Motivation: Existing methods for estimating copy number variations in array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) data are limited to estimations of the gain/loss of chromosome regions for single sample analysis. We propose the linear-median method for estimating shared copy numbers in DNA sequences across multiple samples, demonstrate its operating characteristics through simulations and ap...

This paper describes a procedure for assigning simulation trials to a set of parallel processors for the purpose of conducting a simulation study, involving a complex simulation model, in near real time. Unlike distributed simulation, where a complex simulation model is decomposed and its parts run in a parallel environment, the parallel replications approach discussed here involves running sim...

Statisticians in medicine can disagree on appropriate methodology applicable to the design and analysis of clinical trials. So called Bayesians and frequentists both claim ethical superiority. This paper, by defining and then linking together various dichotomies, argues there is a place for both statistical camps. The choice between them depends on the phase of clinical trial, disease prevalenc...

Sequencing the human genome has made vast amounts of potentially useful genetic data accessible. An important challenge in statistics is to develop methodology to extract information from this data. In this thesis, developments are made in two methodological areas that have wide applications in genetics. First, probabilistic methods to deal with the label switching problem in Bayesian mixture m...

A statistical methodology for automatically determining whether a pair of documents, a known and a questioned, were written by the same individual is proposed. First, several writing elements, e.g., characters, are extracted from each document. Second, differences between corresponding elements from each document are computed. Third, using conditional probability estimates of each difference, t...

Semiparametric regression is a fusion between parametric regression and nonparametric regression and the title of a book that we published on the topic in early 2003. We review developments in the field during the five year period since the book was written. We find semiparametric regression to be a vibrant field with substantial involvement and activity, continual enhancement and widespread ap...

We now will apply the tools and concepts of thermodynamics and probability which we introduced in Chapters 2 and 3 to relate the microscopic and macroscopic descriptions of thermal systems. In so doing we will develop the formalism of statistical mechanics. To make explicit the probabilistic assumptions and the type of calculations that are done in statistical mechanics we first discuss an isol...

The growing availability of computer power and statistical software has greatly increased the ease with which practitioners apply statistical methods, but this has not been accompanied by attention to checking the assumptions on which these methods are based. At the same time, disagreements about inferences based on statistical research frequently revolve around whether the assumptions are actu...