Robust Estimation and Prediction Under the Unit-Level SAE Model"

In rsae: Robust Small Area Estimation

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
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library("rsae")

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## Outline

This vignette is organized as follows:

1. Getting started

2. Exploring the data

3. Model specification

4. Parameter estimation

5. Robust prediction of the area-level means

6. Mean square prediction error

<div class="my-sidebar-blue">
<p style="color: #1f618d;">
**Citable companion paper of the package**
</p>
<p>
Schoch, T. (2012). Robust Unit-Level Small Area Estimation: A Fast Algorithm for Large Datasets. *Austrian Journal of Statistics* 41(4), pp. 243--265. [URL: www.stat.tugraz.at/AJS/ausg124/124Schoch.pdf](http://www.stat.tugraz.at/AJS/ausg124/124Schoch.pdf)
</p>
</div>


## 1 Getting started

In small area estimation (SAE), we distinguish two types of models:

* model A: basic area-level model (also known as Fay-Herriot model),
* model B: basic unit-level model,

The classification of the models (A or B) is from [Rao (2003, Chapter 7)](#biblio). The current version of the package implements the following estimation methods under the **unit-level model (model B)**:

* maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation,
* robust Huber type *M*-estimation.

<div class="my-sidebar-orange">
<p style="color: #ce5b00;">
**IMPORTANT.**
</p>
<p>
The implemented *M*-estimator is the RML II estimator of [Richardson and Welsh (1995)](#biblio); see [Schoch, (2012)](#biblio). This method is **different** from the estimators in [Sinha and Rao (2009)](#biblio).
</p>
</div>


The package can be installed from CRAN using `install.packages("rsae")`. Once the `rsae` package has been installed, we need to load it to the current session by `library("rsae")`.

**Work flow**

The prediction of the area-level means takes three steps.

* model specification using `saemodel()`,
* model fitting using `fitsaemodel()`,
* prediction of the random effects and the area-specific means using `robpredict()`; this step includes the computation of the mean square prediction error.

## 2 Exploring the data

We use the `landsat` data of [Battese et al. (1988)](#biblio), which is loaded by

```r
data("landsat")

The landsat data is a compilation of survey and satellite data from Battese et al. (1988). It consists of data on segments (primary sampling unit; 1 segement approx. 250 hectares) under corn and soybeans for 12 counties in north-central Iowa.

• The survey data on the areas under corn and soybeans (reported in hectares) in the 37 segments of the 12 counties have been determined by USDA Statistical Reporting Service staff, who interviewed farm operators. A segment is about 250 hectares.
• For the LANDSAT satellite data, information is recorded as "pixels". A pixel is about 0.45 hectares.

In the three smallest counties (Cerro Gordo, Hamilton, and Worth), data is available only for one sample segment. All other counties have data for more than one sample segment (i.e., unbalanced data). The largest area (Hardin) covers six units.

The data for the observations 32, 33, and 34 are shown below

landsat[32:34,]

We added the variable outlier to the original data. It flags observation 33 as an outlier, which is in line with the discussion in Battese et al. (1988).

3 Model specification

We consider estimating the parameters of the basic unit-level model (Battese et al. , 1988)

$$ \begin{equation} \mathrm{HACorn}{i,j} = \alpha + \beta_1 \mathrm{PixelsCorn}{i,j} + \beta_2 \mathrm{PixelsSoybeans}{i,j} + u_i + e{i,j}, \end{equation} $$

where $j=1,\ldots, n_i$, $i=1, \ldots,12$, and

• $\alpha$, $\beta_1$, and $\beta_2$ are unknown real-valued coefficients,
• the $u_i$'s are area-specific random effects, $u_i \sim N(0, \sigma_u^2)$, and $\sigma_u^2 \geq 0$ is unknown,
• the $e_i$'s are residual errors, $e_{ij} \sim N(0, \sigma_e^2)$, and $\sigma_e^2 > 0$ is unkown,
• the $u_i$'s and $e_{ij}$'s are independent.

The model is defined with the help of thesaemodel()function:

bhfmodel <- saemodel(formula = HACorn ~ PixelsCorn + PixelsSoybeans,
                     area = ~ CountyName,
                     data = subset(landsat, subset = (outlier == FALSE)))

where

• formula defines the fixed-effect part of the model (the ~ operator separates dependent and independent variables; by default, the model includes a regression intercept),
• area specifies the area-level random effect (variable CountyName serves as area identifier; note that the argument area is also a formula object),
• data specifies the data.frame (here, we consider the subset of observations that are not flagged as outliers).

If you need to know more about a particular model, you can use the summary() method.

4 Parameter estimation

Having specified bhfmodel, we consider estimating its parameters by different estimation method.

4.1 Maximum-likelihood estimation

The maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of the parameters are computed by

mlfit <- fitsaemodel(method = "ml", bhfmodel)

On print, object mlfit shows the following.

mlfit

**IMPORTANT. Failure of convergence**

If the algorithm did not converge, see [Appendix](#appendix).

Inferential statistics for the object mlfit are computed by the summary() method.

summary(mlfit)

Function coef() extracts the estimated coefficients from a fitted model.

• By default, function coef() is called with argument type = "both", which implies that the fixed effects and the random effect variances are returned.
• Calling the function with type = "ranef" or type = "fixef" returns the random effect variances or the fixed effects, respectively.

Function convergence() can be useful if the algorithm did not converge; see Appendix.

**Good to know. When the mixed linear model is not appropriate**

Suppose that our data do not have area-specific variation. If we nevertheless fit the basic unit-level model to the data, the output looks as follows. wzxhzdk:7 The report indicates that the random-effect variance is close to zero or equal to zero. Thus, it is more appropriate to use a linear regression model instead of the basic unit-level model.

4.2 Huber-type M-estimation

The Huber-type M-estimator is appropriate for situations where the response variable is supposed to be (moderately) contaminated by outliers. The M-estimator downweights residual outliers, but it does not limit the effect of high-leverage observations.

The Huber-type M-estimator of bhfmodel is

huberfit <- fitsaemodel("huberm", bhfmodel, k = 1.5)

where k is the robustness tuning constant of the Huber $\psi$-function ($0<k < \infty$). On print, we have

huberfit

**Good to know. Selection of robustness tuning constant**

In the simple location-scale model, the tuning constant `k = 1.345` defines an *M*-estimator of location that has an asymptotic relative efficiency w.r.t. the ML estimate of approx. 95\% at the Gaussian core model. This property does *not* directly carry over to robust estimators of mixed-linear models. Therefore, we should not blindly select `k = 1.345`.

If the algorithm did not converge, see paragraph safe mode (below) and Appendix. Inferential statistics for huberfit are computed by the summary() method.

summary(huberfit)

The output is separated into 2 blocks. The first block shows inferential statistics of the estimated fixed effects. The second block reports the degree of downweighting that is applied to outlying residuals at the final iteration (by estimating equations, EE, separately). The more the value of "sum(wgt)/n" deviates from 1.0, the more downweighting has been applied.

The methods coef() and convergence() are also available.

Safe mode

In the safe mode, the algorithm is initialized by a high-breakdown-point regression estimator. Note. In order to use the safe mode, the robustbase package of Maechler et al. (2021) must be installed.

The safe mode is entered by specifying one the following initialization methods:

• init = "lts" : least trimmed squares (LTS) regression estimator; see Rousseeuw (1984) and Rousseeuw and van Driessen (2006),
• init = "s" : regression S-estimator; see Rousseeuw and Yohai (1984) and Salibian-Barerra and Yohai (2006)

in the call of fitsaemodel(). The safe mode uses a couple of internal tests to check whether the estimates at consecutive iterations behave well. Notably, it tries to detect cycles in the sequence iteratively refined estimates; see Schoch (2012).

5 (Robust) prediction of the area-level means

The package implements the following methods to predict the area-level means:

• empirical best linear unbiased predictor (EBLUP); see Rao (2003, Chapter 7.2),
• robust prediction method of Copt and Victoria-Feser (2009); see also Heritier et al. (2009, p. 113--114).

**Good to know. Robust prediction method**

The implemented robust prediction method is different from the method of [Sinha and Rao (2009)](#biblio), who proposed to solve the robustified mixed model equations [Fellner (1986)](#biblio) by a Newton-Raphson-type updating scheme that is obtained from a Taylor-series expansion of the robustified mixed model equations.

EBLUP and robust predictions are computed by

robpredict(fit, areameans = NULL, k = NULL, reps = NULL, progress_bar = TRUE)

where

• fit is a fitted model (ML estimate or M-estimate),
• k is the robustness tuning constant of the Huber $\psi$-function for robust prediction. By default k is NULL which means that the procedure inherits the tuning constant k that has been used in fitting the model; see fitsaemodel(). For the ML estimator, $k$ is taken as a large value that "represents" infinity; see argument k_Inf in fitsaemodel.control().
• reps and progress_bar are used in the computation of the mean square prediction error (see below).

**Good to know. Robust prediction**

The robustness-tuning constant `k` does not necessarily have to be the same as the one used in `fitsaemodel()`. If `areameans = NULL`, the prediction is based on the same data that have been used in estimating the model parameters (i.e., within-sample prediction). This is rarely used in SAE.

In the landsat data, the county-specific population means of pixels of the segments under corn and soybeans are recorded in the variables MeanPixelsCorn and MeanPixelsSoybeans, respectively. Each sample segment in a particular county is assigned the county-specific means. Therefore, the population mean of the variables MeanPixelsCorn and MeanPixelsSoybeans occurs $n_i$ times. The unique county-specific population means are obtained using

dat <- unique(landsat[-33, c("MeanPixelsCorn", "MeanPixelsSoybeans", "CountyName")])
dat <- cbind(rep(1,12), dat)
rownames(dat) <- dat$CountyName
dat <- dat[,1:3]
dat

The first column of dat is a dummy variable (because bhfmodel has a regression intercept). The second and third column represent, respectively, the county-specific population means of segments under corn and soybeans.

Consider the ML estimate, mlfit, of the bhfmodel model. The EBLUP of the area-level means is computed by

pred <- robpredict(mlfit, areameans = dat)
pred

because (by default) k = NULL . By explicitly specifying k in the call of robpredict(), we can—in principle—compute robust predictions for the ML estimate instead of the EBLUP.

Consider the Huber M-estimate huberfit (with tuning constant k = 1.5, see call of above). If k is not specified in the call of robpredict(), robust predictions are computed with $k$ equal to 1.5; otherwise, the robust predictions are based on the value of k in the call of robpredict().

Object pred is a list with slots "fixeff", "raneff", "means", "mspe", etc. For instance, the predicted means can be extracted by pred$means or pred[["means"]].

A plot() function is available to display the predicted means.

Function residuals() computes the residuals.

6 Mean square prediction error

Function robpredict() can be used to compute bootstrap estimates of the mean squared prediction errors (MSPE) of the predicted area-level means; see Sinha and Rao (2009). To compute the MSPE, we must specify the number of bootstrap replicates (reps). If reps = NULL, the MSPE is not computed.

Consider (for instance) the ML estimate. EBLUP and MSPE of the EBLUP based on 100 bootstrap replicates are computed by

pred <- robpredict(mlfit, areameans = dat, reps = 100,
                   progress_bar = FALSE)
pred

The number of reps = 100 is kept small for illustration purposes; in practice, we should choose larger values. The progress bar has been disabled as it is not suitable for the automatic vignette generation.

A visual display of the predicted area-level means obtains by plot(pred, type = "l", sort = "means").

References {#biblio}

COPT, S. and M.-P. VICTORIA-FESER (2009). Robust prediction in mixed linear models, Tech. rep., University of Geneva.

BATTESE, G. E., R. M. HARTER and W. A. FULLER (1988). An error component model for prediction of county crop areas using, Journal of the American Statistical Association 83, 28--36. DOI: 10.2307/2288915

FELLNER, W. H. (1986). Robust estimation of variance components, Technometrics 28, 51--60. DOI: 10.1080/00401706.1986.10488097

HERITIER, S., E. CANTONI, S. COPT, and M.-P. VICTORIA-FESER (2009). Robust Methods in Biostatistics, New York: John Wiley & Sons.

MAECHLER, M., P. J. ROUSSEEUW, C. CROUX, V. TODOROC, A. RUCKSTUHL, M. SALIBIAN-BARRERA, T. VERBEKE, M. KOLLER, M. KOLLER, E. L. T. CONCEICAO and M. A. DI PALMA (2021). robustbase: Basic Robust Statistics. R package version 0.93-9. URL: CRAN.R-project.org/package=robustbase.

RAO, J.N.K. (2003). Small Area Estimation, New York: John Wiley and Sons.

RICHARDSON, A. M. and A. H. WELSH (1995). Robust Restricted Maximum Likelihood in Mixed Linear Models, Biometrics 51, 1429--1439. DOI: 10.2307/2533273

ROUSSEEUW, P. J. (1984). Least Median of Squares Regression, Journal of the American Statistical Association 79, 871--880. DOI: 10.2307/2288718

ROUSSEEUW, P. J. and K. VAN DRIESSEN (2006). Computing LTS Regression for Large Data Sets, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 12, 29--45. DOI: 10.1007/s10618-005-0024-4

ROUSSEEUW, P. J. and V. YOHAI (1984). Robust Regression by Means of S Estimators, in Robust and Nonlinear Time Series Analysis, ed. by FRANKE, J., W. HÄRDLE AND R. D. MARTIN, New York: Springer, 256--274.

SALIBIAN-BARRERA, M. and V. J. YOHAI (2006). A Fast Algorithm for S-Regression Estimates, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 15, 414--427. DOI: 10.1198/106186006x113629

SCHOCH, T. (2012). Robust Unit-Level Small Area Estimation: A Fast Algorithm for Large Datasets. Austrian Journal of Statistics 41, 243--265. URL: www.stat.tugraz.at/AJS/ausg124/124Schoch.pdf

SINHA, S.K. and J.N.K. RAO (2009). Robust small area estimation. Canadian Journal of Statistics 37, 381--399. DOI: 10.1002/cjs.10029

Appendix

A Failure of convergence

Suppose that we computed

est <- fitsaemodel("ml", bhfmodel, niter = 3)

The algorithm did not converge and we get the following output

est

To learn more, we call convergence(est) and get

convergence(est)

Clearly, we have deliberately set the number of (overall or outer loop) iterations equal to niter = 3 to illustrate the behavior; see also "niter = 3" on the line "overall loop" in the above table. As a consequence, the algorithm failed to converge.

The maximum number of iterations for the fixed effects ("fixeff") is 200, for the residual variance estimator ("residual var") is 200, for the area-level random effect variance is ("area raneff var") is 100. The default values can be modified; see documentation of fitsaemodel.control().

The last table in the above output shows the number of iterations that the algorithm required for the niter = 3 overall loop iteration (i.e., in the first loop, we have fixef = 2, residual var = 2 and area raneff var = 18 iterations). From this table we can learn how to adjust the default values in case the algorithm does not converge.

rsae documentation built on May 24, 2022, 5:06 p.m.