Primary 62H99 #Secondary 62H05 #Statistical Methods and Bayesian Inference #Statistical Methods and Inference #Statistics Theory (math.ST) #math.ST #msc:62H05 #msc:62H99 #stat.TH
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1203.5955
arxiv created 2012/03/27 · openalex publication_date 2012/03/27 · arxiv updated 2012/03/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper considers the empirical likelihood (EL) construction of confidence intervals for a linear functional based on right censored lifetime data. Many of the results in literature show that log EL has a limiting scaled chi-square distribution, where the scale parameter is a function of the unknown asymptotic variance. The scale parameter has to be estimated for the construction. Additional estimation would reduce the coverage accuracy for the parameter. This diminishes a main advantage of the EL method for censored data. By utilizing certain influence functions in an estimating equation, it is shown that under very general conditions, log EL converges weakly to a standard chi-square distribution and thereby eliminates the need for estimating the scale parameter. Moreover, a special way of employing influence functions eases the otherwise very demanding computations of the EL method. Our approach yields smaller asymptotic variance of the influence function than those comparable ones considered by Wang and Jing (2001) and Qin and Zhao (2007). Thus it is not surprising that confidence intervals using influence functions give a better coverage accuracy as demonstrated by simulations.