## My 2015 blogging report

December 29, 2015

## Estimating the mean and standard deviation from the median and the range

December 3, 2015

While preparing the data for a meta-analysis, I run into the problem that a few of my sources did not report the outcome of interest as means and standard deviations, but rather as medians and range of values. After looking around, I found this interesting paper which derived (and validated through simple simulations), simple formulas that can be used to convert the median/range into a mean and a variance in a distribution free fashion.  With

• a = min of the data
• b = max of the data
• m = median
• n = size of the sample

the formulas are as follows:

Mean  $\bar{m} = \frac{a+2 m+b}{4} +\frac{a-2 m+b}{4 n}$

Variance  $\frac{1}{n-1} \Big(a^2+m^2+b^2+\frac{n-3}{2} \frac{(a+m)^2+(b+m)^2}{4}-n \bar{m} \Big)$

The following R function will carry out these calculations

f<-function(a,m,b,n)
{
mn<-(a+2*m+b)/4+(a-2*m+b)/(4*n)
s=sqrt((a*a+m*m+b*b+(n-3)*((a+m)^2+(m+b)^2)/8-n*mn*mn)/(n-1))
c(mn,s)
}

Edit

Surfing around arxiv, I found another paper that handles additional scenarios and proposes alternative formulas

## Summing up my criticism against Propublica’s Scorecard

August 26, 2015

The bottom-line: The major justification for my substantiated (or at least so I think) rant against the use of shrinkage in this case is the elephant in the room that no-one wants to talk about: the substantially limited information (avg number of complications per individual < 50) for otherwise infrequent events (avg complication rate <5%). In such a situation, shrinkage will make everyone look like everyone else, limiting the ability to draw meaningful complications by looking at the values of the random effects. In fact, PP had to rely on post hock classifications of the good, the bad and the ugly to overcome the unavoidable shrinkage towards the mean and overcome the lack of information that could distinguish one surgeon from another. Similar points (with more examples from the actual score card) were made by Ewen Harrison.

(You may stop reading now – or you may read past the rant in the next paragraph)

Rant Mode On: Another criticism that I received, is that I fail to understand random effects modeling, which I personally thought it was funny because one of my recent papers actually says one should scrap the Cox survival model for generalized additive models (which are just generalized linear mixed models in disguise).  In any case, assuming that my understanding of mixed models is poor, maybe my conclusion that these models are to be preferred for such applications is also problematic?

Since one may consider my vote-of-confidence-to-the-almighty-mix-model v.s. my criticism of their application in the Scorecard project, subtle evidence for paranoid schizophrenia let me sum up how one can simultaneously hold these beliefs:

Even though mixed models are to be preferred especially as more data accumulate(a point I make clear in the 3 blog posts I wrote), no modeling could overcome the severe lack of events in the scorecard database.

There are other technical issues that one could “rant” about e.g. how were the hospital and surgeon effects were combined, but I will not digress any further.

Rant mode off

Back to criticism: In my opinion a major reason that mixed models were used is the potentially large number of surgeons with zero complications in their limited observation records*. The use of shrinkage models allow one to report performance for such surgeons, and generate nice colorful graphs (with one and possibly two decimal points) about their performance instead of reporting a NaN (Not A Number). Incidentally, the shrinkage of the individual surgeon effects all the way towards the population mean is the mixed model’s way of telling you the same thing: since it could not estimate how these people actually performed, it might as well give back the only answer consistent with the model applied, i.e. everybody is (almost) like everybody else and thus everyone is average.

*Curiously this information, i.e. the number of surgeons without any complication in the source database is not provided, although I’d have thought it would be important to report this number in the shake of transparency.

Word of caution: For surgeons without any complications in the database, the actual information comes not from their complications but from the number of uncomplicated surgeries they performed. This raises the question of inclusion effects (a point Andrew Gelman thoroughly address in his book) and the associated selection biases inherent in comparing surgeons who accept v.s. those who do not accept Medicare (or accept too little of it) and the corresponding social determinants of health outcomes (beautifully explained here).

A non-statistical criticism: As a nephrologist, I find it amusingly insulting that Acute Kidney Injury (coded as Acute Renal Failure) was not considered a surgical complication, even though it certainly complicates surgeries. Surgery is in fact the leading cause of “hospital-acquired” AKI (40% of cases are preceded by a surgical procedure). But maybe, as Benjamin Davies pointed out, the real end-points are not really measured by the Scorecard. Or I could be just delusional when I point out to surgical colleagues that the selection of analgesia, fluid management and pre as well as post perioperative care DO play a role for some complications. Or it could be just the anesthesiologists’s fault 🙂

July 30, 2015

## The Surgeon Scorecard

Two weeks ago, the world of medical journalism was rocked by the public release of ProPublica’s Surgeon Scorecard. In this project ProPublica “calculated death and complication rates for surgeons performing one of eight elective procedures in Medicare, carefully adjusting for differences in patient health, age and hospital quality.”  By making the dataset available through a user friendly portal, the intended use of this public resource was to “use this database to know more about a surgeon before your operation“.

The criticism to date has largely focused on the potential for selection effects (as the Scorecard is based on Medicare data, and does not include data from private insurers), the incomplete adjustment for confounders, the paucity of data for individual surgeons, the counting of complications and re-admission rates, decisions about risk category classification boundaries and even data errors (ProPublica’s response arguing that the Scorecard matters may be found here). With a few exceptions (e.g. see Schloss’s blogpost in which the complexity of the statistical approach is mentioned) the criticism of the statistical approach (including my own comments in twitter) has largely focused on these issues.

On the other hand, the underlying statistical methodology (here and there) that powers the Scorecard has not received much attention. Therefore I undertook a series of simulation experiments to explore the impact of the statistical procedures on the inferences afforded by the Scorecard.

## The mixed model that could – a short non-technical summary of ProPublica’s approah

ProPublica’s approach to the scorecard is based on logistic regression model, in which individual surgeon (and hospital) performance (probability of suffering a complication) is modelled using Gaussian random effects, while patient level characteristics that may act as confounders are adjusted for, using fixed effects. In a nutshell this approach implies fitting a model of the average complication rate that is function of the fixed effects (e.g. patient age) for the entire universe of surgeries  performed in the USA. Individual surgeon and hospital factors modify this complication rate, so that a given surgeon and hospital will have an individual  rate that varies around the population average. These individual surgeon and hospital factors are constrained to follow Gaussian, bell-shaped distribution when analyzing complication data. After model fitting, these predicted random effects are used to quantify and compare surgical performance. A feature of mixed modeling approaches is the unavoidable shrinkage of the raw complication rate towards the population mean. Shrinkage implies that the dynamic range of the  actually observed complication rates is compressed. This is readily appreciated in the figures generated by the ProPublica analytical team:

In their methodological white paper the ProPublica team notes:

While raw rates ranged from 0.0 to 29%, the Adjusted Complication Rate goes from 1.1 to 5.7%. …. shrinkage is largely a result of modeling in the first place, not due to adjusting for case mix. This shrinkage is another piece of the measured approach we are taking: we are taking care not to unfairly characterize surgeons and hospitals.”

These features should alert us that something is going on. For if a model can distort the data to such a large extent, then the model should be closely scrutinized before being accepted. In fact, given these observations,  it is possible that one mistakes the noise from the model for the information hidden in the empirical data. Or, even more likely, that one is not using the model in the most productive manner.

Note that these comments  should not be interpreted as a criticism against the use of mixed models in general, or even for the particular aspects of the Scorecard project. They are rather a call for re-examining the modeling assumptions and for gaining a better understanding of the model “mechanics of prediction” before releasing the Kraken to the world.

## The little mixed model that shouldn’t

There are many technical aspects one could potentially misfire in a Generalized Linear Mixed Model for complication rates. Getting the wrong shape of the random effects distribution is of may or may not be of concern (e.g. assuming it is bell shaped when it is not). Getting the underlying model wrong, e.g. assuming the binomial model for complication rates while a model with many more zeros (a zero inflated model) may be more appropriate, is yet another potential problem area. However, even if  these factors are not operational, then one may still be misled when using the results of the model. In particular, the major area of concern for such models is the cluster size: the number of observations per individual random effect (e.g. surgeon) in the dataset. It is this factor, rather than the actual size of the dataset that determines the precision in the individual random affects. Using a toy example, we show that the number of observations per surgeon typical of the Scorecard dataset, leads to predicted  random effects that may be far from their true value. This seems to stem from the non-linear nature of the logistic regression model. As we conclude in our first technical post:

• Random Effect modeling of binomial outcomes require a substantial number of observations per individual (in the order of thousands) for the procedure to yield estimates of individual effects that are numerically indistinguishable  from the true values.

Contrast this conclusion to the cluster size in the actual scorecard:

 Procedure Code N (procedures) N(surgeons) Procedures per surgeon 51.23 201,351 21,479 9.37 60.5 78,763 5,093 15.46 60.29 73,752 7,898 9.34 81.02 52,972 5,624 9.42 81.07 106,689 6,214 17.17 81.08 102,716 6,136 16.74 81.51 494,576 13,414 36.87 81.54 1,190,631 18,029 66.04 Total 2,301,450 83,887 27.44

In a follow up simulation study we demonstrate that this feature results in predicted individual effects that are non-uniformly shrank towards their average value. This compromises the ability of mixed model predictions to separate the good from the bad “apples”.

In the second technical post, we undertook a simulation study to understand the implications of over-shrinkage for the Scorecard project. These are best understood by a numerical example from one of simulated datasets. To understand this example one should note that the individual random effects have the interpretation of (log-) odds ratios. Hence, the difference in these random effects when exponentiated yield the odds ratio of suffering a complication in the hands of a good relative to a bad surgeon. By comparing these random effects for good and bad surgeons who are equally bad (or good) relative to the mean (symmetric quantiles around the median), one can get an idea of the impact of using the predicted random effects to carry out individual comparisons.

 Good Bad Quantile (Good) Quantile (Bad) True OR Pred OR Shrinkage Factor -0.050 0.050 48.0 52.0 0.905 0.959 1.06 -0.100 0.100 46.0 54.0 0.819 0.920 1.12 -0.150 0.150 44.0 56.0 0.741 0.883 1.19 -0.200 0.200 42.1 57.9 0.670 0.847 1.26 -0.250 0.250 40.1 59.9 0.607 0.813 1.34 -0.300 0.300 38.2 61.8 0.549 0.780 1.42 -0.350 0.350 36.3 63.7 0.497 0.749 1.51 -0.400 0.400 34.5 65.5 0.449 0.719 1.60 -0.450 0.450 32.6 67.4 0.407 0.690 1.70 -0.500 0.500 30.9 69.1 0.368 0.662 1.80 -0.550 0.550 29.1 70.9 0.333 0.635 1.91 -0.600 0.600 27.4 72.6 0.301 0.609 2.02 -0.650 0.650 25.8 74.2 0.273 0.583 2.14 -0.700 0.700 24.2 75.8 0.247 0.558 2.26 -0.750 0.750 22.7 77.3 0.223 0.534 2.39 -0.800 0.800 21.2 78.8 0.202 0.511 2.53 -0.850 0.850 19.8 80.2 0.183 0.489 2.68 -0.900 0.900 18.4 81.6 0.165 0.467 2.83 -0.950 0.950 17.1 82.9 0.150 0.447 2.99 -1.000 1.000 15.9 84.1 0.135 0.427 3.15 -1.050 1.050 14.7 85.3 0.122 0.408 3.33 -1.100 1.100 13.6 86.4 0.111 0.390 3.52 -1.150 1.150 12.5 87.5 0.100 0.372 3.71 -1.200 1.200 11.5 88.5 0.091 0.356 3.92 -1.250 1.250 10.6 89.4 0.082 0.340 4.14 -1.300 1.300 9.7 90.3 0.074 0.325 4.37 -1.350 1.350 8.9 91.1 0.067 0.310 4.62 -1.400 1.400 8.1 91.9 0.061 0.297 4.88 -1.450 1.450 7.4 92.6 0.055 0.283 5.15 -1.500 1.500 6.7 93.3 0.050 0.271 5.44 -1.550 1.550 6.1 93.9 0.045 0.259 5.74 -1.600 1.600 5.5 94.5 0.041 0.247 6.07 -1.650 1.650 4.9 95.1 0.037 0.236 6.41 -1.700 1.700 4.5 95.5 0.033 0.226 6.77 -1.750 1.750 4.0 96.0 0.030 0.216 7.14 -1.800 1.800 3.6 96.4 0.027 0.206 7.55 -1.850 1.850 3.2 96.8 0.025 0.197 7.97 -1.900 1.900 2.9 97.1 0.022 0.188 8.42 -1.950 1.950 2.6 97.4 0.020 0.180 8.89 -2.000 2.000 2.3 97.7 0.018 0.172 9.39 -2.050 2.050 2.0 98.0 0.017 0.164 9.91

From this table it can be seen that predicted odds ratios are always larger than the true ones. The ratio of these odds ratios (the shrinkage factor) is larger, the more extreme comparisons are contemplated.

In summary, the use of the random effects models for the small cluster sizes (number of observations per surgeon) is likely to lead to estimates (or rather predictions) of individual effects that are smaller than their true values. Even though one should expect the differences to decrease with larger cluster sizes, this is unlikely to happen in real world datasets (how often does one come across a surgeon who has performed 1000s of operation of the same type before they retire?). Hence, the comparison of  surgeon performance based on these random effect predictions is likely to be misleading due to over-shrinkage.

## Where to go from here?

ProPublica should be congratulated for taking up such an ambitious, and ultimately useful project. However, the limitations of the adopted approach should make one very skeptical about accepting the inferences from their modeling tool. In particular, the small number of observations per surgeon limits the utility of the predicted random effects to directly compare surgeons due to over-shrinkage. Further studies are required before one could use the results of mixed effects modeling for this application. Based on some limited simulation experiments (that we do not present here), it seems that relative rankings of surgeons may be robust measures of surgical performance, at least compared to the absolute rates used by the Scorecard. Adding my voice to that of Dr Schloss, I think it is time for an open and transparent dialogue (and possibly a “crowdsourced” research project) to better define the best measure of surgical performance given the limitations of the available data. Such a project could also explore other directions, e.g. the explicit handling of zero inflation and even go beyond the ubiquitous bell shaped curve. By making the R code available, I hope that someone (possibly ProPublica) who can access more powerful computational resources can perform more extensive simulations. These may better define other aspects of the modeling approach and suggest improvements in the scorecard methodology. In the meantime, it is probably a good idea not to exclusively rely on the numerical measures of the scorecard when picking up the surgeon who will perform your next surgery.

## Shrinkage of predicted random effects in logistic regression models

July 30, 2015

As a follow-up of our initial investigation of the bias of random effect predictions in generalized linear mixed regression models, I undertook a limited simulation experiment. In this experiment, we varied the population average complication rate and the associated standard deviation of the individual random effect and generated a small number of replications (N=200) for each combination of population mean and standard deviation. Limited by the computational resources of (the otherwise wonderful!) tablet, I had to forego a more thorough and more precise (larger number of replicates) examination of bias, variance and coverage. The focus is on general patterns rather than precise estimates; by making the code public, these can be obtained by anyone who has access to the R computing environment.

The basic code that simulates  from these logistic regression models is shown below. Although we only examine small cluster sizes (number of observations per cluster 20-100) and a moderate number of individual random effects (200) it is straightforward to modify these aspects of the simulation study. For these simulations we examined a limited number of values for the standard deviation of the random effects (0.1, 0.2 and 0.5) and overall complication rates (0.05, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20) to reflect the potential range of values compatible with the raw data in the Surgeon Scorecard.

library(lme4)
library(mgcv)
## helper functions
logit<-function(x) log(x/(1-x))
invlogit<-function(x) exp(x)/(1+exp(x))

## code allows a sensitivity analysis to the order of the nAGQ
## explanation of symbols/functions appearing inside the
## simulation function
## fit: glmer fit using a X point nAGQ integration rule
## ran: random effects using a X point nAGQ integration rule
##   cR: correlation between fitted and simulated random effect
##       the fitted were obtained with a X point nAGQ integrator
## int: intercept obtained with a X point nAGQ integration rule
## biG: bias of the fitted v.s. the simulated random effects
##      this is obtained as the intercept of a GAM regression of
##      the fitted versus the simulated values
## bi0: bias of the intercept from the glmer fit
## sdR: estimated standard deviation of the random eff distro
## bs0: bias of the standard deviation of the random effects (SDR)
## edf: non-linearity of the slope of a GAM regression of the
##      fitted v.s. the simulated residuals
## slQ: derivative of the non-linear slope at the Qth quantile
simFit<-function(X,complications,ind,pall,SDR,Q=0:10/10) {
fit<-glmer(ev~1+(1|id),data=complications,family=binomial,nAGQ=X)
ran<-ranef(fit)[["id"]][,1] ## predicted (mode) of random effects
cR<-cor(ran,ind)
int<-fixef(fit)
## regress on the residuals to assess performance
fitg<-gam(ran~s(ind,bs="ts")) ## gam fit
edf<-sum(fitg$edf[-1])## edf of the non-linear "slope" biG<-fitg$coef[1]
bi0<-int-logit(pall)
sdR<-sqrt(as.data.frame(VarCorr(fit))$vcov) bs0<-sdR-SDR sQ<-quantile(ind,prob=Q) slQ<-(predict(fitg,newdata=data.frame(ind=sQ+0.0001),type="terms")[,1]- predict(fitg,newdata=data.frame(ind=sQ),type="terms")[,1])/0.0001 names(slQ)<-paste("slQ",Q,sep="") ret<-cbind(int=int,edf=edf,biG=biG,bi0=bi0,bs0=bs0,sdR=sdR,cR=cR,t(slQ),pall=pall,SDR=SDR) } ## function to simulate cases simcase<-function(N,p) rbinom(N,1,p) ## simulation scenarios: fixed for each simulation Nsurgeon<-200; # number of surgeons Nmin<-20; # min number of surgeries per surgeon Nmax<-100; # max number of surgeries per surgeon Nsim<-sample(Nmin:Nmax,Nsurgeon,replace=TRUE); # number of cases per surgeon ## simulate individual surgical performance ## the reality consists of different combos of pall and the sd of the ## random effect Nscenariosim<-200 ## number of simulations per scenario scenarios<-expand.grid(iter=1:Nscenariosim,pall=seq(0.05,.20,.05), sd=c(0.1,0.2,.5)) ## simulate indivindual scenarios simScenario<-function(seed,pall,sd,X,Q) { set.seed(seed) ind<-rnorm(Nsurgeon,0,sd) ; # surgical random effects logitind<-logit(pall)+ind ; # convert to logits pind<-invlogit(logitind); # convert to probabilities complications<-data.frame(ev=do.call(c,mapply(simcase,Nsim,pind,SIMPLIFY=TRUE)), id=factor(do.call(c,mapply(function(i,N) rep(i,N),1:Nsurgeon,Nsim)))) simFit(X,complications,ind,pall,sd,Q) } X<-0 Q=0:10/10 system.time(perf<-mapply(simScenario,scenarios$iter,scenarios$pall,scenarios$sd,
MoreArgs=list(X=X,Q=Q),SIMPLIFY=FALSE))

perf<-do.call(rbind,perf)



The datasets are generated by the function simScenario, which when applied over all combinations of population mean(pall, treated as a fixed effect) and random effect standard deviation (sd) generates the synthetic dataset (‘complications’ variable). Once the data have been generated the function simFit receives the synthetic dataset, fits the mixed logistic regression model and generates random effect predictions.

To assess and quantify shrinkage in these regression models, we compare the predicted random effects against the simulated values. Due to the potentially large number of these effects (10s of thousands in the Surgeon Score Card), we developed a methodology that looks for patterns in these bivariate relationships, taking into account the magnitude of each simulated and predicted random effect pair. This methodology rests on flexible regression between the predicted against the simulated random effect in each of the synthetic datasets. This flexible regression, using smoothing splines, generalizes linear regression and thus avoids the assumption that the shrinkage (as assessed by the slope of the linear regression line) is the same irrespective of the value of the simulated random effect. By numerically differentiating the spline at various quantiles of the simulated random effect, we thus have an estimate of shrinkage. In particular, this estimate gives the change in value of the predicted random effect for a unit change in the simulated one. The relevant code that fits the smoothing spline and differentiates it in (user defined) grid of random effects quantiles is shown below:

</pre>
<pre>fitg<-gam(ran~s(ind,bs="ts")) ## gam fit
edf<-sum(fitg$edf[-1])## edf of the non-linear "slope" biG<-fitg$coef[1]
bi0<-int-logit(pall)
sdR<-sqrt(as.data.frame(VarCorr(fit))$vcov) bs0<-sdR-SDR sQ<-quantile(ind,prob=Q) slQ<-(predict(fitg,newdata=data.frame(ind=sQ+0.0001),type="terms")[,1]- predict(fitg,newdata=data.frame(ind=sQ),type="terms")[,1])/0.0001 names(slQ)<-paste("slQ",Q,sep="")  A representative smoothing spline analysis of a mixed logistic regression model is shown in the figure below, along with the corresponding linear fit, and the line signifying zero shrinkage: a straight line passing from the origin with a unit slope. If the latter relationship is observed, then the predicted random effects are unbiased with respect to the simulated ones. This figure shows the potential for random effect predictions to be excessively shrunken relative to the simulated ones (note that the blue line is more horizontal relative to the blue one). One should also observe that the amount of shrinkage is not the same throughout the range of the random effects: positive values (corresponding to individuals with higher complication rates) are shrank relatively less (the green line is closer to the blue line), relative to negative random effects (complication rates less than the population average). The net effect of this non-linear relationship is that the separation between “good” (negative RE) and “bad” (positive values of the RE) is decreased in the predicted relative to the simulated random effects. This can be a rather drastic compression in dynamic range for small cluster sizes as we will see below. From each mixed logistic regression model we obtain a large number of information : i) the bias in the fixed effect estimate, ii) the bias in the population standard deviation, iii) the bias in the overall relationship between predicted and simulated residuals (indirectly assessing whether the random effects are centered around the fixed effect) iv) the non-linearity of the relationship between the predicted and the simulated random effects (this is given by the estimated degrees of freedom of the spline, with an edf = 1 signifying a linear fit and higher degrees of freedom non linear relationships; edfs that are less than one signify a more complex pattern of shrinkage of a variable proportion of the random effects to a single point, i.e. the fixed effect) v) the linear slope There was no obvious bias in the estimation of the intercept (the only fixed effect in our simulation study) for various combinations of overall event rate and random effect standard deviation (but note higher dispersion for large standard deviation values, indicating the need for a higher number of simulation replicates in order to improve precision): Bias in the estimation of the intercept in the mixed logistic regression model (shown in log scale) Similarly there was no bias in the estimation of the population standard deviation of the random effects: Bias in the standard deviation of the random effects The estimated relationship between predicted and simulated residuals was in linear for approximately 50% of simulated samples for small to moderate standard deviations. However it was non-linear (implying differential shrinkage according to random effect magnitude) for larger standard deviations, typical of the standard deviation of the surgeon random effect in the Surgeon Score Card. Estimated degrees of freedom (a measure of non-linearity) in the relationship between predicted and simulated random effects over simulation replicates. The red horizontal line corresponds to a linear relationship between predicted and simulated random effects (edf=1).Edf<1 signify the shrinkage of a variable proportion of random effects to zero The magnitude of the slopes of the smoothing splines at different quartiles of the random effects distribution and for combinations of overall rate and random effect standard deviation are shown below: Slope of the smoothing spline at different quantiles (20%, 50%, 80%) of the random effect distribution. Boxplots are over 200 replicates of each combination of overall rate and random effect standard deviation There are several things to note in this figure: 1. the amount of shrinkage decreases as the population standard deviation increases (going from left to right in each row of the figure the slopes increase from zero towards one) 2. the amount of shrinkage decreases as the overall average increases for the same value of the standard deviation (going from top to bottom in the same column) 3. the degree of shrinkage appears to be the same across the range of random effect quantiles for small to moderate values of the population standard deviation 4. the discrepancy between the degree of shrinkage is maximized for larger values of the standard deviation of the random effects and small overall rates (top right subpanel). This is the situation that is more relevant for the Surgeon Score Card based on the analyses reported by this project. What are the practical implications of these observations for the individual surgeon comparison reported in the Score Card project? These are best understood by a numerical example from one of these 200 hundred datasets shown in the top right subpanel. To understand this example one should note that the individual random effects have the interpretation of (log-) odds ratios, irrespective of whether they are predicted or (the simulated) true effects. Hence, the difference in these random effects when exponentiated yield the odds ratio of suffering a complication in the hands of a good relative to a bad surgeon. By comparing these random effects for good and bad surgeons who are equally bad (or good) relative to the mean (symmetric quantiles around the median), one can get an idea of the impact of using the predicted random effects to carry out individual comparisons.  Good Bad Quantile (Good) Quantile (Bad) True OR Pred OR Shrinkage Factor -0.050 0.050 48.0 52.0 0.905 0.959 1.06 -0.100 0.100 46.0 54.0 0.819 0.920 1.12 -0.150 0.150 44.0 56.0 0.741 0.883 1.19 -0.200 0.200 42.1 57.9 0.670 0.847 1.26 -0.250 0.250 40.1 59.9 0.607 0.813 1.34 -0.300 0.300 38.2 61.8 0.549 0.780 1.42 -0.350 0.350 36.3 63.7 0.497 0.749 1.51 -0.400 0.400 34.5 65.5 0.449 0.719 1.60 -0.450 0.450 32.6 67.4 0.407 0.690 1.70 -0.500 0.500 30.9 69.1 0.368 0.662 1.80 -0.550 0.550 29.1 70.9 0.333 0.635 1.91 -0.600 0.600 27.4 72.6 0.301 0.609 2.02 -0.650 0.650 25.8 74.2 0.273 0.583 2.14 -0.700 0.700 24.2 75.8 0.247 0.558 2.26 -0.750 0.750 22.7 77.3 0.223 0.534 2.39 -0.800 0.800 21.2 78.8 0.202 0.511 2.53 -0.850 0.850 19.8 80.2 0.183 0.489 2.68 -0.900 0.900 18.4 81.6 0.165 0.467 2.83 -0.950 0.950 17.1 82.9 0.150 0.447 2.99 -1.000 1.000 15.9 84.1 0.135 0.427 3.15 -1.050 1.050 14.7 85.3 0.122 0.408 3.33 -1.100 1.100 13.6 86.4 0.111 0.390 3.52 -1.150 1.150 12.5 87.5 0.100 0.372 3.71 -1.200 1.200 11.5 88.5 0.091 0.356 3.92 -1.250 1.250 10.6 89.4 0.082 0.340 4.14 -1.300 1.300 9.7 90.3 0.074 0.325 4.37 -1.350 1.350 8.9 91.1 0.067 0.310 4.62 -1.400 1.400 8.1 91.9 0.061 0.297 4.88 -1.450 1.450 7.4 92.6 0.055 0.283 5.15 -1.500 1.500 6.7 93.3 0.050 0.271 5.44 -1.550 1.550 6.1 93.9 0.045 0.259 5.74 -1.600 1.600 5.5 94.5 0.041 0.247 6.07 -1.650 1.650 4.9 95.1 0.037 0.236 6.41 -1.700 1.700 4.5 95.5 0.033 0.226 6.77 -1.750 1.750 4.0 96.0 0.030 0.216 7.14 -1.800 1.800 3.6 96.4 0.027 0.206 7.55 -1.850 1.850 3.2 96.8 0.025 0.197 7.97 -1.900 1.900 2.9 97.1 0.022 0.188 8.42 -1.950 1.950 2.6 97.4 0.020 0.180 8.89 -2.000 2.000 2.3 97.7 0.018 0.172 9.39 -2.050 2.050 2.0 98.0 0.017 0.164 9.91 From these table it can be seen that predicted odds ratios are always larger than the true ones. The ratio of these odds ratios (the shrinkage factor) is larger, the more extreme comparisons are contemplated. In summary, the use of the random effects models for the small cluster sizes (number of observations per surgeon) is likely to lead to estimates (or rather predictions) of individual effects that are smaller than their true values. Even though one should expect the differences to decrease with larger cluster sizes, this is unlikely to be observedin real world datasets (how often does one come across a surgeon who has performed 1000s of operation of the same type before they retire?). Furthermore, the comparison of surgeon performance based on predicted random effects is likely to be misleading due to over-shrinkage. ## Empirical bias analysis of random effects predictions in linear and logistic mixed model regression July 30, 2015 In the first technical post in this series, I conducted a numerical investigation of the biasedness of random effect predictions in generalized linear mixed models (GLMM), such as the ones used in the Surgeon Scorecard, I decided to undertake two explorations: firstly, the behavior of these estimates as more and more data are gathered for each individual surgeon and secondly whether the limiting behavior of these estimators critically depends on the underlying GLMM family. Note that the first question directly assesses whether the random effect estimators reflect the underlying (but unobserved) “true” value of the individual practitioner effect in logistic regression models for surgical complications. On the other hand the second simulation examines a separate issue, namely whether the non-linearity of the logistic regression model affects the convergence rate of the random effect predictions towards their true value. For these simulations we will examine three different ranges of dataset sizes for each surgeon: • small data (complication data from between 20-100 cases/ surgeon are available) • large data (complications from between 200-1000 cases/surgeon) • extra large data (complications from between 1000-2000 cases/surgeon) We simulated 200 surgeons (“random effects”) from a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 0.26, while the population average complication rate was set t0 5%. These numbers were chosen to reflect the range of values (average and population standard deviation) of the random effects in the Score Card dataset, while the use of 200 random effects was a realistic compromise with the computational capabilities of the Asus Transformer T100 2 in 1 laptop/tablet that I used for these analyses. The following code was used to simulate the logistic case for small data (the large and extra large cases were simulated by changing the values of the Nmin and Nmax variables). library(lme4) library(mgcv) ## helper functions logit<-function(x) log(x/(1-x)) invlogit<-function(x) exp(x)/(1+exp(x)) ## simulate cases simcase<-function(N,p) rbinom(N,1,p) ## simulation scenario pall<-0.05; # global average Nsurgeon<-200; # number of surgeons Nmin<-20; # min number of surgeries per surgeon Nmax<-100; # max number of surgeries per surgeon ## simulate individual surgical performance ## how many simulations of each scenario set.seed(123465); # reproducibility ind<-rnorm(Nsurgeon,0,.26) ; # surgical random effects logitind<-logit(pall)+ind ; # convert to logits pind<-invlogit(logitind); # convert to probabilities Nsim<-sample(Nmin:Nmax,Nsurgeon,replace=TRUE); # number of cases per surgeon complications<-data.frame(ev=do.call(c,mapply(simcase,Nsim,pind,SIMPLIFY=TRUE)), id=do.call(c,mapply(function(i,N) rep(i,N),1:Nsurgeon,Nsim))) complications$id<-factor(complications$id)  A random effect and fixed effect model were fit to these data (the fixed effect model is simply a series of independent fits to the data for each random effect):  ## Random Effects fit2<-glmer(ev~1+(1|id),data=complications,family=binomial,nAGQ=2) ran2<-ranef(fit2)[["id"]][,1] c2<-cor(ran2,ind) int2<-fixef(fit2) ranind2<-ran2+int2 ## Fixed Effects fixfit<-vector("numeric",Nsurgeon) for(i in 1:Nsurgeon) { fixfit[i]<-glm(ev~1,data=subset(complications,id==i),family="binomial")$coef[1]
}



The corresponding Gaussian GLMM cases were simulated by making minor changes to these codes. These are shown below:


simcase<-function(N,p) rnorm(N,p,1)

fit2<-glmer(ev~1+(1|id),data=complications,nAGQ=2)

fixfit[i]<-glm(ev~1,data=subset(complications,id==i),family="gaussian")$coef[1]  The predicted random effects were assessed against the simulated truth by smoothing regression splines. In these regressions, the intercept yields the bias of the average of the predicted random effects vis-a-vis the truth, while the slope of the regression quantifies the amount of shrinkage effected by the mixed model formulation. For unbiased estimation not only would we like the intercept to be zero, but also the slope to be equal to one. In this case, the predicted random effect would be equal to its true (simulated) value. Excessive shrinkage would result in a slope that is substantially different from one. Assuming that the bias (intercept) is not different from zero, the relaxation of the slope towards one quantifies the consistency and the bias (or rather its rate of convergence) of these estimators using simulation techniques (or so it seems to me). The use of smoothing (flexible), rather than simple linear regression, to quantify these relationships does away with a restrictive assumption: that the amount of shrinkage is the same throughout the range of the random effects: ## smoothing spline (flexible) fit fitg<-gam(ran2~s(ind) ## linear regression fitl<-lm(ran2~ind)  The following figure shows the results of the flexible regression (black with 95% CI, dashed black) v.s. the linear regression (red) and the expected (blue) line (intercept of zero, slope of one). Predicted v.s. simulated random effects for logistic and linear mixed regression as a function of the number of observations per random effect (cluster size) Several observations are worth noting in this figure. First , the flexible regression was indistinguishable from a linear regression in all cases; hence the red and black lines overlap. Stated in other terms, the amount of shrinkage was the same across the range of the random effect values. Second, the intercept in all flexible models was (within machine precision) equal to zero. Consequently, when estimating a group of random effects their overall mean is (unbiasedly) estimated. Third, the amount of shrinkage of individual random effects appears to be excessive for small sample sizes (i.e. few cases per surgeon). Increasing the number of cases decreases the shrinkage, i.e. the black and red lines come closer to the blue line as N is increased from 20-100 to 1000-2000. Conversely, for small cluster sizes the amount of shrinkage is so excessive that one may lose the ability to distinguish between individuals with very different complication rates. This is reflected by a regression line between the predicted and the simulated random effect value that is nearly horizontal. Fourth, the rate of convergence of the predicted random effects to their true value critically depends upon the linearity of the regression model. In particular, the shrinkage of logistic regression model with 1000-2000 observations per case is almost the same at that of a linear model with 20-100 for the parameter values considered in this simulation. An interesting question is whether these observations (overshrinkage of random effects from small sample sizes in logistic mixed regression) reflects the use of random effects in modeling, or whether they are simply due to the interplay between sample size and the non-linearity of the statistical model. Hence, I turned to fixed effects modeling of the same datasets. The results of these analyses are summarized in the following figure: Difference between fixed effect estimates of random effects(black histograms) v.s. random effects predictions (density estimators: red lines) relative to their simulated (true) values One notes that the distribution of the differences between the random and fixed effects relative to the true (simulated) values is nearly identical for the linear case (second row). In other words, the use of the implicit constraint of the mixed model, offers no additional advantage when estimating individual performance in this model. On the other hand there is a value in applying mixed modeling techniques for the logistic regression case. In particular, outliers (such as those arising for small samples) are eliminated by the use of random effect modeling. The difference between the fixed and the random effect approach progressively decreases for large sample sizes, implying that the benefit of the latter approach is lost for “extra large” cluster sizes. One way to put these differences into perspective is to realize that the random effects for the logistic model correspond to log-odd ratios, relative to the population mean. Hence the difference between the predicted random effect and its true value, when exponentiated, corresponds to an Odd Ratio (OR). A summary of the odds ratios over the population of the random effects as a function of cluster size is shown below.  Metric 20-100 200-1000 1000-2000 Min 0.5082 0.6665 0.7938 Q25 0.8901 0.9323 0.9536 Median 1.0330 1.0420 1.0190 Mean 1.0530 1.0410 1.0300 Q75 1.1740 1.1340 1.1000 Max 1.8390 1.5910 1.3160  Even though the average Odds Ratio is close to 1, a substantial number of predicted random effects are far from the true value and yield ORs that are greater than 11% in either direction for small cluster sizes. These observations have implications for the Score Card (or similar projects): if one were to use Random Effects modeling to focus on individuals, then unless the cluster sizes (observations per individual) are substantial, one would run a substantial risk of misclassifying individuals, even though one would be right on average! One could wonder whether these differences between the simulated truth and the predicted random effects arise as a result of the numerical algorithms of the lme4 package. The latter was used by both the Surgeon Score Card project and our simulations so far and thus it would be important to verify that it performs up to specs. The major tuning variable for the algorithm is the order of the Adaptive Gaussian Quadrature (argument nAGQ). We did not find any substantial departures when the order of the quadrature was varied from 0 to 1 and 2. However, there is a possibility that the algorithm fails for all AGQ orders as it has to calculate probabilities that are numerically close to the boundary of the parameter space. We thus decided to fit the same model from a Bayesian perspective using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The following code will fit the Bayesian model and graphs the true values of the effects used in the simulated dataset against the Bayesian estimates (the posterior mean) and also the lme4 predictions. The latter tend to be numerically close to the posterior mode of the random effects when a Bayesian perspective is adopted.  ## Fit the mixed effects logistic model from R using openbugs library("glmmBUGS") library(nlme) fitBUGS = glmmBUGS(ev ~ 1, data=complications, effects="id", family="bernoulli") startingValues = fitBUGS$startingValues
source("getInits.R")
require(R2WinBUGS)
fitBUGSResult = bugs(fitBUGS$ragged, getInits, parameters.to.save = names(getInits()), model.file="model.txt", n.chain=3, n.iter=6000, n.burnin=2000, n.thin=10, program="openbugs", working.directory=getwd()) fitBUGSParams = restoreParams(fitBUGSResult , fitBUGS$ragged)
sumBUGS<-summaryChain(fitBUGSParams )
checkChain(fitBUGSParams )

## extract random effects

cnames<-as.character(sort(as.numeric(row.names(sumBUGS$FittedRid)))) fitBUGSRE<-sumBUGS$Rid[cnames,1]

## plot against the simulated (true) effects and the lme4 estimates

hist(ind,xlab="RE",ylim=c(0,3.8),freq=FALSE,main="")
lines(density(fitBUGSRE),main="Bayesian",xlab="RE",col="blue")
lines(density(ran2),col="red")
legend(legend=c("Truth","lme4","MCMC"),col=c("black","red","blue"),
bty="n",x=0.2,y=3,lwd=1)



The following figure shows the histogram of the true values of the random effects (black), the frequentist(lme4) estimates (red) and the Bayesian posterior means (blue).

It can be appreciated that both the Bayesian estimates and the lme4 predictions demonstrate considerable shrinkage relative to the true values for small cluster sizes (20-100). Hence, an lme4 numerical quirk seems an unlikely explanation for the shrinkage observed in the simulation.

Summing up:

• Random Effect modeling of binomial outcomes require a substantial number of observations per individual (cluster size) for the procedure to yield estimates of individual effects that are numerically indistinguishable  from the true values
• Fixed effect modeling is even worse an approach for this problem
• Bayesian fitting procedures do not appear to yield numerically different effects from their frequentist counterparts

These features should raise the barrier for accepting a random effects logistic modeling approach when the focus is on individual rather than population average effects. Even though the procedure is certainly preferable to fixed effects regression, the direct use of the value of the predicted individual random effects as an effect measure will be problematic for small cluster sizes (e.g. a small number of procedures per surgeon). In particular, a substantial proportion of these estimated effects is likely to be far from the truth even if the model is unbiased on the average. These observations are of direct relevance to the Surgical Score Card in which the number of observations per surgeon were far lower than the average value in our simulations: 60 (small), 600 (large) and 1500 (extra large):

 Procedure Code N (procedures) N(surgeons) Procedures per surgeon 51.23 201,351 21,479 9.37 60.5 78,763 5,093 15.46 60.29 73,752 7,898 9.34 81.02 52,972 5,624 9.42 81.07 106,689 6,214 17.17 81.08 102,716 6,136 16.74 81.51 494,576 13,414 36.87 81.54 1,190,631 18,029 66.04 Total 2,301,450 83,887 27.44

## The Weibull distribution is useful but its parameterization is confusing

June 5, 2015

The Weibull distribution is a very useful generalization of the exponential distribution that frequently appears in analysis of survival times and extreme events. Nevertheless it is a confusing distribution to use due to the different parameterizations that one finds in the literature

http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~dhunter/525/weekly/weibull.pdf

http://psfaculty.ucdavis.edu/bsjjones/slide3_parm.pdf

http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/18550/how-do-i-parameterize-a-weibull-distribution-in-jags-bugs

So be aware 🙂

## Machine Learning Cheat Sheet

May 24, 2015

Simply excellent – includes a section of Bayesian vs Frequentist Analyses

## Survival Analysis With Generalized Additive Models: Part V (stratified baseline hazards)

May 9, 2015

In the fifth part of this series we will examine the capabilities of Poisson GAMs to stratify the baseline hazard for survival analysis. In a stratified Cox model, the baseline hazard is not the same for all individuals in the study. Rather, it is assumed that the baseline hazard may differ between members of groups, even though it will be the same for members of the same group.

Stratification is one of the ways that one may address the violation of the proportionality assumption for a categorical covariate in the Cox model. The stratified Cox model resolves the overall hazard in the study as:

$h_{g}(t,X) = h_{0_{g}}(t)exp(\boldsymbol{x\beta}) ,\quad g=1,2,\dotsc ,g_{K}$

In the logarithmic scale, the multiplicative model for the stratified baseline hazard becomes an additive one. In particular, the specification of a different baseline hazard for the different levels of a factor amounts to specifying an interaction between the factor and the smooth baseline hazard in the PGAM.

We turn to the PBC dataset to provide an example of a stratified analysis with either the Cox model or the PGAM. In that dataset the covariate edema is a categorical variable assuming the values of 0 (no edema), 0.5 (untreated or successfully treated) and 1(edema despite treatment). An analysis of the Schoenfeld residual test shows that this covariate violates the proportionality assumption

> f<-coxph(Surv(time,status)~trt+age+sex+factor(edema),data=pbc)
> Schoen<-cox.zph(f)
> Schoen
rho chisq p
trt -0.089207 1.12e+00 0.2892
age -0.000198 4.72e-06 0.9983
sexf -0.075377 7.24e-01 0.3950
factor(edema)0.5 -0.202522 5.39e+00 0.0203
factor(edema)1 -0.132244 1.93e+00 0.1651
GLOBAL NA 8.31e+00 0.1400
> 

To fit a stratified GAM model, we should transform the dataset to include additional variables, one for each level of the edema covariate. To make the PGAM directly comparable to the stratified Cox model, we have to fit the former without an intercept term. This requires that we include additional dummy variables for any categorical covariates that we would to adjust our model for. In this particular case, the only other additional covariate is the female gender:

pbcGAM<-transform(pbcGAM,edema0=as.numeric(edema==0),
edema05=as.numeric(edema==0.5),edema1=as.numeric(edema==1),
sexf=as.numeric(sex=="f"))

Then the stratifed Cox and PGAM models are fit as:


fGAM<-gam(gam.ev~s(stop,bs="cr",by=edema0)+s(stop,bs="cr",by=edema05)+
s(stop,bs="cr",by=edema1)+trt+age+sexf+offset(log(gam.dur))-1,
data=pbcGAM,family="poisson",scale=1,method="REML")

fs<-coxph(Surv(time,status)~trt+age+sex+strata(edema),data=pbc)



In general the values of covariates of the stratified Cox and the PGAM models are similar with the exception of the trt variable. However the standard error of this variable estimated by either model is so large, that the estimates are statistically no different from zero, despite their difference in magnitude

> fs
Call:
coxph(formula = Surv(time, status) ~ trt + age + sex + strata(edema),
data = pbc)

coef exp(coef) se(coef) z p
trt 0.0336 1.034 0.18724 0.18 0.86000
age 0.0322 1.033 0.00923 3.49 0.00048
sexf -0.3067 0.736 0.24314 -1.26 0.21000

Likelihood ratio test=15.8 on 3 df, p=0.00126 n= 312, number of events= 125
(106 observations deleted due to missingness)
> summary(fGAM)

Family: poisson

Formula:
gam.ev ~ s(stop, bs = "cr", by = edema0) + s(stop, bs = "cr",
by = edema05) + s(stop, bs = "cr", by = edema1) + trt + age +
sexf + offset(log(gam.dur)) - 1

Parametric coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(>|z|)
trt 0.002396 0.187104 0.013 0.989782
age 0.033280 0.009170 3.629 0.000284 ***
sexf -0.297481 0.240578 -1.237 0.216262
---
Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

Approximate significance of smooth terms:
edf Ref.df Chi.sq p-value
s(stop):edema0 2.001 2.003 242.0 <2e-16 ***
s(stop):edema05 2.001 2.001 166.3 <2e-16 ***
s(stop):edema1 2.000 2.001 124.4 <2e-16 ***
---
Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

R-sq.(adj) = -0.146 Deviance explained = -78.4%
REML score = 843.96 Scale est. = 1 n = 3120</pre>


## Survival Analysis With Generalized Additive Models : Part IV (the survival function)

May 3, 2015

The ability of PGAMs to estimate the log-baseline hazard rate, endows them with the capability to be used as smooth alternatives to the Kaplan Meier curve. If we assume for the shake of simplicity that there are no proportional co-variates in the PGAM regression, then the quantity modeled  corresponds to the log-hazard of the  survival function. Note that the only assumptions made by the PGAM is that the a) log-hazard is a smooth function, with b) a given maximum complexity (number of degrees of freedom) and c) continuous second derivatives. A PGAM provides estimates of the log-hazard constant, $\beta_{0}$, and the time-varying deviation, $\lambda(t_{i,j})$. These can be used to predict the value of the survival function, $S(t)$, by approximating the integral appearing in the definition of $S(t)$ by numerical quadrature.

$S(t_{i})=\exp\left(-\int_{0}^{t_{i}}h(t)\mathrm{\, d}t\right)\approx\exp\left(-\sum_{j=1}^{N_{i}}w_{i,j}\exp(\beta_{0}+\lambda(t_{i,j}))\right)$

From the above definition it is obvious that the value of the survival distribution at any given time point is a non-linear function of the PGAM estimate. Consequently, the predicted survival value, $S_{pred}(t)$, cannot be derived in closed form; as with all non-linear PGAM estimates, a simple Monte Carlo simulation algorithm may be used to derive both the expected value of $\hat{S}_{pred}(t)$ and its uncertainty. For the case of the survival function, the simulation steps are provided in Appendix (Section A3) of our paper. The following R function can be used to predict the survival function and an associated confidence interval at a grid of points. It accepts as arguments a) the vector of time points, b) a PGAM object for the fitted log-hazard function, c) a list with the nodes and weights of a Gauss-Lobatto rule for the integration of the predicted survival, d) the number of Monte Carlo samples to obtain and optionally e) the seed of the random number generation. Of note, the order of the quadrature used to predict the survival function is not necessarily the same as the order used to fit the log-hazard function.

## Calculate survival and confidence interval over a grid of points
## using a GAM
SurvGAM<-Vectorize(function(t,gm,gl.rule,CI=0.95,Nsim=1000,seed=0)
##         t : time at which to calculate relative risk
##        gm : gam model for the fit
##   gl.rule : GL rule (list of weights and nodes)
##        CI : CI to apply
##      Nsim : Number of replicates to draw
##      seed : RNG seed
{
q<-(1-CI)/2.0
## create the nonlinear contrast
pdfnc<-data.frame(stop=t,gam.dur=1)
L<-length(gl.rule$x) start<-0; ## only for right cens data ## map the weights from [-1,1] to [start,t] gl.rule$w<-gl.rule$w*0.5*(t-start) ## expand the dataset df<-Survdataset(gl.rule,pdfnc,fu=1) ## linear predictor at each node Xp <- predict(gm,newdata=df,type="lpmatrix") ## draw samples set.seed(seed) br <- rmvn(Nsim,coef(gm),gm$Vp)
res1<-rep(0,Nsim)
for(i in 1:Nsim){
## hazard function at the nodes
hz<-exp(Xp%*%br[i,])
## cumumative hazard
chz1<-gl.rule$w %*% hz[1:L,] ##survival res1[i]<-exp(-chz1) } ret<-data.frame(t=t,S=mean(res1), LCI=quantile(res1,prob=q), UCI=quantile(res1,prob=1-q)) ret },vectorize.args=c("t")) The function makes use of another function, Survdataset, that expands internally the vector of time points into a survival dataset. This dataset is used to obtain predictions of the log-hazard function by calling the predict function from the mgcv package. ## Function that expands a prediction dataset ## so that a GL rule may be applied ## Used in num integration when generating measures of effect Survdataset<-function(GL,data,fu) ## GL : Gauss Lobatto rule ## data: survival data ## fu: column number containing fu info { ## append artificial ID in the set data$id<-1:nrow(data)
Gllx<-data.frame(stop=rep(GL$x,length(data$id)),
t=rep(data[,fu],each=length(GL$x)), id=rep(data$id,each=length(GL\$x)),
start=0)
## Change the final indicator to what
## was observed, map node positions,
## weights from [-1,1] back to the
## study time
Gllx<-transform(Gllx,
stop=0.5*(stop*(t-start)+(t+start)))
## now merge the remaining covariate info

Gllx<-merge(Gllx,data[,-c(fu)])
nm<-match(c("t","start","id"),colnames(Gllx))
Gllx[,-nm]
}

The ability to draw samples from the multivariate normal distribution corresponding to the model estimates and its covariance matrix is provided by another function, rmvn:

## function that draws multivariate normal random variates with
## a given mean vector and covariance matrix
##    n : number of samples to draw
##   mu : mean vector
##  sig : covariance matrix
rmvn <- function(n,mu,sig) { ## MVN random deviates
L <- mroot(sig);m <- ncol(L);
t(mu + L%*%matrix(rnorm(m*n),m,n))
}

To illustrate the use of these functions we revisit the PBC example from the 2nd part of this blog series. Firstly, let’s obtain a few Gauss-Lobatto lists of weights/nodes for the integration of the survival function:


## Obtain a few Gauss Lobatto rules to integrate the survival
## distribution
GL5<-GaussLobatto(5);
GL10<-GaussLobatto(10);
GL20<-GaussLobatto(20);

Subsequently, we fit the log-hazard rate to the coarsely (5 nodes) and more finely discretized (using a 10 point Gauss Lobatto rule) versions of the PBC dataset, created in Part 2. The third command obtains the Kaplan Meier estimate in the PBC dataset.


fSurv1<-gam(gam.ev~s(stop,bs="cr")+offset(log(gam.dur)),
data=pbcGAM,family="poisson",scale=1,method="REML")
fSurv2<-gam(gam.ev~s(stop,bs="cr")+offset(log(gam.dur)),
data=pbcGAM2,family="poisson",scale=1,method="REML")

KMSurv<-survfit(Surv(time,status)~1,data=pbc)


We obtained survival probability estimates for the 6 combinations of time discretization for fitting (either a 5 or 10th order Lobatto rule) and prediction (a 5th, 10th or 20th order rule):

t<-seq(0,4500,100)
s1<-SurvGAM(t,fSurv1,GL5)
s2<-SurvGAM(t,fSurv1,GL10)
s3<-SurvGAM(t,fSurv1,GL20)
s4<-SurvGAM(t,fSurv2,GL5)
s5<-SurvGAM(t,fSurv2,GL10)
s6<-SurvGAM(t,fSurv2,GL20)

In all cases 1000 Monte Carlo samples were obtained for the calculation of survival probability estimates and their pointwise 95% confidence intervals. We can plot these against the Kaplan Meier curve estimates:

par(mfrow=c(2,3))
plot(KMSurv,xlab="Time (days)",ylab="Surv Prob",ylim=c(0.25,1),main="Fit(GL5)/Predict(GL5)")
lines(s1[1,],s1[2,],col="blue",lwd=2)
lines(s1[1,],s1[3,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)
lines(s1[1,],s1[4,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)

plot(KMSurv,xlab="Time (days)",ylab="Surv Prob",ylim=c(0.25,1),main="Fit(GL5)/Predict(GL10)")
lines(s2[1,],s2[2,],col="blue",lwd=2)
lines(s2[1,],s2[3,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)
lines(s2[1,],s2[4,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)

plot(KMSurv,xlab="Time (days)",ylab="Surv Prob",ylim=c(0.25,1),main="Fit(GL5)/Predict(GL20)")
lines(s3[1,],s3[2,],col="blue",lwd=2)
lines(s3[1,],s3[3,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)
lines(s3[1,],s3[4,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)

plot(KMSurv,xlab="Time (days)",ylab="Surv Prob",ylim=c(0.25,1),main="Fit(GL10)/Predict(GL5)")
lines(s4[1,],s4[2,],col="blue",lwd=2)
lines(s4[1,],s4[3,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)
lines(s4[1,],s4[4,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)

plot(KMSurv,xlab="Time (days)",ylab="Surv Prob",ylim=c(0.25,1),main="Fit(GL10)/Predict(GL10)")
lines(s5[1,],s5[2,],col="blue",lwd=2)
lines(s5[1,],s5[3,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)
lines(s5[1,],s5[4,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)

plot(KMSurv,xlab="Time (days)",ylab="Surv Prob",ylim=c(0.25,1),main="Fit(GL10)/Predict(GL20)")
lines(s6[1,],s6[2,],col="blue",lwd=2)
lines(s6[1,],s6[3,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)
lines(s6[1,],s6[4,],col="blue",lwd=2,lty=2)



Survival probability estimates: Kaplan Meier curve (black) v.s. the PGAM estimates for different orders of Gauss Lobatto (GL) quadrature

Overall, there is a close agreement between the Kaplan Meier estimate and the PGAM estimates despite the different function spaces that the corresponding estimators “live”: the space of all piecewise constant functions (KM) v.s. that of the smooth functions with bounded, continuous second derivatives (PGAM). Furthermore, the 95% confidence interval of each estimator (dashed lines) contain the expected value of the other estimator. This suggests that there is no systematic difference between the KM and the PGAM survival estimators. This was confirmed in simulated datasets (see Fig 2 in our PLoS One paper).