The unitquantreg R package provide efficient tools for
estimation and inference in parametric quantile regression models for
bounded data.
The current version of unitquantreg has 11 probability
distributions available for user choice. The Table above lists the
families of distributions, their abbreviations and the paper
reference.
| Family | Abbreviation | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| arc-secant hyperbolic Weibull | ashw | Korkmaz et al. (2021) |
| Johnson-SB | johnsonsb | Johnson (1949) |
| Kumaraswamy | kum | Kumaraswamy, (1980) |
| log-extended Exponential-Geometric | leeg | Jodrá and Jiménez-Gamero (2020) |
| unit-Birnbaum-Saunders | ubs | Mazucheli, et al. (2021) |
| unit-Burr-XII | uburrxii | Korkmaz and Chesneau (2021) |
| unit-Chen | uchen | Korkmaz, et al. (2020) |
| unit-Generalized Half-Normal-E | ughne | Korkmaz MÇ (2020) |
| unit-Generalized Half-Normal-X | ughnx | New |
| unit-Gompertz | ugompertz | Mazucheli et al. (2019) |
| unit-Gumbel | ugumbel | New |
| unit-Logistic | ulogistic | Tadikamalla and Johnson (1982) |
| unit-Weibull | uweibull | Mazucheli, et al. (2018) |
The [dpqr]’s functions of the distributions are
vectorized and implemented in C++. The log likelihood,
score and hessian functions are also implemented in C++ in
order to guarantee more computational efficiency.
The parameter estimation and inference are performed under the
frequentist paradigm. Maximization of the log-likelihood function is
done by optimization techniques available in the R through
the optimx
package, which is a general-purpose optimization wrapper function that
allows the use of several R tools for optimization,
including the existing stats::optim() function. To achieve
quick and better convergence the analytical score function is use during
the maximization. Also, standard errors of parameter estimates are
computed using the analytical hessian matrix.
The unitquantreg package is built around the
unitquantreg() function which perform the fit of parametric
quantile regression models via likelihood method. The
unitquantreg() function has standard arguments as
stats::glm() function, and they are as follows:
#> function (formula, data, subset, na.action, tau, family, link = c("logit",
#> "probit", "cloglog", "cauchit"), link.theta = c("identity",
#> "log", "sqrt"), start = NULL, control = unitquantreg.control(),
#> model = TRUE, x = FALSE, y = TRUE)
#> NULL
The formula argument use the concept of Formula
package allows multiple parts on the right-hand side, which indicates
regression structure for the quantile and shape parameter of the
distribution. For instance, formula = y ~ x1 | z1 means the
following regression structure
\[ g_1(\mu) = \beta_0 + \beta_1\,x_1 \quad \textrm{and} \quad g_2(\theta) = \gamma_0 + \gamma_1\,z_1 \] where \(\mu\) indicates the quantile of order \(\tau\) and \(\theta\) is the shape parameter.
The tau argument indicates the quantile(s) to be
estimated, being possible to specify a vector of quantiles.
family argument specify the distribution family using the
abbreviation of dpqr functions, listed in Table above.
The control argument controls the fitting process
through the unitquantreg.control() function which returned
a list and the default values are:
unlist(unitquantreg.control())
#> method hessian gradient
#> "BFGS" "FALSE" "TRUE"
#> maxit reltol factr
#> "5000" "1.49011611938477e-08" "1e+07"
#> trace dowarn starttests
#> "0" "FALSE" "FALSE"
#> fnscale
#> "1"The two most important arguments are hessian and
gradient which tell the optimx::optimx()
whether it should use the numerical hessian matrix and the analytical
score vector, respectively. That is, if hessian = TRUE,
then the standard errors are computed using the numerical hessian
matrix. For detailed description of other arguments see the package
documentation.
The unitquanreg() function returns an object of class
unitquanreg if the argument tau is scalar or
unitquanregs if tau is a vector. The currently
methods implemented for unitquantreg objects are:
methods(class = "unitquantreg")
#> [1] coef confint fitted hnp logLik
#> [6] model.frame model.matrix plot predict print
#> [11] residuals summary terms update vcov
#> see '?methods' for accessing help and source codeAnd for the unitquantregs objects are
methods(class = "unitquantregs")
#> [1] plot print summary
#> see '?methods' for accessing help and source codeIt is important to mention that the unitquantregs
objects consists of a list with unitquantreg objects for
according to the vector of tau.
Furthermore, the package provide functions designated for model
comparison between uniquantreg objects. Particularly,
likelihood_stats() function computes
likelihood-based statistics (Neg2LogLike, AIC, BIC and HQIC),
vuong.test() function performs Vuong test between
two fitted non nested models,
pairwise.vuong.test() function performs pairwise
Vuong test with adjusted p-value according to
stats::p.adjust.methods between fitted models
Finally, uniquantreg objects also permits use the
inference methods functions lmtest::coeftest(),
lmtest::coefci, lmtest::coefci,
lmtest::waldtest and lmtest::lrtest
implemented in lmtest
to perform hypothesis test, confidence intervals for nested
models.
Next, a detailed account of the usage of all these functions is provided.
As in Mazucheli
et al. (2020) consider the data set related to the access of people
in households with piped water supply in the cities of Brazil from the
Southeast and Northeast regions. The response variable
phpws is the proportion of households with piped water
supply. The covariates are:
mhdi: human development index.
incpc: per capita income.
region: 0 for southeast, 1 for northeast.
pop: population.
data(water)
head(water)
#> phpws mhdi incpc region pop
#> 1 0.8957 0.672 438.56 1 104047
#> 2 0.6777 0.529 149.78 1 5905
#> 3 0.8673 0.500 172.55 1 11581
#> 4 0.7363 0.573 209.27 1 21851
#> 5 0.7726 0.513 179.92 1 23952
#> 6 0.8824 0.549 164.24 1 11063Assuming the following regression structure for the parameters: \[ \textrm{logit}(\mu_i) = \beta_0 + \beta_1 \texttt{mhdi}_{i1} + \beta_2 \texttt{incp}_{i2} + \beta_3 \texttt{region}_{i3} + \beta_4 \log\left(\texttt{pop}_{i4}\right), \] and \[ \log(\theta_i) = \gamma_0. \] for \(i = 1, \ldots, 3457\).
For \(\tau = 0.5\), that is, the median regression model we fitted for all families of distributions as follows:
lt_families <- list("unit-Weibull" = "uweibull",
"Kumaraswamy" = "kum",
"unit-Logistic" = "ulogistic",
"unit-Birnbaum-Saunders" = "ubs",
"log-extended Exponential-Geometric" = "leeg",
"unit-Chen" = "uchen",
"unit-Generalized Half-Normal-E" = "ughne",
"unit-Generalized Half-Normal-X" = "ughnx",
"unit-Gompertz" = "ugompertz",
"Johnson-SB" = "johnsonsb",
"unit-Burr-XII" = "uburrxii",
"arc-secant hyperbolic Weibull" = "ashw",
"unit-Gumbel" = "ugumbel")
lt_fits <- lapply(lt_families, function(fam) {
unitquantreg(formula = phpws ~ mhdi + incpc + region + log(pop),
data = water, tau = 0.5, family = fam, link = "logit",
link.theta = "log")
})
t(sapply(lt_fits, coef))
#> (Intercept) mhdi incpc
#> unit-Weibull -6.514485 11.826177 2.600473e-04
#> Kumaraswamy -1.625951 4.843166 2.111029e-03
#> unit-Logistic -5.365469 10.508100 1.559636e-03
#> unit-Birnbaum-Saunders -6.556648 13.723681 6.499360e-04
#> log-extended Exponential-Geometric -4.712735 9.142144 1.928040e-03
#> unit-Chen -8.098012 13.560938 -6.162645e-05
#> unit-Generalized Half-Normal-E -6.598061 11.731146 -1.037014e-04
#> unit-Generalized Half-Normal-X -5.035562 13.186081 1.580614e-03
#> unit-Gompertz -6.260194 11.719934 4.103341e-04
#> Johnson-SB -5.993763 11.803290 1.144566e-03
#> unit-Burr-XII -5.811837 11.043123 3.777215e-04
#> arc-secant hyperbolic Weibull -7.363838 12.705584 7.957473e-05
#> unit-Gumbel -9.338592 14.990026 -5.503130e-04
#> region log(pop) log(theta)
#> unit-Weibull -0.26990871 0.10546762 0.17249694
#> Kumaraswamy -0.07860323 -0.04727081 1.75778137
#> unit-Logistic -0.15826000 0.01773368 0.63005907
#> unit-Birnbaum-Saunders -0.18081222 -0.02300195 0.00832919
#> log-extended Exponential-Geometric -0.18882479 0.02252007 1.68797084
#> unit-Chen -0.48153890 0.19218762 -0.25568492
#> unit-Generalized Half-Normal-E -0.37220694 0.14224250 -0.18418543
#> unit-Generalized Half-Normal-X -0.16993805 -0.18341181 -0.38141377
#> unit-Gompertz -0.23932329 0.09146941 -5.42477111
#> Johnson-SB -0.19500756 0.01823070 0.01748328
#> unit-Burr-XII -0.19140000 0.07565710 0.28322367
#> arc-secant hyperbolic Weibull -0.38168564 0.14972053 0.72098495
#> unit-Gumbel -0.62080389 0.25058612 -0.26073820Let’s check the likelihood-based statistics of fit
likelihood_stats(lt = lt_fits)
#>
#> Likelihood-based statistics of fit for unit quantile regression models
#>
#> Call: likelihood_stats(lt = lt_fits)
#>
#> Neg2LogLike AIC BIC HQIC
#> unit-Logistic -8443.029 -8431.029 -8394.140 -8417.855
#> Johnson-SB -8238.405 -8226.405 -8189.516 -8213.232
#> unit-Burr-XII -8096.114 -8084.114 -8047.225 -8070.941
#> unit-Weibull -7994.077 -7982.077 -7945.188 -7968.903
#> unit-Birnbaum-Saunders -7955.990 -7943.990 -7907.101 -7930.817
#> unit-Gompertz -7808.838 -7796.838 -7759.949 -7783.664
#> arc-secant hyperbolic Weibull -7679.482 -7667.482 -7630.593 -7654.308
#> log-extended Exponential-Geometric -7677.034 -7665.034 -7628.145 -7651.860
#> unit-Generalized Half-Normal-E -7496.966 -7484.966 -7448.077 -7471.792
#> Kumaraswamy -7188.498 -7176.498 -7139.609 -7163.324
#> unit-Chen -7016.542 -7004.542 -6967.653 -6991.368
#> unit-Generalized Half-Normal-X -6965.962 -6953.962 -6917.073 -6940.789
#> unit-Gumbel -6531.775 -6519.775 -6482.886 -6506.602According to the statistics the unit-Logistic, Johnson-SB, unit-Burr-XII and unit-Weibull were the best models. Now, let’s perform the pairwise vuong test to check if there is statistical significant difference between the four models.
lt_chosen <- lt_fits[c("unit-Logistic", "Johnson-SB", "unit-Burr-XII", "unit-Weibull")]
pairwise.vuong.test(lt = lt_chosen)
#>
#> Pairwise comparisons using Vuong likelihood ratio test for non-nested models
#>
#> data: unitquantreg(formula = phpws ~ mhdi + incpc + region + log(pop),
#> data = water, tau = 0.5, family = fam, link = "logit", link.theta = "log")
#>
#> unit-Logistic Johnson-SB unit-Burr-XII
#> Johnson-SB 0.00031 - -
#> unit-Burr-XII 3.9e-07 0.09659 -
#> unit-Weibull 8.8e-11 0.00013 0.04868
#>
#> P value adjustment method: holmThe adjusted p-values of pairwise Vuong tests shows that there is a large statistical significance difference between the models. In particular, the pairwise comparison between unit-Logistic and the other models provide a smaller p-values, indicating that the unit-Logistic median regression model is the most suitable model for this data set comparing to the others families of distributions.
It is possible to check model assumptions from diagnostic plots using
the plot() function method for unitquantreg
objects. The residuals() method provides
quantile, cox-snell, working and
partial residuals type. The randomize quantile residuals is
the default choice of plot() method.
oldpar <- par(no.readonly = TRUE)
par(mfrow = c(2, 2))
plot(lt_fits[["unit-Logistic"]])par(oldpar)Plots of the residuals against the fitted linear predictor and the residuals against indices of observations are the tools for diagnostic analysis to check the structural form of the model. Two features of the plots are important:
Trends: Any trends appearing in these plots indicate that the systematic component can be improved. This could mean changing the link function, adding extra explanatory variables, or transforming the explanatory variables.
Constant variation: If the random component is correct then the variance of the points is approximately constant.
Working residuals versus linear predictor is used to check possible misspecification of link function and Half-normal plot of residuals to check distribution assumption.
Another best practice in diagnostic analysis is to inspect the (Half)-Normal plots with simulated envelope for several quantile value. This is done to obtain a more robust evaluation of the model assumptions. Thus, let’s fit the unit-Logistic quantile regression model for various quantiles.
system.time(
fits_ulogistic <- unitquantreg(formula = phpws ~ mhdi + incpc + region + log(pop),
data = water, tau = 1:49/50,
family = "ulogistic", link = "logit",
link.theta = "log"))
#> user system elapsed
#> 7.957 0.000 7.957Now, we can check the (Half)-Normal plots using the output of
hnp() method.
library(ggplot2)
get_data <- function(obj) {
tmp <- hnp(obj, halfnormal = FALSE, plot = FALSE, nsim = 10)
tmp <- as.data.frame(do.call("cbind", tmp))
tmp$tau <- as.character(obj$tau)
tmp
}
chosen_taus <- c("0.02", "0.5", "0.98")
df_plot <- do.call("rbind", lapply(fits_ulogistic[chosen_taus], get_data))
df_plot$tau <- paste0(expression(tau), " == ", df_plot$tau)
ggplot(df_plot, aes(x = teo, y = obs)) +
facet_wrap(~tau, labeller = label_parsed) +
geom_point(shape = 3, size = 1.4) +
geom_line(aes(y = median), linetype = "dashed") +
geom_line(aes(y = lower), col = "#0080ff") +
geom_line(aes(y = upper), col = "#0080ff") +
theme_bw() +
labs(x = "Theoretical quantiles", y = "Randomized quantile residuals") +
scale_x_continuous(breaks = seq(-3, 3, by = 1)) +
scale_y_continuous(breaks = seq(-3, 3, by = 1)) +
theme_bw() +
theme(text = element_text(size = 16, family = "Palatino"),
panel.grid.minor = element_blank())Inference results about the parameter estimates can be accessed
through the summary method. For instance,
summary(lt_fits[["unit-Logistic"]])
#>
#> Wald-tests for unit-Logistic quantile regression model
#>
#> Call: unitquantreg(formula = phpws ~ mhdi + incpc + region + log(pop),
#> data = water, tau = 0.5, family = fam, link = "logit", link.theta = "log")
#>
#> Mu coefficients: (quantile model with logit link and tau = 0.5):
#> Estimate Std. Error Z value Pr(>|z|)
#> (Intercept) -5.3654690 0.3373263 -15.906 < 2e-16 ***
#> mhdi 10.5080995 0.5717793 18.378 < 2e-16 ***
#> incpc 0.0015596 0.0001706 9.140 < 2e-16 ***
#> region -0.1582600 0.0488825 -3.238 0.00121 **
#> log(pop) 0.0177337 0.0167306 1.060 0.28917
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#>
#> Model with constant shape:
#> Estimate Std. Error Z value Pr(>|z|)
#> log(theta) 0.63006 0.01421 44.35 <2e-16 ***
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#>
#> Residual degrees of freedom: 3451
#> Log-likelihood: 4221.514
#> Number of iterations: 65For unitquantregs objects the plot method
provide a convenience to check the significance as well as the effect of
estimate along the specify quantile value.
plot(fits_ulogistic, which = "coef")Curiously, the unit-Logistic quantile regression models capture
constant effect for all covariates along the different quantiles. In
contrast, the unit-Weibull model (the fourth best model) found a
decrease effect of mhdi covaraite on the response as the
quantile increases and increase effects of incpc and
region on the response variable as the quantile
increases.
system.time(
fits_uweibull <- unitquantreg(formula = phpws ~ mhdi + incpc + region + log(pop),
data = water, tau = 1:49/50,
family = "uweibull", link = "logit",
link.theta = "log"))
#> user system elapsed
#> 8.719 0.000 8.720
plot(fits_uweibull, which = "coef")Using the plot() method with argument
which = "conddist" for unitquantregs objects
it is possible to estimate and visualize the conditional distribution of
a response variable at different values of covariates. For instance,
lt_data <- list(mhdi = c(0.5, 0.7), incpc = round(mean(water$incpc)),
region = c(1, 0), pop = round(mean(water$pop)))
plot(fits_ulogistic, which = "conddist", at_obs = lt_data, at_avg = FALSE,
dist_type = "density")plot(fits_ulogistic, which = "conddist", at_obs = lt_data, at_avg = FALSE,
dist_type = "cdf")sessionInfo()
#> R version 4.3.0 (2023-04-21)
#> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
#> Running under: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
#>
#> Matrix products: default
#> BLAS: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.9.0
#> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.9.0
#>
#> locale:
#> [1] LC_CTYPE=en_IE.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C
#> [3] LC_TIME=en_IE.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=C
#> [5] LC_MONETARY=en_IE.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_IE.UTF-8
#> [7] LC_PAPER=en_IE.UTF-8 LC_NAME=C
#> [9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C
#> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_IE.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
#>
#> time zone: Europe/Dublin
#> tzcode source: system (glibc)
#>
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
#>
#> other attached packages:
#> [1] ggplot2_3.4.2 unitquantreg_0.0.6
#>
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#> [1] sass_0.4.6 utf8_1.2.3 generics_0.1.3
#> [4] lattice_0.21-8 pracma_2.4.2 digest_0.6.31
#> [7] magrittr_2.0.3 evaluate_0.21 grid_4.3.0
#> [10] fastmap_1.1.1 jsonlite_1.8.4 Matrix_1.6-1
#> [13] Formula_1.2-5 survival_3.5-5 fansi_1.0.4
#> [16] scales_1.2.1 codetools_0.2-19 numDeriv_2016.8-1.1
#> [19] jquerylib_0.1.4 cli_3.6.1 rlang_1.1.1
#> [22] munsell_0.5.0 splines_4.3.0 withr_2.5.0
#> [25] cachem_1.0.8 yaml_2.3.7 tools_4.3.0
#> [28] SparseM_1.81 MatrixModels_0.5-2 nloptr_2.0.3
#> [31] dplyr_1.1.2 colorspace_2.1-0 optimx_2023-8.13
#> [34] vctrs_0.6.2 R6_2.5.1 lifecycle_1.0.3
#> [37] MASS_7.3-59 pkgconfig_2.0.3 bslib_0.4.2
#> [40] pillar_1.9.0 gtable_0.3.3 glue_1.6.2
#> [43] Rcpp_1.0.10 xfun_0.39 tibble_3.2.1
#> [46] tidyselect_1.2.0 highr_0.10 rstudioapi_0.14
#> [49] knitr_1.42 farver_2.1.1 htmltools_0.5.5
#> [52] rmarkdown_2.21 compiler_4.3.0 quantreg_5.96