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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Shang, Longwen, Tsao, Min, Zhang, Xuekui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03995
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author Shang, Longwen
Tsao, Min
Zhang, Xuekui
author_facet Shang, Longwen
Tsao, Min
Zhang, Xuekui
contents Clinical trial simulation (CTS) is critical in new drug development, providing insight into safety and efficacy while guiding trial design. Achieving realistic outcomes in CTS requires an accurately estimated joint distribution of the underlying variables. However, privacy concerns and data availability issues often restrict researchers to marginal summary-level data of each variable, making it challenging to estimate the joint distribution due to the lack of access to individual-level data or relational summaries between variables. We propose a novel approach based on the method of maximum likelihood that estimates the joint distribution of two binary variables using only marginal summary data. By leveraging numerical optimization and accommodating varying sample sizes across studies, our method preserves privacy while bypassing the need for granular or relational data. Through an extensive simulation study covering a diverse range of scenarios and an application to a real-world dataset, we demonstrate the accuracy, robustness, and practicality of our method. This method enhances the generation of realistic simulated data, thereby improving decision-making processes in drug development.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_03995
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimating the Joint Distribution of Two Binary Variables with Marginal Statistics
Shang, Longwen
Tsao, Min
Zhang, Xuekui
Methodology
Clinical trial simulation (CTS) is critical in new drug development, providing insight into safety and efficacy while guiding trial design. Achieving realistic outcomes in CTS requires an accurately estimated joint distribution of the underlying variables. However, privacy concerns and data availability issues often restrict researchers to marginal summary-level data of each variable, making it challenging to estimate the joint distribution due to the lack of access to individual-level data or relational summaries between variables. We propose a novel approach based on the method of maximum likelihood that estimates the joint distribution of two binary variables using only marginal summary data. By leveraging numerical optimization and accommodating varying sample sizes across studies, our method preserves privacy while bypassing the need for granular or relational data. Through an extensive simulation study covering a diverse range of scenarios and an application to a real-world dataset, we demonstrate the accuracy, robustness, and practicality of our method. This method enhances the generation of realistic simulated data, thereby improving decision-making processes in drug development.
title Estimating the Joint Distribution of Two Binary Variables with Marginal Statistics
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03995