{"title":"Conditional Distribution Function Estimation Using Neural Networks for Censored and Uncensored Data.","authors":"Bingqing Hu, Bin Nan","doi":"","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Most work in neural networks focuses on estimating the conditional mean of a continuous response variable given a set of covariates. In this article, we consider estimating the conditional distribution function using neural networks for both censored and uncensored data. The algorithm is built upon the data structure particularly constructed for the Cox regression with time-dependent covariates. Without imposing any model assumptions, we consider a loss function that is based on the full likelihood where the conditional hazard function is the only unknown nonparametric parameter, for which unconstrained optimization methods can be applied. Through simulation studies, we show that the proposed method possesses desirable performance, whereas the partial likelihood method and the traditional neural networks with <math><mrow><msub><mi>L</mi><mn>2</mn></msub></mrow></math> loss yields biased estimates when model assumptions are violated. We further illustrate the proposed method with several real-world data sets. The implementation of the proposed methods is made available at https://github.com/bingqing0729/NNCDE.</p>","PeriodicalId":50161,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Machine Learning Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10798802/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Machine Learning Research","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AUTOMATION & CONTROL SYSTEMS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Most work in neural networks focuses on estimating the conditional mean of a continuous response variable given a set of covariates. In this article, we consider estimating the conditional distribution function using neural networks for both censored and uncensored data. The algorithm is built upon the data structure particularly constructed for the Cox regression with time-dependent covariates. Without imposing any model assumptions, we consider a loss function that is based on the full likelihood where the conditional hazard function is the only unknown nonparametric parameter, for which unconstrained optimization methods can be applied. Through simulation studies, we show that the proposed method possesses desirable performance, whereas the partial likelihood method and the traditional neural networks with loss yields biased estimates when model assumptions are violated. We further illustrate the proposed method with several real-world data sets. The implementation of the proposed methods is made available at https://github.com/bingqing0729/NNCDE.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) provides an international forum for the electronic and paper publication of high-quality scholarly articles in all areas of machine learning. All published papers are freely available online.
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formalization of new learning tasks (e.g., in the context of new applications) and of methods for assessing performance on those tasks;
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