Masking criteria for selecting an imputation model

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Yang, Yanjiao, Suen, Daniel, Chen, Yen-Chi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Yang, Yanjiao
Suen, Daniel
Chen, Yen-Chi
author_facet Yang, Yanjiao
Suen, Daniel
Chen, Yen-Chi
contents The masking-one-out (MOO) procedure, masking an observed entry and comparing it versus its imputed values, is a very common procedure for comparing imputation models. We study the optimum of this procedure and generalize it to a missing data assumption and establish the corresponding semi-parametric efficiency theory. However, MOO is a measure of prediction accuracy, which is not ideal for evaluating an imputation model. To address this issue, we introduce three modified MOO criteria, based on rank transformation, energy distance, and likelihood principle, that allow us to select an imputation model that properly account for the stochastic nature of data. The likelihood approach further enables an elegant framework of learning an imputation model from the data and we derive its statistical and computational learning theories as well as consistency of BIC model selection. We also show how MOO is related to the missing-at-random assumption. Finally, we introduce the prediction-imputation diagram, a two-dimensional diagram visually comparing both the prediction and imputation utilities for various imputation models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_10048
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Masking criteria for selecting an imputation model
Yang, Yanjiao
Suen, Daniel
Chen, Yen-Chi
Methodology
Statistics Theory
Computation
Machine Learning
Primary: 62D10, secondary: 62F12, 62G09
The masking-one-out (MOO) procedure, masking an observed entry and comparing it versus its imputed values, is a very common procedure for comparing imputation models. We study the optimum of this procedure and generalize it to a missing data assumption and establish the corresponding semi-parametric efficiency theory. However, MOO is a measure of prediction accuracy, which is not ideal for evaluating an imputation model. To address this issue, we introduce three modified MOO criteria, based on rank transformation, energy distance, and likelihood principle, that allow us to select an imputation model that properly account for the stochastic nature of data. The likelihood approach further enables an elegant framework of learning an imputation model from the data and we derive its statistical and computational learning theories as well as consistency of BIC model selection. We also show how MOO is related to the missing-at-random assumption. Finally, we introduce the prediction-imputation diagram, a two-dimensional diagram visually comparing both the prediction and imputation utilities for various imputation models.
title Masking criteria for selecting an imputation model
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
Computation
Machine Learning
Primary: 62D10, secondary: 62F12, 62G09
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10048