Approximating Likelihoods for Large Environmental Datasets
报告人: Ying Sun, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
时间:2016-06-02 14:00 ~ 15:00
地点:理科一号楼1114
Abstract:
For Gaussian process models, likelihood based methods are often difficult to use with large irregularly spaced spatial datasets due to the prohibitive computational burden and substantial storage requirements. Although various approximation methods have been developed to address the computational difficulties, retaining the statistical efficiency remains an issue. This talk focuses on statistical methods for approximating likelihoods and score equations. The proposed new unbiased estimating equations are both computationally and statistically efficient, where the covariance matrix inverse is approximated by a sparse inverse Cholesky approach. A unified framework based on composite likelihood methods is also introduced, which allows for constructing different types of hierarchical low rank approximations. The performance of the proposed methods is investigated by numerical and simulation studies, and parallel computing techniques are explored for very large datasets. Our methods are applied to nearly 90,000 satellite-based measurements of water vapor levels over a region in the Southeast Pacific Ocean, and nearly 1 million numerical model generated soil moisture data in the area of Mississippi River basin. The fitted models facilitate a better understanding of the spatial variability of the climate variables.
About the Speaker: