A0180
Title: Semiparametric mixture of regression with unspecied error distributions
Authors: Weixin Yao - UC Riverside (United States) [presenting]
Abstract: In the fitting of a mixture of linear regression models, the normal assumption has been traditionally used for the error term and then the regression parameters are estimated by the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE). Unlike the least squares estimate (LSE) for the linear regression model, the validity of the MLE for mixtures of regression depends on the normal assumption. In order to relax the strong parametric assumption about the error density, we propose a mixture of linear regression models with unknown error density. We prove the identifiability of our proposed model and provide the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimates. In addition, we will propose an EM-type algorithm that uses a kernel density estimator for the unknown error when calculating the classification probabilities in the E step. Using a Monte Carlo simulation study, we demonstrate that our method works comparably to the traditional MLE when the error is normal. In addition, we demonstrate the success of our new estimation procedure when the error is not normal. An empirical analysis of tone perception data is illustrated for the proposed methodology.