VCBART: Bayesian trees for varying coefficients

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Deshpande, Sameer K., Bai, Ray, Balocchi, Cecilia, Starling, Jennifer E., Weiss, Jordan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2020
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author Deshpande, Sameer K.
Bai, Ray
Balocchi, Cecilia
Starling, Jennifer E.
Weiss, Jordan
author_facet Deshpande, Sameer K.
Bai, Ray
Balocchi, Cecilia
Starling, Jennifer E.
Weiss, Jordan
contents The linear varying coefficient models posits a linear relationship between an outcome and covariates in which the covariate effects are modeled as functions of additional effect modifiers. Despite a long history of study and use in statistics and econometrics, state-of-the-art varying coefficient modeling methods cannot accommodate multivariate effect modifiers without imposing restrictive functional form assumptions or involving computationally intensive hyperparameter tuning. In response, we introduce VCBART, which flexibly estimates the covariate effect in a varying coefficient model using Bayesian Additive Regression Trees. With simple default settings, VCBART outperforms existing varying coefficient methods in terms of covariate effect estimation, uncertainty quantification, and outcome prediction. We illustrate the utility of VCBART with two case studies: one examining how the association between later-life cognition and measures of socioeconomic position vary with respect to age and socio-demographics and another estimating how temporal trends in urban crime vary at the neighborhood level. An R package implementing VCBART is available at https://github.com/skdeshpande91/VCBART
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2003_06416
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VCBART: Bayesian trees for varying coefficients
Deshpande, Sameer K.
Bai, Ray
Balocchi, Cecilia
Starling, Jennifer E.
Weiss, Jordan
Methodology
The linear varying coefficient models posits a linear relationship between an outcome and covariates in which the covariate effects are modeled as functions of additional effect modifiers. Despite a long history of study and use in statistics and econometrics, state-of-the-art varying coefficient modeling methods cannot accommodate multivariate effect modifiers without imposing restrictive functional form assumptions or involving computationally intensive hyperparameter tuning. In response, we introduce VCBART, which flexibly estimates the covariate effect in a varying coefficient model using Bayesian Additive Regression Trees. With simple default settings, VCBART outperforms existing varying coefficient methods in terms of covariate effect estimation, uncertainty quantification, and outcome prediction. We illustrate the utility of VCBART with two case studies: one examining how the association between later-life cognition and measures of socioeconomic position vary with respect to age and socio-demographics and another estimating how temporal trends in urban crime vary at the neighborhood level. An R package implementing VCBART is available at https://github.com/skdeshpande91/VCBART
title VCBART: Bayesian trees for varying coefficients
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.06416