The effect of errors-in-variables on variance component estimation

Abstract

Although total least squares (TLS) has been widely applied, variance components in an errors-in-variables (EIV) model can be inestimable under certain conditions and unstable in the sense that small random errors can result in very large errors in the estimated variance components. We investigate the effect of the random design matrix on variance component (VC) estimation of MINQUE type by treating the design matrix as if it were errors-free, derive the first-order bias of the VC estimate, and construct bias-corrected VC estimators. As a special case, we obtain a bias-corrected estimate for the variance of unit weight. Although TLS methods are statistically rigorous, they can be computationally too expensive. We directly Taylor-expand the nonlinear weighted LS estimate of parameters up to the second-order approximation in terms of the random errors of the design matrix, derive the bias of the estimate, and use it to construct a bias-corrected weighted LS estimate. Bearing in mind that the random errors of the design matrix will create a bias in the normal matrix of the weighted LS estimate, we propose to calibrate the normal matrix by computing and then removing the bias from the normal matrix. As a result, we can obtain a new parameter estimate, which is called the N-calibrated weighted LS estimate. The simulations have shown that (i) errors-in-variables have a significant effect on VC estimation, if they are large/significant but treated as non-random. The variance components can be incorrectly estimated by more than one order of magnitude, depending on the nature of problems and the sizes of EIV; (ii) the bias-corrected VC estimate can effectively remove the bias of the VC estimate. If the signal-to-noise is small, higher order terms may be necessary. Nevertheless, since we construct the bias-corrected VC estimate by directly removing the estimated bias from the estimate itself, the simulation results have clearly indicated that there is a great risk to obtain negative values for variance components. VC estimation in EIV models remains difficult and challenging; and (iii) both the bias-corrected weighted LS estimate and the N-calibrated weighted LS estimate obviously outperform the weighted LS estimate. The intuitively N-calibrated weighted LS estimate is computationally less expensive and shown to statistically perform even better than the bias-corrected weighted LS estimate in producing an almost unbiased estimate of parameters.