Semiparametric Regression (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics) [Paperback]

David Ruppert (Author), M. P. Wand (Author), R. J. Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 14, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0521785162 | ISBN-13: 978-0521785167 | Edition: 1

Science abounds with problems where the data are noisy and the answer is not a straight line. Semiparametric regression analysis helps make sense of such data in application areas that include engineering, finance, medicine and public health. The book is geared towards researchers and professionals with little background in regression as well as statistically oriented scientists (biostatisticians, econometricians, quantitative social scientists, and epidemiologists) with knowledge of regression and the desire to begin using more flexible semiparametric models. Author resource page: http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~carroll/semiregbook/

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the field. It is very readable, informative without being heavy, and (excellent news) comes in a paperback version as well as hardback."
ISI Short Book Reviews

"This great book is the first one to remove barriers and to close gaps between advanced statistical methodology and applied research in various fields ... I highly recommend this book ... It provides a very readable access to modern semiparametric regression, demonstrates its potential in various applications, and is an inspiring source for new ideas. I enjoyed reading this book."
Biometrics

"... contains clear presentations of new developments in the field and also the state of the art in classical methods... I found it an easily readable book; its coverage of material was extensive and well explained and well illustrated ... I found the material useful and I recommend it strongly to anyone who is interested in modern nonparametric methods, whether they are expert or not ... here are 500-odd pages of good teaching material, nicely done, culminating in the arc-sine law and the Black-Scholes formula: anyone teaching probability would be glad to have it to hand."
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society

"This book provides an extensive overview of techniques for semiparametric regression ... I think it may be very useful for a more practically oriented audience."
Kwantitatieve Methoden

"This book is a very nice book for data analysis and indicates how to flexibly develop and analyze complex models using penalized spline functions. The examples are nontrivial and very useful."
Mathematical Reviews

"Although appealing to statistically-oriented scientists, this book also should not fail to attract the attention of experts in the field, because it provides a fresh perspective on smoothing and addresses ongoing computational and theoretical issues. The text is quite comprehensive, and the chapters are carefully organized for a coherent development of the subject...this is a book that I would strongly recommend to practitioners who want to learn nonparametric regression techniques and apply them to their own problems without being burdened by advanced mathematical concepts such as a reproducing kernel Hilbert space."
Yoonkyung Lee, Journal of the American Statistical Association

Book Description

Science abounds with problems where the data are noisy and the answer is not a straight line. Semiparametric regression aims to make sense of such data. Application areas include engineering, finance, medicine and public health. Semiparametric Regression Modeling explains this topic in a concise and modular fashion. The book is pitched towarards researchers and pro fessionals with little background in regression and statistically oriented scientists, such as biostatisticians, econometricians, quantitative social scientists, epidemiologists, with a good working knowledge of regression and the desire to begin using more flexible semiparametric models.

Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (July 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521785162
• ISBN-13: 978-0521785167
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #550,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars another great text by the team if Ruppert and Carroll, January 20, 2008

By 

Michael R. Chernick "statman31147" (Holland PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Semiparametric Regression (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics) (Paperback)

David Ruppert and Ray Carroll have been a research team for over 25 years. They have published many articles and books on regression analysis. These articles are always very clearly written and are great at showing the big picture and not just the nitty gritty details of the theorems that they prove. Two of my favorite books that they published are "Transformations and Weighting in Regression" published by Chapman & Hall in 1988 and "Measurement Error in Nonlinear Models " with Stefanski in 1995 and also published by Chapman & Hall.

This book is no exception. It is lucid in expostion and paints a general picture summarizing the area of nonparametric regression models and incorporating them with parametric regression both linear and nonlinear.

Their work has also been motivated by the desire to extend the theory of regression models to practical problems where the standard theory with assumptions such as linearity, normality, and homogeneity of variance don't hold.

In the first chapter, they motivate their methods through a number of examples in the areas of health science and environmental pollution problems. Chapter two goes through the standard linear regression models and the diagnostic checks for those models. They also cover other practical issues including model selection, use of transformations and extensions to nonlinear models. The special case of polynomial regression (a particular example of linear regression) is presented in detail.

Chapter 3 on scatterplot smoothing introduces many of the key ideas to their approach to semiparametric regression. Their approach in its most general form is based on mixed models which are introduced in chapter 4. Chapter 5 deals with automated methods for implementing the scatterplot smoothing techniques. The remaining chapters cover for example, simple semiparametric models, additive models, semiparametric mixed models, and generalized parametric models which include the very useful generalized linear models that they have extended to cover mixed effects.

The generalized additive models of Tibshirani and Hastie are covered in chapter 11, Other important issues including variance function estimation, accounting for measurement error, Bayesian approaches and more are covered in the latter chapters (12-17), Finally in chapter 18 seven examples are introduced to illustrate applications of the various methods. An epilogue, chapter 19, was written to motivate further research.

Many of these chapter are the subjects of whole monographs including some that Ruppert and Carroll have co-authored. In the preface they say that the book is intended for three potential audiences. The first audience is the students and scientists with interest in applying the techniques or learning about them but possess at most a moderate background in regression. The second audience (the group I would put myself in)are the biostatisticians ,econometricians and scientists in other disciplines who have a good working knowledge of regression and want to add the flexibility of semiparametric methods to their arsenal of techniques. The third group is the researchers in nonparametric regression who may not yet know about some of the new advances of Carroll, Ruppert and Wand that are included in this text.

I find in general that their books are masterpieces. As a statistician who has done both applied and theoretical work, I know what it takes to write books that summarize a body of theory or connect the theory and applications, or incorporate new results. These authors do both of these things in this book. They have the rare talent to find a way to unify and simplify existing theory and that is another great feature you will find in this book.

I haven't been able to do that and only a few others that I know can. One example that comes to my mind is the book on extremes by Leadbetter, Lindgren and Rootzen. At the time if of publication in 1978, they provided a unified theory for extremes combining the theory for independent and dependent cases. They also provide some examples in the bppk. But even that landmark book is heavily theoretical. Ruppert, Carroll and Wand emphasize applications and provide a number of examples throughout.