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This paper presents a goodness-of-fit test for parametric regression models with scalar response and directional predictor, that is, a vector on a sphere of arbitrary dimension. The testing procedure is based on the weighted squared distance between a smooth and a parametric regression estimator, where the smooth regression estimator is obtained by a projected local approach. Asymptotic behaviour of the test statistic under the null hypothesis and local alternatives is provided, jointly with a consistent bootstrap algorithm for application in practice. A simulation study illustrates the performance of the test in finite samples. The procedure is applied to test a linear model in text mining.

Recently described stochastic models of protein evolution have demonstrated that the inclusion of structural information in addition to amino acid sequences leads to a more reliable estimation of evolutionary parameters. We present a generative, evolutionary model of protein structure and sequence that is valid on a local length scale. The model concerns the local dependencies between sequence and structure evolution in a pair of homologous proteins. The evolutionary trajectory between the two structures in the protein pair is treated as a random walk in dihedral angle space, which is modeled using a novel angular diffusion process on the two-dimensional torus. Coupling sequence and structure evolution in our model allows for modeling both “smooth” conformational changes and “catastrophic” conformational jumps, conditioned on the amino acid changes. The model has interpretable parameters and is comparatively more realistic than previous stochastic models, providing new insights into the relationship between sequence and structure evolution. For example, using the trained model we were able to identify an apparent sequence–structure evolutionary motif present in a large number of homologous protein pairs. The generative nature of our model enables us to evaluate its validity and its ability to simulate aspects of protein evolution conditioned on an amino acid sequence, a related amino acid sequence, a related structure or any combination thereof.

Mainstream statistical methodology is generally applicable to data observed in Euclidean space. There are, however, numerous contexts of considerable scientific interest in which the natural supports for the data under consideration are Riemannian manifolds like the unit circle, torus, sphere, and their extensions. Typically, such data can be represented using one or more directions, and directional statistics is the branch of statistics that deals with their analysis. In this paper, we provide a review of the many recent developments in the field since the publication of Mardia and Jupp (Wiley 1999), still the most comprehensive text on directional statistics. Many of those developments have been stimulated by interesting applications in fields as diverse as astronomy, medicine, genetics, neurology, space situational awareness, acoustics, image analysis, text mining, environmetrics, and machine learning. We begin by considering developments for the exploratory analysis of directional data before progressing to distributional models, general approaches to inference, hypothesis testing, regression, nonparametric curve estimation, methods for dimension reduction, classification and clustering, and the modelling of time series, spatial and spatio-temporal data. An overview of currently available software for analysing directional data is also provided, and potential future developments are discussed.

Mathematically, the execution of an American-style financial derivative is commonly reduced to solving an optimal stopping problem. Breaking the general assumption that the knowledge of the holder is restricted to the price history of the underlying asset, we allow for the disclosure of future information about the terminal price of the asset by modeling it as a Brownian bridge. This model may be used under special market conditions, in particular we focus on what in the literature is known as the “pinning effect”, that is, when the price of the asset approaches the strike price of a highly-traded option close to its expiration date. Our main mathematical contribution is in characterizing the solution to the optimal stopping problem when the gain function includes the discount factor. We show how to numerically compute the solution and we analyze the effect of the volatility estimation on the strategy by computing the confidence curves around the optimal stopping boundary. Finally, we compare our method with the optimal exercise time based on a geometric Brownian motion by using real data exhibiting pinning.

We consider marked empirical processes indexed by a randomly projected functional covariate to construct goodness-of-fit tests for the functional linear model with scalar response. The test statistics are built from continuous functionals over the projected process, resulting in computationally efficient tests that exhibit root-n convergence rates and circumvent the curse of dimensionality. The weak convergence of the empirical process is obtained conditionally on a random direction, whilst the almost surely equivalence between the testing for significance expressed on the original and on the projected functional covariate is proved. The computation of the test in practice involves calibration by wild bootstrap resampling and the combination of several p-values, arising from different projections, by means of the false discovery rate method. The finite sample properties of the tests are illustrated in a simulation study for a variety of linear models, underlying processes, and alternatives. The software provided implements the tests and allows the replication of simulations and data applications.

This article proposes a goodness-of-fit test for the null hypothesis of a functional linear model with scalar response. The test is based on a generalization to the functional framework of a previous one, designed for the goodness-of-fit of regression models with multivariate covariates using random projections. The test statistic is easy to compute using geometrical and matrix arguments, and simple to calibrate in its distribution by a wild bootstrap on the residuals. The finite sample properties of the test are illustrated by a simulation study for several types of basis and under different alternatives. Finally, the test is applied to two datasets for checking the assumption of the functional linear model and a graphical tool is introduced. Supplementary materials are available online.

We solve the non-discounted, finite-horizon optimal stopping problem of a Gauss–Markov bridge by using a time-space transformation approach. The associated optimal stopping boundary is proved to be Lipschitz continuous on any closed interval that excludes the horizon, and it is characterized by the unique solution of an integral equation. A Picard iteration algorithm is discussed and implemented to exemplify the numerical computation and geometry of the optimal stopping boundary for some illustrative cases.

A goodness-of-fit test for the Functional Linear Model with Scalar Response (FLMSR) with responses Missing at Random (MAR) is proposed in this paper. The test statistic relies on a marked empirical process indexed by the projected functional covariate and its distribution under the null hypothesis is calibrated using a wild bootstrap procedure. The computation and performance of the test rely on having an accurate estimator of the functional slope of the FLMSR when the sample has MAR responses. Three estimation methods based on the Functional Principal Components (FPCs) of the covariate are considered. First, the simplified method estimates the functional slope by simply discarding observations with missing responses. Second, the imputed method estimates the functional slope by imputing the missing responses using the simplified estimator. Third, the inverse probability weighted method incorporates the missing response generation mechanism when imputing. Furthermore, both cross-validation and LASSO regression are used to select the FPCs used by each estimator. Several Monte Carlo experiments are conducted to analyze the behavior of the testing procedure in combination with the functional slope estimators. Results indicate that estimators performing missing-response imputation achieve the highest power. The testing procedure is applied to check for linear dependence between the average number of sunny days per year and the mean curve of daily temperatures at weather stations in Spain.

We introduce nonparametric tests of independence for bivariate circular data based on trigonometric moments. Our contributions lie in (i) proposing non-parametric tests that are locally and asymptotically optimal against bivariate cosine von Mises alternatives and (ii) extending these tests, via the empirical characteristic function, to obtain consistent tests against broader sets of alternatives, eventually being omnibus. In particular, one such omnibus test is a circular version of the celebrated distance-covariance test. Thus, we provide a collection of trigonometric-based tests of varying generality and known optimalities. We obtain the large-sample behavior of the tests under the null and alternative hypotheses, and use simulations to show that the new tests are competitive against previous proposals. Lastly, we demonstrate the proposed tests with two data applications in astronomy and forest science.