Projection predictive variable selection for discrete response families with finite support

Frank Weber (), Änne Glass () and Aki Vehtari ()
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Frank Weber: Rostock University Medical Center
Änne Glass: Rostock University Medical Center
Aki Vehtari: Aalto University

Computational Statistics, 2025, vol. 40, issue 2, No 5, 721 pages

Abstract: Abstract The projection predictive variable selection is a decision-theoretically justified Bayesian variable selection approach achieving an outstanding trade-off between predictive performance and sparsity. Its projection problem is not easy to solve in general because it is based on the Kullback–Leibler divergence from a restricted posterior predictive distribution of the so-called reference model to the parameter-conditional predictive distribution of a candidate model. Previous work showed how this projection problem can be solved for response families employed in generalized linear models and how an approximate latent-space approach can be used for many other response families. Here, we present an exact projection method for all response families with discrete and finite support, called the augmented-data projection. A simulation study for an ordinal response family shows that the proposed method performs better than or similarly to the previously proposed approximate latent-space projection. The cost of the slightly better performance of the augmented-data projection is a substantial increase in runtime. Thus, if the augmented-data projection’s runtime is too high, we recommend the latent projection in the early phase of the model-building workflow and the augmented-data projection for final results. The ordinal response family from our simulation study is supported by both projection methods, but we also include a real-world cancer subtyping example with a nominal response family, a case that is not supported by the latent projection.

Keywords: Bayesian; Variable selection; Post-selection inference; Ordinal; Nominal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s00180-024-01506-0

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