Cross-validation vs. DIC using stack loss data

Aki Vehtari
2003-01-15

Introduction

Here is the code and results for comparing cross-validation (CV) vs. deviance information criteria (DIC) using stack loss data. Stack loss data is used as an example in Classic BUGS and WinBUGS (Spiegelhalter et al., 1996, pages 27-29) and was specifically used to demonstrate the DIC by Spiegelhalter et al. (2002). Data is available in Classic BUGS and WinBUGS distributions. Residual models expect for one are also available in BUGS distributions but with slightly different priors. To make comparison as fair as possible, Brad Carlin kindly provided the models and priors used by Spiegelhalter et al. (2002).

Both DIC and cross-validation estimate the expected predictive performance, that is, expected utilities of the model (Vehtari, 2002; Vehtari and Lampinen, 2002; Vehtari and Lampinen, 2003). We presented in the 2002 International Conference of the Royal Statistical Society some results comparing CV and DIC (Slides in PDF, Abstract in PDF). Cross-validation was made using Matlab to divide the data to cross-validation folds and to call Classic BUGS or WinBUGS to do the MCMC sampling. We used DIC values reported by Spiegelhalter et al. (2002).

Robust regression using stack loss data

Problem is to make regression model for predicting the amount of stack loss (escaping ammonia in industrial application). There are three predictor variables and linear regression model is used. The model selection problem is to choose residual model. Five residual models were compared: 1) Normal, 2) Double-exponential (Laplace), 3) Logistic, 4) Student's t-distribution with 4 degrees of freedom (t_4), and 5) t_4 as scale mixture model.

Code

Code and explanation of files

Results

Figure 1 shows the expected predictive deviance estimated with CV and DIC. They produce similar results, but the DIC gives consistently lower values. This is probably because of using plug-in predictive distributions instead of full predictive distributions, and thus ignoring the uncertainty in the parameter values. Largest difference is in the scale mixture model, which supports this argument. Figure 2 shows the effective number of parameters. There is no need to compute this in the CV approach, but it may be computed if thought that it would provide addtional insight to the models.
Expected predictive deviance estimated with CV and DIC Effective number of parameters estimated with CV and DIC
Figure 1 Figure 2

In the case of DIC estimation of the uncertainty in the estimate is still under investigation and usually only point estimates with some heuristic is used to estimate what difference is significant. In the case of cross-validation it is easy to estimate the associated uncertainty. Figure 3 shows the pairwise comparison of t_4 scale mixture model to every other model. Comparison is presented by plotting the the distribution of the estimate of the difference between the expected utilities of two models. It is easy to see differences and associated uncertainties. Note that the amount of uncertainty in the comparison depends heavily on which models are compared. From these results it is also possible to compute the probability that one model is better than other one. For example, probabilities that t_4 scale mixture model is better than models 1,2,3 and 4 are 0.85, 0.48, 0.96 and 0.98, respectively. Models 2 and 5 have better predictive performance than models 1,2 and 4. Models 2 and 5 are indistinguishable on grounds of predictive performance.
Pairwise comparison of t_4 scale mixture model to others
Figure 3

References

Aki Vehtari
Last modified: 2003-06-10