Bayesian nonlinear regression for large small problems

Abstract

Statistical modeling and inference problems with sample sizes substantially smaller than the number of available covariates are challenging. This is known as large p small n problem. Furthermore, the problem is more complicated when we have multiple correlated responses. We develop multivariate nonlinear regression models in this setup for accurate prediction. In this paper, we introduce a full Bayesian support vector regression model with Vapnik's ε-insensitive loss function, based on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS) under the multivariate correlated response setup. This provides a full probabilistic description of support vector machine (SVM) rather than an algorithm for fitting purposes. We have also introduced a multivariate version of the relevance vector machine (RVM). Instead of the original treatment of the RVM relying on the use of type II maximum likelihood estimates of the hyper-parameters, we put a prior on the hyper-parameters and use Markov chain Monte Carlo technique for computation. We have also proposed an empirical Bayes method for our RVM and SVM. Our methods are illustrated with a prediction problem in the near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. A simulation study is also undertaken to check the prediction accuracy of our models. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.