scholarly journals Measuring the dispersion of rainfall using Bayesian confidence intervals for coefficient of variation of delta-lognormal distribution: a study from Thailand

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noppadon Yosboonruang ◽  
Sa-aat Niwitpong ◽  
Suparat Niwitpong

Since rainfall data series often contain zero values and thus follow a delta-lognormal distribution, the coefficient of variation is often used to illustrate the dispersion of rainfall in a number of areas and so is an important tool in statistical inference for a rainfall data series. Therefore, the aim in this paper is to establish new confidence intervals for a single coefficient of variation for delta-lognormal distributions using Bayesian methods based on the independent Jeffreys’, the Jeffreys’ Rule, and the uniform priors compared with the fiducial generalized confidence interval. The Bayesian methods are constructed with either equitailed confidence intervals or the highest posterior density interval. The performance of the proposed confidence intervals was evaluated using coverage probabilities and expected lengths via Monte Carlo simulations. The results indicate that the Bayesian equitailed confidence interval based on the independent Jeffreys’ prior outperformed the other methods. Rainfall data recorded in national parks in July 2015 and in precipitation stations in August 2018 in Nan province, Thailand are used to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed methods using a real-life dataset.

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e9662
Author(s):  
Noppadon Yosboonruang ◽  
Sa-Aat Niwitpong ◽  
Suparat Niwitpong

The coefficient of variation is often used to illustrate the variability of precipitation. Moreover, the difference of two independent coefficients of variation can describe the dissimilarity of rainfall from two areas or times. Several researches reported that the rainfall data has a delta-lognormal distribution. To estimate the dynamics of precipitation, confidence interval construction is another method of effectively statistical inference for the rainfall data. In this study, we propose confidence intervals for the difference of two independent coefficients of variation for two delta-lognormal distributions using the concept that include the fiducial generalized confidence interval, the Bayesian methods, and the standard bootstrap. The performance of the proposed methods was gauged in terms of the coverage probabilities and the expected lengths via Monte Carlo simulations. Simulation studies shown that the highest posterior density Bayesian using the Jeffreys’ Rule prior outperformed other methods in virtually cases except for the cases of large variance, for which the standard bootstrap was the best. The rainfall series from Songkhla, Thailand are used to illustrate the proposed confidence intervals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-278
Author(s):  
Warisa Thangjai ◽  
Sa-Aat Niwitpong ◽  
Suparat Niwitpong

The coefficient of variation is widely used as a measure of data precision. Confidence intervals for a single coefficient of variation when the data follow a normal distribution that is symmetrical and the difference between the coefficients of variation of two normal populations are considered in this paper. First, the confidence intervals for the coefficient of variation of a normal distribution are obtained with adjusted generalized confidence interval (adjusted GCI), computational, Bayesian, and two adjusted Bayesian approaches. These approaches are compared with existing ones comprising two approximately unbiased estimators, the method of variance estimates recovery (MOVER) and generalized confidence interval (GCI). Second, the confidence intervals for the difference between the coefficients of variation of two normal distributions are proposed using the same approaches, the performances of which are then compared with the existing approaches. The highest posterior density interval was used to estimate the Bayesian confidence interval. Monte Carlo simulation was used to assess the performance of the confidence intervals. The results of the simulation studies demonstrate that the Bayesian and two adjusted Bayesian approaches were more accurate and better than the others in terms of coverage probabilities and average lengths in both scenarios. Finally, the performances of all of the approaches for both scenarios are illustrated via an empirical study with two real-data examples.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 62-76
Author(s):  
Sunisa Junnumtuam ◽  
Sa-Aat Niwitpong ◽  
Suparat Niwitpong

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly throughout the world and has caused millions of deaths. However, the number of daily COVID-19 deaths in Thailand has been low with most daily records showing zero deaths, thereby making them fit a Zero-Inflated Poisson (ZIP) distribution. Herein, confidence intervals for the Coefficient Of Variation (CV) of a ZIP distribution are derived using four methods: the standard bootstrap (SB), percentile bootstrap (PB), Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), and the Bayesian-based highest posterior density (HPD), for which using the variance of the CV is unnecessary. We applied the methods to both simulated data and data on the number of daily COVID-19 deaths in Thailand. Both sets of results show that the SB, MCMC, and HPD methods performed better than PB for most cases in terms of coverage probability and average length. Overall, the HPD method is recommended for constructing the confidence interval for the CV of a ZIP distribution. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-SPER-05 Full Text: PDF


PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e10004
Author(s):  
Warisa Thangjai ◽  
Sa-Aat Niwitpong ◽  
Suparat Niwitpong

The log-normal distribution is often used to analyze environmental data like daily rainfall amounts. The rainfall is of interest in Thailand because high variable climates can lead to periodic water stress and scarcity. The mean, standard deviation or coefficient of variation of the rainfall in the area is usually estimated. The climate moisture index is the ratio of plant water demand to precipitation. The climate moisture index should use the coefficient of variation instead of the standard deviation for comparison between areas with widely different means. The larger coefficient of variation indicates greater dispersion, whereas the lower coefficient of variation indicates the lower risk. The common coefficient of variation, is the weighted coefficients of variation based on k areas, presents the average daily rainfall. Therefore, the common coefficient of variation is used to describe overall water problems of k areas. In this paper, we propose four novel approaches for the confidence interval estimation of the common coefficient of variation of log-normal distributions based on the fiducial generalized confidence interval (FGCI), method of variance estimates recovery (MOVER), computational, and Bayesian approaches. A Monte Carlo simulation was used to evaluate the coverage probabilities and average lengths of the confidence intervals. In terms of coverage probability, the results show that the FGCI approach provided the best confidence interval estimates for most cases except for when the sample case was equal to six populations (k = 6) and the sample sizes were small (nI < 50), for which the MOVER confidence interval estimates were the best. The efficacies of the proposed approaches are illustrated with example using real-life daily rainfall datasets from regions of Thailand.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wararit Panichkitkosolkul

This paper presents three confidence intervals for the coefficient of variation in a normal distribution with a known population mean. One of the proposed confidence intervals is based on the normal approximation. The other proposed confidence intervals are the shortest-length confidence interval and the equal-tailed confidence interval. A Monte Carlo simulation study was conducted to compare the performance of the proposed confidence intervals with the existing confidence intervals. Simulation results have shown that all three proposed confidence intervals perform well in terms of coverage probability and expected length.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-20
Author(s):  
Moustafa Omar Ahmed Abu-Shawiesh ◽  
Aamid Saghir

In this paper, three robust confidence intervals are proposed as alternatives to the Student t confidence interval. The performance of these intervals was compared through a simulation study shows that Qn-t confidence interval performs the best and it is as good as Student’s t confidence interval. Real-life data was used for illustration and performing a comparison that support the findings obtained from the simulation study.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0253935
Author(s):  
Patcharee Maneerat ◽  
Sa-Aat Niwitpong ◽  
Suparat Niwitpong

Natural disasters such as flooding and landslides are important unexpected events during the rainy season in Thailand, and how to direct action to avoid their impacts is the motivation behind this study. The differences between the means of natural rainfall datasets in different areas can be estimated using simultaneous confidence intervals (SCIs) for pairwise comparisons of the means of delta-lognormal distributions. Our proposed methods are based on a parametric bootstrap (PB), a fiducial generalized confidence interval (FGCI), the method of variance estimates recovery (MOVER), and Bayesian credible intervals based on mixed (BCI-M) and uniform (BCI-U) priors. Their coverage probabilities, lower and upper error probabilities, and relative average lengths were used to evaluate and compare their SCI performances through Monte Carlo simulation. The results show that BCI-U and PB work well in different situations, even with large differences in variances σ j 2. All of the methods were applied to estimate pairwise differences between the means of natural rainfall data from five areas in Thailand during the rainy season to determine their abilities to predict occurrences of flooding and landslides.


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