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quantreg (version 4.77)

rq: Quantile Regression

Description

Returns an object of class "rq" "rqs" or "rq.process" that represents a quantile regression fit.

Usage

rq(formula, tau=.5, data, subset, weights, na.action,
   method="br", model = TRUE, contrasts, ...)

Arguments

formula
a formula object, with the response on the left of a ~ operator, and the terms, separated by + operators, on the right.
tau
the quantile(s) to be estimated, this is generally a number strictly between 0 and 1, but if specified strictly outside this range, it is presumed that the solutions for all values of tau in (0,1) are desired. In the former case an
data
a data.frame in which to interpret the variables named in the formula, or in the subset and the weights argument. If this is missing, then the variables in the formula should be on the search list. This may also be a single number to handl
subset
an optional vector specifying a subset of observations to be used in the fitting process.
weights
vector of observation weights; if supplied, the algorithm fits to minimize the sum of the weights multiplied into the absolute residuals. The length of weights must be the same as the number of observations. The weights must be nonnegative
na.action
a function to filter missing data. This is applied to the model.frame after any subset argument has been used. The default (with na.fail) is to create an error if any missing values are found. A possible alternative is
model
if TRUE then the model frame is returned. This is essential if one wants to call summary subsequently.
method
the algorithmic method used to compute the fit. There are several options: The default method is the modified version of the Barrodale and Roberts algorithm for $l_1$-regression, used by l1fit in S, and is described in detail
contrasts
a list giving contrasts for some or all of the factors default = NULL appearing in the model formula. The elements of the list should have the same name as the variable and should be either a contrast matrix (specifically, any
...
additional arguments for the fitting routines (see rq.fit.br and rq.fit.fnb and the functions they call).

Value

  • See rq.object and rq.process.object for details. Inferential matters are handled with summary. There are extractor methods logLik and AIC that are potentially relevant for model selection.

Method

The function computes an estimate on the tau-th conditional quantile function of the response, given the covariates, as specified by the formula argument. Like lm(), the function presumes a linear specification for the quantile regression model, i.e. that the formula defines a model that is linear in parameters. For non-linear quantile regression see the package nlrq(). The function minimizes a weighted sum of absolute residuals that can be formulated as a linear programming problem. As noted above, there are three different algorithms that can be chosen depending on problem size and other characteristics. For moderate sized problems ($n \ll 5,000, p \ll 20$) it is recommended that the default "br" method be used. There are several choices of methods for computing confidence intervals and associated test statistics. See the documentation for summary.rq for further details and options.

Details

For further details see the vignette available from Rwith vignette("rq",package="quantreg") and/or the Koenker (2005). For estimation of nonlinear (in parameters) quantile regression models there is the function nlrq and for nonparametric additive quantile regression there is the function rqss. Fitting of quantile regression models with censored data is handled by the crq function.

References

[1] Koenker, R. W. and Bassett, G. W. (1978). Regression quantiles, Econometrica, 46, 33--50.

[2] Koenker, R.W. and d'Orey (1987, 1994). Computing regression quantiles. Applied Statistics, 36, 383--393, and 43, 410--414.

[3] Gutenbrunner, C. Jureckova, J. (1991). Regression quantile and regression rank score process in the linear model and derived statistics, Annals of Statistics, 20, 305--330.

[4] Koenker, R. W. (1994). Confidence Intervals for regression quantiles, in P. Mandl and M. Huskova (eds.), Asymptotic Statistics, 349--359, Springer-Verlag, New York.

[5] Koenker, R. and S. Portnoy (1997) The Gaussian Hare and the Laplacean Tortoise: Computability of Squared-error vs Absolute Error Estimators, (with discussion). Statistical Science, 12, 279-300.

[6] Koenker, R. W. (2005). Quantile Regression, Cambridge U. Press.

There is also recent information available at the URL: http://www.econ.uiuc.edu.

See Also

summary.rq, nlrq, rqss, rq.object, rq.process.object

Examples

Run this code
data(stackloss)
rq(stack.loss ~ stack.x,.5)  #median (l1) regression  fit for the stackloss data. 
rq(stack.loss ~ stack.x,.25)  #the 1st quartile, 
        #note that 8 of the 21 points lie exactly on this plane in 4-space! 
rq(stack.loss ~ stack.x, tau=-1)   #this returns the full rq process
rq(rnorm(50) ~ 1, ci=FALSE)    #ordinary sample median --no rank inversion ci
rq(rnorm(50) ~ 1, weights=runif(50),ci=FALSE)  #weighted sample median 
#plot of engel data and some rq lines see KB(1982) for references to data
data(engel)
attach(engel)
plot(income,foodexp,xlab="Household Income",ylab="Food Expenditure",type = "n", cex=.5)
points(income,foodexp,cex=.5,col="blue")
taus <- c(.05,.1,.25,.75,.9,.95)
xx <- seq(min(income),max(income),100)
f <- coef(rq((foodexp)~(income),tau=taus))
yy <- cbind(1,xx)%*%f
for(i in 1:length(taus)){
        lines(xx,yy[,i],col = "gray")
        }
abline(lm(foodexp ~ income),col="red",lty = 2)
abline(rq(foodexp ~ income), col="blue")
legend(3000,500,c("mean (LSE) fit", "median (LAE) fit"),
	col = c("red","blue"),lty = c(2,1))
#Example of plotting of coefficients and their confidence bands
plot(summary(rq(foodexp~income,tau = 1:49/50,data=engel)))
#Example to illustrate inequality constrained fitting
n <- 100
p <- 5
X <- matrix(rnorm(n*p),n,p)
y <- .95*apply(X,1,sum)+rnorm(n)
#constrain slope coefficients to lie between zero and one
R <- cbind(0,rbind(diag(p),-diag(p)))
r <- c(rep(0,p),-rep(1,p))
rq(y~X,R=R,r=r,method="fnc")

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