Graduation Year

2004

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Granting Department

Mathematics and Statistics

Major Professor

A.N.V. Rao, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Marcus McWaters, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Kandethody Ramachandran, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Lihua Li, Ph.D.

Committee Member

George Yanev, Ph.D.

Keywords

Bayesian, Empirical Bayes, Power Law Process, Nonhomogeneous Poisson Process, Microarray, EBarrays

Abstract

In this dissertation, we apply Bayesian and Empirical Bayes methods for reliability growth models based on the power law process. We also apply Bayes methods for the study of microarrays, in particular, in the selection of differentially expressed genes.

The power law process has been used extensively in reliability growth models. Chapter 1 reviews some basic concepts in reliability growth models. Chapter 2 shows classical inferences on the power law process. We also assess the goodness of fit of a power law process for a reliability growth model. In chapter 3 we develop Bayesian procedures for the power law process with failure truncated data, using non-informative priors for the scale and location parameters. In addition to obtaining the posterior density of parameters of the power law process, prediction inferences for the expected number of failures in some time interval and the probability of future failure times are also discussed. The prediction results for the software reliability model are illustrated. We compare our result with the result of Bar-Lev,S.K. et al. Also, posterior densities of several parametric functions are given. Chapter 4 provides Empirical Bayes for the power law process with natural conjugate priors and nonparametric priors. For the natural conjugate priors, two-hyperparameter prior and a more generalized three-hyperparameter prior are used.

In chapter 5, we review some basic statistical procedures that are involved in microarray analysis. We will also present and compare several transformation and normalization methods for probe level data. The objective of chapter 6 is to select differentially expressed genes from tens of thousands of genes. Both classical methods (fold change, T-test, Wilcoxon Rank-sum Test, SAM and local Z-score and Empirical Bayes methods (EBarrays and LIMMA) are applied to obtain the results. Outputs of a typical classical method and a typical Empirical Bayes Method are discussed in detail.

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