Semi-Parametric Estimation of Incubation and Generation Times by Means of Laguerre Polynomials

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kreiss, Alexander, Van Keilegom, Ingrid
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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author Kreiss, Alexander
Van Keilegom, Ingrid
author_facet Kreiss, Alexander
Van Keilegom, Ingrid
contents In epidemics many interesting quantities, like the reproduction number, depend on the incubation period (time from infection to symptom onset) and/or the generation time (time until a new person is infected from another infected person). Therefore, estimation of the distribution of these two quantities is of distinct interest. However, this is a challenging problem since it is normally not possible to obtain precise observations of these two variables. Instead, in the beginning of a pandemic, it is possible to observe for infection pairs the time of symptom onset for both people as well as a window for infection of the first person (e.g. because of travel to a risk area). In this paper we suggest a simple semi-parametric sieve-estimation method based on Laguerre-Polynomials for estimation of these distributions. We provide detailed theory for consistency and illustrate the finite sample performance for small datasets via a simulation study.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2012_15611
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Semi-Parametric Estimation of Incubation and Generation Times by Means of Laguerre Polynomials
Kreiss, Alexander
Van Keilegom, Ingrid
Statistics Theory
In epidemics many interesting quantities, like the reproduction number, depend on the incubation period (time from infection to symptom onset) and/or the generation time (time until a new person is infected from another infected person). Therefore, estimation of the distribution of these two quantities is of distinct interest. However, this is a challenging problem since it is normally not possible to obtain precise observations of these two variables. Instead, in the beginning of a pandemic, it is possible to observe for infection pairs the time of symptom onset for both people as well as a window for infection of the first person (e.g. because of travel to a risk area). In this paper we suggest a simple semi-parametric sieve-estimation method based on Laguerre-Polynomials for estimation of these distributions. We provide detailed theory for consistency and illustrate the finite sample performance for small datasets via a simulation study.
title Semi-Parametric Estimation of Incubation and Generation Times by Means of Laguerre Polynomials
topic Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.15611