Re: "A statistical method for evaluating suicide clusters and implementing cluster surveillance".
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to P Schlattmann.
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This paper considers a statistic--recently suggested by Mora--for the deviation of a sample distribution from a reference distribution which typically arises in anthropometry when using the nutritional indicators height/age, weight/age or weight/height. The statistic measures the area between curves (ABC) and stands for the mass of the sample distribution which is not covered by the reference distribution. The paper provides a statistical framework for the ABC and includes some minor corrections of Mora's original paper. For the normal distribution situation with common or different variances, formulae are derived which include a partition of ABC into parts corresponding to malnourished and well-nourished groups. However, the main result is a non-parametric generalization of the ABC, motivated by the fact that the nutritional indicators often have skewed distributions with heavier left tails. Non-parametric statistical inference is provided by linking the ABC to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic.
This paper presents various algorithmic approaches for computing the maximum likelihood estimator of the mixing distribution of a one-parameter family of densities and provides a unifying computer-oriented concept for the statistical analysis of unobserved heterogeneity (i.e., observations stemming from different subpopulations) in a univariate sample. The case with unknown number of population subgroups as well as the case with known number of population subgroups, with emphasis on the first, is considered in the computer package C.A.MAN (Computer Assisted Mixture Analysis). It includes an algorithmic menu with choices of the EM algorithm, the vertex exchange algorithm, a combination of both, as well as the vertex direction method. To ensure reliable convergence, a step-length menu is provided for the three latter methods, each achieving monotonicity for the direction of choice. C.A.MAN has the option to work with restricted support size-that is, the case when the number of components is known a priori. In the latter case, the EM algorithm is used. Applications of mixture modelling in medical problems are discussed.