Refs:

• Ziefler - Randomization & Bootstrap Methods using R (2011)

• Allen Downey - There is only One Test (post 1, post 2, youtube)

## Introduction

Downey talks how the standard statistical tests can be seen as analytical solutions of simplified problems back when simulation was not available in pre-computer times.

When we can rely on simulation, we can follow the method presented in this diagram:

Herein, the observed effect $$\delta^*$$ is the value computed by a chosen test statistic over the observed data.

The null hypothesis $$H_0$$ is the model asserting the observed effect $$\delta^*$$ was due to chance.

The test statistic is a chosen measure of the difference between the data (either observed or simulated) with respect to $$H_0$$.

The probability we which to compute is $$P(\delta^* | H_0)$$. If $$P(\delta^* | H_0)$$ is small, it suggests that the effect is probably real and not due to chance.

The Monte Carlo p-value (this is similar but not equal to the standard p-value of Frequentist Statistics) is the probability of having effect $$\delta^*$$ or something more extreme under the assumption that $$H_0$$ holds, ie, $$p(\delta^* \text{or more extreme effects} | H_0)$$. Ie, it is the ratio of effects as extreme as the number observed effect, $$r$$, over the total number of simulated effects, $$n$$. This proportion tends to under-estimate the p-value, so Davison & Hinkley propose the following correction:

$\text{MC p-value} = \frac{r+1}{n+1}$

The next R function codes this:

compute.p.value <- function(results, observed.effect, precision=3) {

# n = #experiences
n <- length(results)
# r = #replications at least as extreme as observed effect
r <- sum(abs(results) >= observed.effect)
# compute Monte Carlo p-value with correction (Davison & Hinkley, 1997)
list(mc.p.value=round((r+1)/(n+1), precision), r=r, n=n)
}

Therefore, the procedure consists of:

1. Define the Null Hypothesis $$H_0$$ (assume the effect was due to chance)
2. Choose a test statistic measurement
3. Create a stochastic model of $$H_0$$ in order to produce simulated data
4. Produce simulated data
5. compute the MC p-value and assess $$H_0$$

The simulation assumes all data permutations are equally probable under $$H_0$$ (ie, exchangeability)

If the simulation cannot be done - because it’s too slow -, we must search for analytic shortcuts or other methods (but beware of their own simplifying assumptions).

Before we see some egs, let’s add the next function to present the results in a histogram format:

present_results <- function(results, observed.effect,  label="") {

lst <- compute.p.value(results, observed.effect)

hist(results, breaks=50, prob=T, main=label,
sub=paste0("MC p-value for H0: ", lst$mc.p.value), xlab=paste("found", lst$r, "as extreme effects for", lst$n, "replications")) abline(v=observed.effect, lty=2, col="red") } ### Example 1 - Replacing t-tests Let’s see this technique used to perform a permutation test that replaces a t-test (eg taken from this youtube lecture): data <- list(experiment = c(27,20,21,26,27,31,24,21,20,19,23,24,28,19,24,29,18,20,17,31,20,25,28,21,27), control = c(21,22,15,12,21,16,19,15,22,24,19,23,13,22,20,24,18,20)) Our $$H_0$$ model assumes that the data of both experiment and control are equal. The entire data will be resampled to produce artificial datasets to be compared with the real data; this is the stocasthic model following $$H_0$$. According to $$H_0$$ there’s no problem in mixing experiment and control. The function resampling performs permutation tests on experiment/control datasets (it can be used on other egs): resampling <- function(n, data, test.statistic) { all.data <- c(data$experiment, data$control) # get n random permutations of indexes with experiment size permutations <- replicate(n, sample(1:length(all.data), length(data$experiment)))

# apply the test statistics for each permutation, and return all results
apply(permutations, 2, function(permutation) {
# all.data[ permutation] is a sample experiment
# all.data[-permutation] is a sample control
test.statistic(all.data[permutation], all.data[-permutation])
})
}

We must also choose a test statistic.

We’ll pick two test statistics to check two different hypothesis:

• check if is there a difference of means, ie, is the experience an improvement over the control data? (herein, a higher value is better). Which is to ask if under the Null Hypothesis Model, $$H_0$$, what is the probability that the effect was due to chance?

• check if the variances of both datasets are the same

diff.means <- function(x,y) mean(x) - mean(y)
diff.vars  <- function(x,y) var(x)  - var(y)  

Now we apply the simulation and present the results:

n.resamplings <- 1e4

stats <- resampling(n.resamplings, data, diff.means)
present_results(stats, diff.means(data$experiment, data$control),
label="Difference of Means")

stats <- resampling(n.resamplings, data, diff.vars)
present_results(stats, diff.vars(data$experiment, data$control),
label="Difference of Variance")

So our conclusion, concerning the difference of means, is that $$H_0$$ has strong evidence against it, ie, the observed effect is most probably not due to chance.

Regarding the difference of variance, the simulation favors $$H_0$$, ie, the difference of variances is probably due to chance.

### Example 2 - Replacing $$\chi^2$$-tests

Suppose you run a casino and you suspect that a customer has replaced a die provided by the casino with a crooked die’’; that is, one that has been tampered with to make one of the faces more likely to come up than the others. You apprehend the alleged cheater and confiscate the die, but now you have to prove that it is crooked. You roll the die 60 times and get the following results:

value frequency
1 1 8.00
2 2 9.00
3 3 19.00
4 4 6.00
5 5 8.00
6 6 10.00

What is the probability of seeing results like this by chance? – ref

observed <- c(8,9,19,6,8,10)

data <- list(observed = observed,
expected = rep(round(sum(observed)/6),6)) # the most probable result

Our chosen $$H_0$$ states that the dice is fair.

The test statistic is $$\chi^2$$:

The chi-squared test is used to determine whether there is a significant difference between the expected frequencies and the observed frequencies in one or more categories – wikipedia

chiSquared <- function(expected, observed) {
sum((observed-expected)^2/expected)
}

Let’s produce the stochastic model for $$H_0$$:

resampling <- function(n, data, test.statistic) {

n.throws <- sum(data$observed) get_throws <- function() { throws <- c(1:6,sample(1:6, n.throws, rep=TRUE)) # add 1:6 to prevent zeros as.numeric(table(throws)) - 1 # -1 removes those extra } samples <- replicate(n, get_throws()) # get n dice frequency throws apply(samples, 2, function(a.sample) {test.statistic(data$expected, a.sample)})
}

Now we are ready to perform the simulation:

n.resamplings <- 1e4
stats <- resampling(n.resamplings, data, chiSquared)
present_results(stats, chiSquared(data$expected, data$observed))

There are some evidence that the dice might not be fair.

We can check another test statistic, say chiModule (sum the absolute differences instead of summing the squares). While there is no analytic solution, and so no classical test, here we just need to replace the test statistic chiSquared with this one:

chiModule <- function(expected, observed) {
sum(abs(observed-expected)/expected)
}

stats <- resampling(n.resamplings, data, chiModule)
present_results(stats, chiModule(data$expected, data$observed))

This is an expected result, since the module does not punish extreme values as the square version does. This means that the 19’s threes are not so important here. That’s why this second simulation is not that certain about rejecting $$H_0$$.

## Bootstrap

The basic idea of bootstrapping is that inference about a population from sample data (sample -> population) can be modeled by resampling the sample data and performing inference on (resample -> sample). As the population is unknown, the true error in a sample statistic against its population value is unknowable. In bootstrap resamples, the ‘population’ is in fact the sample, and this is known; hence the quality of inference from resample data -> ‘true’ sample is measurable – wikipedia

The bootstrap uses Monte Carlo simulations to resample many datasets based on the original data. These resamples are used to study the variation of a given test statistic.

The bootstrap assumes that the different samples from the observed data are independent of one another.

Here’s a simple eg: one knows a sample of size 30 from a population with $$\mathcal{N}(0,1)$$ distribution. In practice we don’t know the population distribution (otherwise, the bootstrap would not be needed), but let’s assume that in order to compare results. Say, we wish to find out about the variation of its mean:

set.seed(333)
my.sample <- rnorm(30)

test.statistic <- mean
n.resamplings  <- 5e4

# execute bootstrap (resamplig from just the original sample):
boot.samples <- replicate(n.resamplings, test.statistic(sample(my.sample, replace=TRUE)))
# compare it with samples taken from the population:
real.samples <- replicate(n.resamplings, test.statistic(sample(rnorm(30), replace=TRUE)))

plot( density(real.samples), ylim=c(0,2.5), main="mean distributions")
lines(density(boot.samples), col="red")
abline(v=0, lty=2) # true value
legend("topright", c("from population", "from bootstrap", "true mean"), col=c(1,2,1), lty=c(1,1,2))

This can also be done with the boot package (more info):

library(boot)

# boot() needs a function applying the statistic to the original data over i, a vector of indexes
f <- function(data,i) { test.statistic(data[i]) }

boot.stat    <- boot(my.sample, f, n.resamplings)
boot.samples <- boot.stat$t # recover the bootstrap samples boot.ci(boot.stat) # compute confidence intervals ## BOOTSTRAP CONFIDENCE INTERVAL CALCULATIONS ## Based on 50000 bootstrap replicates ## ## CALL : ## boot.ci(boot.out = boot.stat) ## ## Intervals : ## Level Normal Basic ## 95% (-0.3822, 0.3421 ) (-0.3830, 0.3448 ) ## ## Level Percentile BCa ## 95% (-0.3837, 0.3442 ) (-0.3876, 0.3392 ) ## Calculations and Intervals on Original Scale ### Bayesian Bootstrap In standard bootstrapping observations are sampled with replacement. This implies that observation weights follow multinomial distribution. In Bayesian bootstrap multinomial distribution is replaced by Dirichlet distribution – ref library(gtools) # use: rdirichlet set.seed(333) n.resamplings <- 1000 mean.bb <- function(x, n) { apply( rdirichlet(n, rep(1, length(x))), 1, weighted.mean, x = x ) } boot.bayes <- mean.bb(my.sample, n.resamplings) plot(density(real.samples), ylim=c(0,2.5)) lines(density(boot.bayes), col="red") quantile(boot.bayes, c(0.025, 0.975)) # find credible intervals ## 2.5% 97.5% ## -0.370165 0.331055 (Rubin (1981) introduced the Bayesian bootstrap. In contrast to the frequentist bootstrap which simulates the sampling distribution of a statistic estimating a parameter, the Bayesian bootstrap simulates the posterior distribution. The data, X, are assumed to be independent and identically distributed (IID), and to be a representative sample of the larger (bootstrapped) population. Given that the data has N rows in one bootstrap replication, the row weights are sampled from a Dirichlet distribution with all N concentration parameters equal to 1 (a uniform distribution over an open standard N-1 simplex). The distributions of a parameter inferred from considering many samples of weights are interpretable as posterior distributions on that parameter – LaplacesDemon helpfile ### Using bayesboot This package from Rasmus Baath implements a Bayesian bootstrapping described here: library(bayesboot) boot.bayes2 <- bayesboot(my.sample, test.statistic) plot(density(real.samples), ylim=c(0,2.5)) lines(density(boot.bayes2$V1), col="red")

summary(boot.bayes2)
## Bayesian bootstrap
##
## Number of posterior draws: 4000
##
## Summary of the posterior (with 95% Highest Density Intervals):
##  statistic        mean        sd    hdi.low hdi.high
##         V1 -0.02366064 0.1829075 -0.3882545 0.325694
##
## Quantiles:
##  statistic      q2.5%       q25%      median       q75%    q97.5%
##         V1 -0.3846715 -0.1452675 -0.02108793 0.09834785 0.3320632
##
## Call:
##  bayesboot(data = my.sample, statistic = test.statistic)

To compare a statistic between two groups, we bootstrap each and compute the difference to calculate the posterior difference (eg from here):

# Heights of the last ten American presidents in cm (Kennedy to Obama).
heights <- c(183, 192, 182, 183, 177, 185, 188, 188, 182, 185)

# The heights of opponents of American presidents (first time they were elected).
# From Richard Nixon to John McCain
heights_opponents <- c(182, 180, 180, 183, 177, 173, 188, 185, 175)

# Running the Bayesian bootstrap for both datasets
b_presidents <- bayesboot(heights,           test.statistic)
b_opponents  <- bayesboot(heights_opponents, test.statistic)

# Calculating the posterior difference and converting back to a
# bayesboot object for pretty plotting.
b_diff <- as.bayesboot(b_presidents - b_opponents)
plot(b_diff)

It seems the presidential winner tends to have more height than his opponent.

### Example 1 - Obtaining a Confidence Interval

Let’s use the same data as in the first eg:

data <- list(experiment = c(27,20,21,26,27,31,24,21,20,19,23,24,28,19,24,29,18,20,17,31,20,25,28,21,27),
control    = c(21,22,15,12,21,16,19,15,22,24,19,23,13,22,20,24,18,20))

This next resampling function selects bootstrap samples from the data and produces a population of difference of means.

resampling <- function(n, data, test.statistic) {

size.experiment <- length(data$experiment) size.control <- length(data$control)

one.bootstrap <- function() {
boot.experiment <- sample(data$experiment, size.experiment, replace=TRUE) boot.control <- sample(data$control,    size.control,    replace=TRUE)
test.statistic(boot.experiment, boot.control)
}

replicate(n, one.bootstrap())
}

Now let’s execute the bootstrap and reuse the previous present_results. Notice that now the shown Monte Carlo p-value does not make sense in this context, and should be around $$50%$$, ie, the observed difference of means should be around the median of the bootstrap empirical distribution:

n.resamplings <- 1e4
stats <- resampling(n.resamplings, data, diff.means)
present_results(stats, diff.means(data$experiment, data$control))

quantile(x=stats, probs = c(.025,.975)) # 95% confidence interval
##     2.5%    97.5%
## 2.159944 6.660111

Concerning the confidence interval, since zero is not included, we could say that $$H_0$$ - ie, the difference of means is due to chance - is not backed by evidence.

Let’s compare the bootstrap’s confidence interval with the classic t-test and the bayesian approach:

# Using the t-test should produce similar results
t.test(data$experiment, data$control)$conf.int ## [1] 1.957472 6.798084 ## attr(,"conf.level") ## [1] 0.95 # Using the bayesian version of the t-test # devtools::install_github("rasmusab/bayesian_first_aid") library(BayesianFirstAid) bayes.t.test(data$experiment, data$control, n.iter=1e4)  ## ## Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test (BEST) - two sample ## ## data: data$experiment (n = 25) and data$control (n = 18) ## ## Estimates [95% credible interval] ## mean of data$experiment: 24 [22, 25]
## mean of data$control: 19 [17, 21] ## difference of the means: 4.2 [1.6, 6.8] ## sd of data$experiment: 4.2 [3.1, 5.7]
## sd of data$control: 3.8 [2.5, 5.4] ## ## The difference of the means is greater than 0 by a probability of 0.999 ## and less than 0 by a probability of 0.001 Or using bayesboot package: library(bayesboot) experiment.means <- bayesboot(data$experiment, mean, R=1e4)
control.means    <- bayesboot(data$control, mean, R=1e4) stats <- (experiment.means - control.means)$V1
quantile(x=stats, probs = c(.025,.975)) # 95% confidence interval
##     2.5%    97.5%
## 2.226231 6.617550
present_results(stats, diff.means(data$experiment, data$control))

If we wish to compute the MC p-value we could consider the entire data, bootstrap it, and then split the simulated data accordingly to the sizes of the experiment and control datasets before applying the chosen test statistic:

resampling <- function(n, data, test.statistic) {

all.data        <- c(data$experiment, data$control)
size.all.data   <- length(all.data)
size.experiment <- length(data$experiment) one.bootstrap <- function() { boot.all.data <- sample(all.data, size.all.data, replace=TRUE) test.statistic(boot.all.data[1:size.experiment], # split bootstrap data boot.all.data[(size.experiment+1):size.all.data]) } replicate(n, one.bootstrap()) } Now, the Monte Carlo p-value makes sense. The bootstrap procedure mirrors the difference of means between the observed experiment and control data: n.resamplings <- 1e4 stats <- resampling(n.resamplings, data, diff.means) present_results(stats, diff.means(data$experiment, data\$control))