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Abstract The increasing prevalence of relational data describing interactions among a target population has motivated a wide literature on statistical network analysis. In many applications, interactions may involve more than two members of the population and this data is more appropriately represented by a hypergraph. In this paper, we present a model for hypergraph data that extends the well-established latent space approach for graphs and, by drawing a connection to constructs from computational topology, we develop a model whose likelihood is inexpensive to compute. A delayed acceptance MCMC scheme is proposed to obtain posterior samples and we rely on Bookstein coordinates to remove the identifiability issues associated with the latent representation. We theoretically examine the degree distribution of hypergraphs generated under our framework and, through simulation, we investigate the flexibility of our model and consider estimation of predictive distributions. Finally, we explore the application of our model to two real-world datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Suppose we observe a random vector X from some distribution in a known family with unknown parameters. We ask the following question: when is it possible to split X into two pieces f(X) and g(X) such that neither part is sufficient to reconstruct X by itself, but both together can recover X fully, and their joint distribution is tractable? One common solution to this problem when multiple samples of X are observed is data splitting, but Rasines and Young (2022) offers an alternative approach that uses additive Gaussian noise — this enables post-selection inference in finite samples for Gaussian distributed data and asymptotically for non-Gaussian additive models. In this paper, we offer a more general methodology for achieving such a split in finite samples by borrowing ideas from Bayesian inference to yield a (frequentist) solution that can be viewed as a continuous analog of data splitting. We call our method data fission, as an alternative to data splitting, data carving and p-value masking. We exemplify the method on several prototypical applications, such as post-selection inference for trend filtering and other regression problems, and effect size estimation after interactive multiple testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In observational studies, the time origin of interest for time-to-event analysis is often unknown, such as the time of disease onset. Existing approaches to estimating the time origins are commonly built on extrapolating a parametric longitudinal model, which rely on rigid assumptions that can lead to biased inferences. In this paper, we introduce a flexible semiparametric curve registration model. It assumes the longitudinal trajectories follow a flexible common shape function with person-specific disease progression pattern characterized by a random curve registration function, which is further used to model the unknown time origin as a random start time. This random time is used as a link to jointly model the longitudinal and survival data where the unknown time origins are integrated out in the joint likelihood function, which facilitates unbiased and consistent estimation. Since the disease progression pattern naturally predicts time-to-event, we further propose a new functional survival model using the registration function as a predictor of the time-to-event. The asymptotic consistency and semiparametric efficiency of the proposed models are proved. Simulation studies and two real data applications demonstrate the effectiveness of this new approach. for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring and testing the dependency between multiple random functions is often an important task in functional data analysis. In the literature, a model-based method relies on a model which is subject to the risk of model misspecification, while a model-free method only provides a correlation measure which is inadequate to test independence. In this paper, we adopt the Hilbert–Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC) to measure the dependency between two random functions. We develop a two-step procedure by first pre-smoothing each function based on its discrete and noisy measurements and then applying the HSIC to recovered functions. To ensure the compatibility between the two steps such that the effect of the pre-smoothing error on the subsequent HSIC is asymptotically negligible when the data are densely measured, we propose a new wavelet thresholding method for pre-smoothing and to use Besov-norm-induced kernels for HSIC. We also provide the corresponding asymptotic analysis. The superior numerical performance of the proposed method over existing ones is demonstrated in a simulation study. Moreover, in a magnetoencephalography (MEG) data application, the functional connectivity patterns identified by the proposed method are more anatomically interpretable than those by existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multiple change-point analysis, one of the main difficulties is to determine the number of change-points. Various consistent selection methods, including the use of Schwarz information criterion and cross-validation, have been proposed to balance the model fitting and complexity. However, there is lack of systematic approaches to provide theoretical guarantee of significance in determining the number of changes. In this paper, we introduce a data-adaptive selection procedure via error rate control based on order-preserving sample-splitting, which is applicable to most existing change-point methods. The key idea is to construct a series of statistics with global symmetry property and then utilize the symmetry to derive a data-driven threshold. Under this general framework, we are able to rigorously investigate the false discovery proportion control, and show that the proposed method controls the false discovery rate (FDR) asymptotically under mild conditions while retaining the true change-points. Numerical experiments indicate that our selection procedure works well for many change-detection methods and is able to yield accurate FDR control in finite samples. Keywords: Empirical distribution; False discovery rate; Multiple change-point model; Sample-splitting; Symmetry; Uniform convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence-based decision making often relies on meta-analyzing multiple studies, which enables more precise estimation and investigation of generalizability. Integrative analysis of multiple heterogeneous studies is, however, highly challenging in the ultra high-dimensional setting. The challenge is even more pronounced when the individual-level data cannot be shared across studies, known as DataSHIELD contraint. Under sparse regression models that are assumed to be similar yet not identical across studies, we propose in this paper a novel integrative estimation procedure for data-Shielding High-dimensional Integrative Regression (SHIR). SHIR protects individual data through summary-statistics-based integrating procedure, accommodates between-study heterogeneity in both the covariate distribution and model parameters, and attains consistent variable selection. Theoretically, SHIR is statistically more efficient than the existing distributed approaches that integrate debiased LASSO estimators from the local sites. Furthermore, the estimation error incurred by aggregating derived data is negligible compared to the statistical minimax rate and SHIR is shown to be asymptotically equivalent in estimation to the ideal estimator obtained by sharing all data. The finite-sample performance of our method is studied and compared with existing approaches via extensive simulation settings. We further illustrate the utility of SHIR to derive phenotyping algorithms for coronary artery disease using electronic health records data from multiple chronic disease cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latent time series models such as (the independent sum of) ARMA(p, q) models with additional stochastic processes are increasingly used for data analysis in biology, ecology, engineering, and economics. Inference on and/or prediction from these models can be highly challenging: (i) the data may contain outliers that can adversely affect the estimation procedure; (ii) the computational complexity can become prohibitive when the time series are extremely large; (iii) model selection adds another layer of (computational) complexity; and (iv) solutions that address (i), (ii), and (iii) simultaneously do not exist in practice. This paper aims at jointly addressing these challenges by proposing a general framework for robust two-step estimation based on a bounded influence M-estimator of the wavelet variance. We first develop the conditions for the joint asymptotic normality of the latter estimator thereby providing the necessary tools to perform (direct) inference for scale-based analysis of signals. Taking advantage of the model-independent weights of this first-step estimator, we then develop the asymptotic properties of two-step robust estimators using the framework of the generalized method of wavelet moments (GMWM). Simulation studies illustrate the good finite sample performance of the robust GMWM estimator and applied examples highlight the practical relevance of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an empirical Bayes analysis, we use data from repeated sampling to imitate inferences made by an oracle Bayesian with extensive knowledge of the data-generating distribution. Existing results provide a comprehensive characterization of when and why empirical Bayes point estimates accurately recover oracle Bayes behavior. In this paper, we develop flexible and practical confidence intervals that provide asymptotic frequentist coverage of empirical Bayes estimands, such as the posterior mean or the local false sign rate. The coverage statements hold even when the estimands are only partially identified or when empirical Bayes point estimates converge very slowly. for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce the Theory and Methods Special Issue on Precision Medicine and Individualized Policy Discovery. The issue consists of four discussion papers, grouped into two pairs, and sixteen regular research papers that cover many important lines of research on data-driven decision making. We hope that the many provocative and original ideas presented herein will inspire further work and development in precision medicine and personalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spectral distribution f (ω) of a stationary time series { Y t } t ∈ Z can be used to investigate whether or not periodic structures are present in { Y t } t ∈ Z , but f (ω) has some limitations due to its dependence on the autocovariances γ (h) . For example, f (ω) can not distinguish white iid noise from GARCH-type models (whose terms are dependent, but uncorrelated), which implies that f (ω) can be an inadequate tool when { Y t } t ∈ Z contains asymmetries and nonlinear dependencies. Asymmetries between the upper and lower tails of a time series can be investigated by means of the local Gaussian autocorrelations, and these local measures of dependence can be used to construct the local Gaussian spectral density presented in this paper. A key feature of the new local spectral density is that it coincides with f (ω) for Gaussian time series, which implies that it can be used to detect non-Gaussian traits in the time series under investigation. In particular, if f (ω) is flat, then peaks and troughs of the new local spectral density can indicate nonlinear traits, which potentially might discover local periodic phenomena that remain undetected in an ordinary spectral analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-trait polygenic risk score (PRS) method has gained popularity for assessing genetic correlation of complex traits using summary statistics from biobank-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS). However, empirical evidence has shown a common bias phenomenon that highly significant cross-trait PRS can only account for a very small amount of genetic variance (R2 can be < 1 % ) in independent testing GWAS. The aim of this paper is to investigate and address the bias phenomenon of cross-trait PRS in numerous GWAS applications. We show that the estimated genetic correlation can be asymptotically biased toward zero. A consistent cross-trait PRS estimator is then proposed to correct such asymptotic bias. In addition, we investigate whether or not SNP screening by GWAS p-values can lead to improved estimation and show the effect of overlapping samples among GWAS. We analyze GWAS summary statistics of reaction time and brain structural magnetic resonance imaging-based features measured in the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition, and Genetics study. We find that the raw cross-trait PRS estimators heavily underestimate the genetic similarity between cognitive function and human brain structures (mean R 2 = 1.32 % ), whereas the bias-corrected estimators uncover the moderate degree of genetic overlap between these closely related heritable traits (mean R 2 = 22.42 % ). Supplementary materials for this article, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work, are available as an online supplement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a thought-provoking paper, Efron investigated the merit and limitation of an empirical Bayes method to correct selection bias based on Tweedie's formula first reported in the study by Robbins. The exceptional virtue of Tweedie's formula for the normal distribution lies in its representation of selection bias as a simple function of the derivative of log marginal likelihood. Since the marginal likelihood and its derivative can be estimated from the data directly without invoking prior information, bias correction can be carried out conveniently. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical model for chi-squared data such that the resulting Tweedie's formula has the same virtue as that of the normal distribution. Because the family of noncentral chi-squared distributions, the common alternative distributions for chi-squared tests, does not constitute an exponential family, our results cannot be obtained by extending existing results. Furthermore, the corresponding Tweedie's formula manifests new phenomena quite different from those of the normal distribution and suggests new ways of analyzing chi-squared data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to develop a novel statistical model for studying cross-neuronal spike train interactions during decision making. For an individual to successfully complete the task of decision-making, a number of temporally-organized events must occur: stimuli must be detected, potential outcomes must be evaluated, behaviors must be executed or inhibited, and outcomes (such as reward or no-reward) must be experienced. Due to the complexity of this process, it is likely the case that decision-making is encoded by the temporally-precise interactions between large populations of neurons. Most existing statistical models, however, are inadequate for analyzing such a phenomenon because they provide only an aggregated measure of interactions over time. To address this considerable limitation, we propose a dynamic Bayesian model which captures the time-varying nature of neuronal activity (such as the time-varying strength of the interactions between neurons). The proposed method yielded results that reveal new insight into the dynamic nature of population coding in the prefrontal cortex during decision making. In our analysis, we note that while some neurons in the prefrontal cortex do not synchronize their firing activity until the presence of a reward, a different set of neurons synchronize their activity shortly after stimulus onset. These differentially synchronizing sub-populations of neurons suggests a continuum of population representation of the reward-seeking task. Secondly, our analyses also suggest that the degree of synchronization differs between the rewarded and non-rewarded conditions. Moreover, the proposed model is scalable to handle data on many simultaneously-recorded neurons and is applicable to analyzing other types of multivariate time series data with latent structure. Supplementary materials (including computer codes) for our paper are available online.

At first glance, the initial stage of MERMAID modeling seems to involve an epidemiological model for infection growth, centered on I R SB t sb i , the reproductive number associated with SARS-Cov-2 infections; however, this does not appear essential to the overall approach as noted below. 2 Characteristics of MERMAID There has been a plethora of quantitative models that try to both explain patterns of COVID-19 infections and provide insight into the scale of future transmissions and associated hospitalizations. To be fair, empirical models (and mechanistic models for that matter) have not, in general, successfully I predicted i COVID-19 infection counts more than a month out, and model ensemble estimates only partially address key uncertainties. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss the thought-provoking paper by Quick, Dey and Lin (2021), which we shall refer to as QDL in the following for convenience. [Extracted from the article]

How to dynamically measure the local-to-global spatio-temporal coherence between demand and supply networks is a fundamental task for ride-sourcing platforms, such as DiDi. Such coherence measurement is critically important for the quantification of the market efficiency and the comparison of different platform policies, such as dispatching. The aim of this paper is to introduce a graph-based equilibrium metric (GEM) to quantify the distance between demand and supply networks based on a weighted graph structure. We formulate GEM as the optimal objective value of an unbalanced optimal transport problem, which can be formulated as an equivalent linear programming and efficiently solved. We examine how the GEM can help solve three operational tasks of ride-sourcing platforms. The first one is that GEM achieves up to 70.6% reduction in root-mean-square error over the second-best distance measurement for the prediction accuracy of order answer rate. The second one is that the use of GEM for designing order dispatching policy increases drivers' revenue for more than 1%, representing a huge improvement in number. The third one is that GEM can serve as an endpoint for comparing different platform policies in AB test. for this article, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work, are available as an online supplement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the properties of such nonparametric classes is that they are broad enough, so misspecification of Graph HT ht stops being an issue. The present paper studies much more narrow choices of Graph HT ht . The latter also highlights what choices of Graph HT ht is most appropriate. [Extracted from the article]

Researchers across the health and social sciences generally assume that observations are independent, even while relying on convenience samples that draw subjects from one or a small number of communities, schools, hospitals, etc. A paradigmatic example of this is the Framingham Heart Study (FHS). Many of the limitations of such samples are well-known, but the issue of statistical dependence due to social network ties has not previously been addressed. We show that, along with anticonservative variance estimation, this can result in spurious associations due to network dependence. Using a statistical test that we adapted from one developed for spatial autocorrelation, we test for network dependence in several of the thousands of influential papers that have been published using FHS data. Results suggest that some of the many decades of research on coronary heart disease, other health outcomes, and peer influence using FHS data may suffer from spurious associations, error-prone point estimates, and anticonservative inference due to unacknowledged network dependence. These issues are not unique to the FHS; as researchers in psychology, medicine, and beyond grapple with replication failures, this unacknowledged source of invalid statistical inference should be part of the conversation. for this article, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work, are available as an online supplement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the availability of high dimensional genetic biomarkers, it is of interest to identify heterogeneous effects of these predictors on patients survival, along with proper statistical inference. Censored quantile regression has emerged as a powerful tool for detecting heterogeneous effects of covariates on survival outcomes. To our knowledge, there is little work available to draw inference on the effects of high dimensional predictors for censored quantile regression. This paper proposes a novel procedure to draw inference on all predictors within the framework of global censored quantile regression, which investigates covariate-response associations over an interval of quantile levels, instead of a few discrete values. The proposed estimator combines a sequence of low dimensional model estimates that are based on multi-sample splittings and variable selection. We show that, under some regularity conditions, the estimator is consistent and asymptotically follows a Gaussian process indexed by the quantile level. Simulation studies indicate that our procedure can properly quantify the uncertainty of the estimates in high dimensional settings. We apply our method to analyze the heterogeneous effects of SNPs residing in lung cancer pathways on patients survival, using the Boston Lung Cancer Survivor Cohort, a cancer epidemiology study on the molecular mechanism of lung cancer.

Ranked data arise in many areas of application ranging from the ranking of up-regulated genes for cancer to the ranking of academic statistics journals. Complications can arise when rankers do not report a full ranking of all entities; for example, they might only report their top-M ranked entities after seeing some or all entities. It can also be useful to know whether rankers are equally informative, and whether some entities are effectively judged to be exchangeable. Revealing subgroup structure in the data may also be helpful in understanding the distribution of ranker views. In this paper, we propose a flexible Bayesian nonparametric model for identifying heterogeneous structure and ranker reliability in ranked data. The model is a weighted adapted nested Dirichlet (WAND) process mixture of Plackett–Luce models and inference proceeds through a simple and efficient Gibbs sampling scheme for posterior sampling. The richness of information in the posterior distribution allows us to infer many details of the structure both between ranker groups and between entity groups (within-ranker groups). Our modeling framework also facilitates a flexible representation of the posterior predictive distribution. This flexibility is important as we propose to use the posterior predictive distribution as the basis for addressing the rank aggregation problem, and also for identifying lack of model fit. The methodology is illustrated using several simulation studies and real data examples. for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the problem of modeling relationship between two spherical (or directional) random variables in a regression setup. Here the predictor and the response variables are constrained to be on a unit sphere and, due to this nonlinear condition, the standard Euclidean regression models do not apply. Several past papers have studied this problem, termed spherical regression, by modeling the response variable with a von Mises-Fisher (VMF) density with the mean given by a rotation of the predictor variable. The few papers that go beyond rigid rotations are limited to one- or two-dimensional spheres. This article extends the mean transformations to a larger group—the projective linear group of transformations—on unit spheres of arbitrary dimensions, while keeping the VMF density to model the noise. It develops a Newton–Raphson algorithm on the special linear group for estimating the MLE of regression parameter and establishes its asymptotic properties when the sample-size becomes large. Through a variety of experiments, using data taken from projective shape analysis, cloud tracking, etc., and some simulations, this article demonstrates improvements in the prediction and modeling performance of the proposed framework over previously used models. Supplementary materials for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern scientific research, data are often collected from multiple modalities. Since different modalities could provide complementary information, statistical prediction methods using multimodality data could deliver better prediction performance than using single modality data. However, one special challenge for using multimodality data is related to block-missing data. In practice, due to dropouts or the high cost of measures, the observations of a certain modality can be missing completely for some subjects. In this paper, we propose a new direct sparse regression procedure using covariance from multimodality data (DISCOM). Our proposed DISCOM method includes two steps to find the optimal linear prediction of a continuous response variable using block-missing multimodality predictors. In the first step, rather than deleting or imputing missing data, we make use of all available information to estimate the covariance matrix of the predictors and the cross-covariance vector between the predictors and the response variable. The proposed new estimate of the covariance matrix is a linear combination of the identity matrix, the estimates of the intra-modality covariance matrix and the cross-modality covariance matrix. Flexible estimates for both the sub-Gaussian and heavy-tailed cases are considered. In the second step, based on the estimated covariance matrix and the estimated cross-covariance vector, an extended Lasso-type estimator is used to deliver a sparse estimate of the coefficients in the optimal linear prediction. The number of samples that are effectively used by DISCOM is the minimum number of samples with available observations from two modalities, which can be much larger than the number of samples with complete observations from all modalities. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by theoretical studies, simulated examples, and a real application from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. The comparison between DISCOM and some existing methods also indicates the advantages of our proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiomics involves the study of tumor images to identify quantitative markers explaining cancer heterogeneity. The predominant approach is to extract hundreds to thousands of image features, including histogram features comprised of summaries of the marginal distribution of pixel intensities, which leads to multiple testing problems and can miss out on insights not contained in the selected features. In this paper, we present methods to model the entire marginal distribution of pixel intensities via the quantile function as functional data, regressed on a set of demographic, clinical, and genetic predictors to investigate their effects of imaging-based cancer heterogeneity. We call this approach quantile functional regression, regressing subject-specific marginal distributions across repeated measurements on a set of covariates, allowing us to assess which covariates are associated with the distribution in a global sense, as well as to identify distributional features characterizing these differences, including mean, variance, skewness, heavy-tailedness, and various upper and lower quantiles. To account for smoothness in the quantile functions, account for intrafunctional correlation, and gain statistical power, we introduce custom basis functions we call quantlets that are sparse, regularized, near-lossless, and empirically defined, adapting to the features of a given dataset and containing a Gaussian subspace so non-Gaussianness can be assessed. We fit this model using a Bayesian framework that uses nonlinear shrinkage of quantlet coefficients to regularize the functional regression coefficients and provides fully Bayesian inference after fitting a Markov chain Monte Carlo. We demonstrate the benefit of the basis space modeling through simulation studies, and apply the method to Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based radiomic dataset from Glioblastoma Multiforme to relate imaging-based quantile functions to various demographic, clinical, and genetic predictors, finding specific differences in tumor pixel intensity distribution between males and females and between tumors with and without DDIT3 mutations. for this article, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work, are available as an online supplement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider the model Y = X + ε with X = τ + Z , where τ is an unknown constant (the boundary of X), Z is a random variable defined on R + , ε is a symmetric error, and ε and Z are independent. Based on an iid sample of Y, we aim at identifying and estimating the boundary τ when the law of ε is unknown (apart from symmetry) and in particular its variance is unknown. We propose an estimation procedure based on a minimal distance approach and by making use of Laguerre polynomials. Asymptotic results as well as finite sample simulations are shown. The paper also proposes an extension to stochastic frontier analysis, where the model is conditional to observed variables. The model becomes Y = τ (w 1 , w 2) + Z + ε , where Y is a cost, w1 are the observed outputs and w2 represents the observed values of other conditioning variables, so Z is the cost inefficiency. Some simulations illustrate again how the approach works in finite samples, and the proposed procedure is illustrated with data coming from post offices in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding and developing a correlation measure that can detect general dependencies is not only imperative to statistics and machine learning, but also crucial to general scientific discovery in the big data age. In this paper, we establish a new framework that generalizes distance correlation (Dcorr)—a correlation measure that was recently proposed and shown to be universally consistent for dependence testing against all joint distributions of finite moments—to the multiscale graph correlation (MGC). By using the characteristic functions and incorporating the nearest neighbor machinery, we formalize the population version of local distance correlations, define the optimal scale in a given dependency, and name the optimal local correlation as MGC. The new theoretical framework motivates a theoretically sound sample MGC and allows a number of desirable properties to be proved, including the universal consistency, convergence, and almost unbiasedness of the sample version. The advantages of MGC are illustrated via a comprehensive set of simulations with linear, nonlinear, univariate, multivariate, and noisy dependencies, where it loses almost no power in monotone dependencies while achieving better performance in general dependencies, compared to Dcorr and other popular methods. for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and medical scientists are often concerned that the external validity of experimental results may be compromised because of heterogeneous treatment effects. If a treatment has different effects on those who would choose to take it and those who would not, the average treatment effect estimated in a standard randomized controlled trial (RCT) may give a misleading picture of its impact outside of the study sample. Patient preference trials (PPTs), where participants' preferences over treatment options are incorporated in the study design, provide a possible solution. In this paper, we provide a systematic analysis of PPTs based on the potential outcomes framework of causal inference. We propose a general design for PPTs with multi-valued treatments, where participants state their preferred treatments and are then randomized into either a standard RCT or a self-selection condition. We derive nonparametric sharp bounds on the average causal effects among each choice-based subpopulation of participants under the proposed design. We also propose a sensitivity analysis for the violation of the key ignorability assumption sufficient for identifying the target causal quantity. The proposed design and methodology are illustrated with an original study of partisan news media and its behavioral impact. for this article, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work, are available as an online supplement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It should, however, be noted that such approximations have ultimately allowed the authors to conduct a comprehensive analysis of thousands of images from multiple studies, which further substantiates their findings. We congratulate the authors on an interesting paper which combines the ideas of shape analysis with longitudinal data analysis. This, of course, loses some of the elegance of the SRNF framework, but at a considerable ease of preserving the topology of the data and avoiding Euclidean approximations. [Extracted from the article]