Structural equation modelingStructural equation modeling (SEM) is a diverse set of methods used by scientists doing both observational and experimental research. SEM is used mostly in the social and behavioral sciences but it is also used in epidemiology, business, and other fields. A definition of SEM is difficult without reference to technical language, but a good starting place is the name itself. SEM involves a model representing how various aspects of some phenomenon are thought to causally connect to one another.
Latent variable modelA latent variable model is a statistical model that relates a set of observable variables (also called manifest variables or indicators) to a set of latent variables. It is assumed that the responses on the indicators or manifest variables are the result of an individual's position on the latent variable(s), and that the manifest variables have nothing in common after controlling for the latent variable (local independence).
Latent and observable variablesIn statistics, latent variables (from Latin: present participle of lateo, “lie hidden”) are variables that can only be inferred indirectly through a mathematical model from other observable variables that can be directly observed or measured. Such latent variable models are used in many disciplines, including political science, demography, engineering, medicine, ecology, physics, machine learning/artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, chemometrics, natural language processing, management, psychology and the social sciences.
CausalityCausality (also called causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (a cause) contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an effect) where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. In general, a process has many causes, which are also said to be causal factors for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future.
Independent component analysisIn signal processing, independent component analysis (ICA) is a computational method for separating a multivariate signal into additive subcomponents. This is done by assuming that at most one subcomponent is Gaussian and that the subcomponents are statistically independent from each other. ICA is a special case of blind source separation. A common example application is the "cocktail party problem" of listening in on one person's speech in a noisy room.
Principal component analysisPrincipal component analysis (PCA) is a popular technique for analyzing large datasets containing a high number of dimensions/features per observation, increasing the interpretability of data while preserving the maximum amount of information, and enabling the visualization of multidimensional data. Formally, PCA is a statistical technique for reducing the dimensionality of a dataset. This is accomplished by linearly transforming the data into a new coordinate system where (most of) the variation in the data can be described with fewer dimensions than the initial data.
Probabilistic latent semantic analysisProbabilistic latent semantic analysis (PLSA), also known as probabilistic latent semantic indexing (PLSI, especially in information retrieval circles) is a statistical technique for the analysis of two-mode and co-occurrence data. In effect, one can derive a low-dimensional representation of the observed variables in terms of their affinity to certain hidden variables, just as in latent semantic analysis, from which PLSA evolved.
Latent Dirichlet allocationIn natural language processing, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is a Bayesian network (and, therefore, a generative statistical model) that explains a set of observations through unobserved groups, and each group explains why some parts of the data are similar. The LDA is an example of a Bayesian topic model. In this, observations (e.g., words) are collected into documents, and each word's presence is attributable to one of the document's topics. Each document will contain a small number of topics.
Factor analysisFactor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observed variables mainly reflect the variations in two unobserved (underlying) variables. Factor analysis searches for such joint variations in response to unobserved latent variables.
Kernel principal component analysisIn the field of multivariate statistics, kernel principal component analysis (kernel PCA) is an extension of principal component analysis (PCA) using techniques of kernel methods. Using a kernel, the originally linear operations of PCA are performed in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Recall that conventional PCA operates on zero-centered data; that is, where is one of the multivariate observations.
Errors-in-variables modelsIn statistics, errors-in-variables models or measurement error models are regression models that account for measurement errors in the independent variables. In contrast, standard regression models assume that those regressors have been measured exactly, or observed without error; as such, those models account only for errors in the dependent variables, or responses. In the case when some regressors have been measured with errors, estimation based on the standard assumption leads to inconsistent estimates, meaning that the parameter estimates do not tend to the true values even in very large samples.
Gaussian functionIn mathematics, a Gaussian function, often simply referred to as a Gaussian, is a function of the base form and with parametric extension for arbitrary real constants a, b and non-zero c. It is named after the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. The graph of a Gaussian is a characteristic symmetric "bell curve" shape. The parameter a is the height of the curve's peak, b is the position of the center of the peak, and c (the standard deviation, sometimes called the Gaussian RMS width) controls the width of the "bell".
Gaussian blurIn , a Gaussian blur (also known as Gaussian smoothing) is the result of blurring an by a Gaussian function (named after mathematician and scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss). It is a widely used effect in graphics software, typically to reduce and reduce detail. The visual effect of this blurring technique is a smooth blur resembling that of viewing the image through a translucent screen, distinctly different from the bokeh effect produced by an out-of-focus lens or the shadow of an object under usual illumination.
Vector autoregressionVector autoregression (VAR) is a statistical model used to capture the relationship between multiple quantities as they change over time. VAR is a type of stochastic process model. VAR models generalize the single-variable (univariate) autoregressive model by allowing for multivariate time series. VAR models are often used in economics and the natural sciences. Like the autoregressive model, each variable has an equation modelling its evolution over time.
Causal inferenceCausal inference is the process of determining the independent, actual effect of a particular phenomenon that is a component of a larger system. The main difference between causal inference and inference of association is that causal inference analyzes the response of an effect variable when a cause of the effect variable is changed. The science of why things occur is called etiology, and can be described using the language of scientific causal notation. Causal inference is said to provide the evidence of causality theorized by causal reasoning.
Elastic mapElastic maps provide a tool for nonlinear dimensionality reduction. By their construction, they are a system of elastic springs embedded in the data space. This system approximates a low-dimensional manifold. The elastic coefficients of this system allow the switch from completely unstructured k-means clustering (zero elasticity) to the estimators located closely to linear PCA manifolds (for high bending and low stretching modules). With some intermediate values of the elasticity coefficients, this system effectively approximates non-linear principal manifolds.
Dependent and independent variablesDependent and independent variables are variables in mathematical modeling, statistical modeling and experimental sciences. Dependent variables are studied under the supposition or demand that they depend, by some law or rule (e.g., by a mathematical function), on the values of other variables. Independent variables, in turn, are not seen as depending on any other variable in the scope of the experiment in question. In this sense, some common independent variables are time, space, density, mass, fluid flow rate, and previous values of some observed value of interest (e.
Causal modelIn the philosophy of science, a causal model (or structural causal model) is a conceptual model that describes the causal mechanisms of a system. Several types of causal notation may be used in the development of a causal model. Causal models can improve study designs by providing clear rules for deciding which independent variables need to be included/controlled for. They can allow some questions to be answered from existing observational data without the need for an interventional study such as a randomized controlled trial.
Instrumental variables estimationIn statistics, econometrics, epidemiology and related disciplines, the method of instrumental variables (IV) is used to estimate causal relationships when controlled experiments are not feasible or when a treatment is not successfully delivered to every unit in a randomized experiment. Intuitively, IVs are used when an explanatory variable of interest is correlated with the error term, in which case ordinary least squares and ANOVA give biased results.
Omitted-variable biasIn statistics, omitted-variable bias (OVB) occurs when a statistical model leaves out one or more relevant variables. The bias results in the model attributing the effect of the missing variables to those that were included. More specifically, OVB is the bias that appears in the estimates of parameters in a regression analysis, when the assumed specification is incorrect in that it omits an independent variable that is a determinant of the dependent variable and correlated with one or more of the included independent variables.
