Emerging Topics in Statistics and Biostatistics

Editor-in-Chief
Ding-Geng Chen, College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Phoenix,
AZ, USA

Series Editor
Hon Keung Tony Ng, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA

Editorial Board Members

Andriëtte Bekker, Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South
Africa
Carlos A. Coelho, NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Maxim Finkelstein, Mathematical Statistics, University of the Free State, Bloem-
fontein, South Africa
Jeffrey R. Wilson, Department of Economics, W.P. Carey School, Arizona State
University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Yuhlong Lio, Mathematical Sciences, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD,
USA
Ding-Geng Chen . Carlos A. Coelho
Editors

Biostatistics Modeling and

Public Health Applications
Study Design and Analysis Methodology
in Health Sciences, Volume 1
Editors
Ding-Geng Chen Carlos A. Coelho
College of Health Solutions Department of Mathematics
Arizona State University NOVA University of Lisbon
Phoenix, AZ, USA Caparica, Portugal

ISSN 2524-7735 ISSN 2524-7743 (electronic)

Emerging Topics in Statistics and Biostatistics
ISBN 978-3-031-69689-3 ISBN 978-3-031-69690-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69690-9

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Preface

This book aims to discuss a wide range of emerging topics in biostatistical modeling
with applications to public health. It serves as a comprehensive resource for
students, researchers, and professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of
biostatistical methods and their practical applications in public health. The con-
tributing authors are a distinguished group of scholars and researchers from leading
academic institutions and research institutes around the world. Their collective
expertise covers various aspects of biostatistical modeling and public health data
analysis, offering readers diverse insights and advanced knowledge.
By bringing together these scholars and researchers, the book provides a
thorough exploration of contemporary issues and innovative approaches in biosta-
tistical modeling. Topics covered include advanced biostatistical techniques, the
integration of biostatistics with other scientific disciplines, and the application of
these methods to real-world public health problems. The interdisciplinary nature
of the contributions aims to stimulate further collaborations between the fields of
mathematics, statistics, and public health, fostering a multidisciplinary approach to
addressing complex health challenges.
Furthermore, the book emphasizes the importance of biostatistics in improving
public health outcomes, showcasing case studies and examples that illustrate the
practical impact of statistical modeling on health policy, disease prevention, and
health promotion. By highlighting these applications, the book not only enhances
the reader’s theoretical understanding but also provides practical tools and method-
ologies that can be applied in various public health settings.
Overall, we intend to have this book to be an invaluable resource for anyone
involved in biostatistics and public health, offering a platform for the exchange of
ideas and the development of new research collaborations. It aims to inspire future
research and innovation in the field, ultimately contributing to the advancement of
public health through improved statistical practices.
The chapters of the book are organized into three parts with Part I (five chapters)
presenting some emerging topics in biostatistical modeling, Part II (two chapters)
delving into the emerging development in imaging data analysis, and Part III (five

v
vi Preface

chapters) presenting the public health applications. Each chapter is self-contained

with references at the end for easy access.
Part I (Biostatistical Modeling) includes five chapters. In Chap. 1, Rabab
Elnaiem, Thomas Mathew, and Xiaoyu Dong discuss a most important development
on bioequivalence. They state that for the assessment of average bioequivalence,
the two one-sided t-test (TOST) is widely used. The test is known to be very
conservative for large values of the variance, suggesting that the TOST is likely
to have type I error probabilities close to the nominal level if the test is implemented
using a significance level larger than the nominal level. In this chapter, a bootstrap
calibration is proposed to estimate the required significance level. Numerical results
show that a bootstrap-calibrated TOST provides better type I error probabilities,
and hence increased power. The test may be an attractive alternative to the scaled
average bioequivalence test, especially since the latter cannot be implemented
using data from a 2 × 2 crossover design, whereas such data are adequate for
carrying out the bootstrap calibrated TOST. The bootstrap-calibrated TOST is easy
to understand and implement, unlike some of the theoretical improvements of the
TOST available in the literature. The bootstrap-calibrated TOST can be adopted
for the assessment of multivariate average bioequivalence. Finally, the bootstrap
calibration methodology is applied for obtaining an accurate test procedure for the
assessment of scaled average bioequivalence for highly variable drugs with data
generated using a four-period crossover design.
In Chap. 2, Isabel Natario reviews the Bayesian framework on hypothesis
testing. She states that in a Bayesian framework, statistical inference relies on
posterior distributions of unknown quantities and parameters of the models used
for fitting data. From these, point estimators, credible intervals, and posterior
probabilistic statements can be produced. However, unlike the frequentist approach,
null hypothesis testing does not hold the same importance neither is a consensus
matter between Bayesian statisticians, that regard the frequentist significance tests
with reservation, admitting that they might serve a more complementary role to
parameter estimation. Bayesian statistics, quite critics of p-values, suggests an
investigation of the alternative hypotheses using the Bayes factor, only dependent
on the observed data, for evaluating evidence in favor of the null hypothesis and
being quite intuitive, forming a bridge to those interested in testing. Hypothesis tests
have become completely essential in applied studies in areas such as biology, health,
and psychology, even though their generalized use is sometimes a problem, and the
change in paradigm often stumbles in this particular difference between approaches.
This work reviews the most common Bayesian approach for hypothesis testing, the
Bayes factor, more robust and less demanding on assumptions and sample sizes
than the frequentist approach, reflecting on its disadvantages, including sensitivity
to prior distributions and computational difficulties, and misuses related to wrong
interpretations. Two examples are detailed with R implementation.
In Chap. 3, Mahboubeh Akbari, Najmeh Nakhaei Rad, Ding-Geng Chen,
and Vahid Fakoor present an overview of the length-biased sampling which has
been widely used in various fields, including economics, industrial reliability,
applications in etiology, and studies related to epidemiology, genetics, and cancer
Preface vii

screening. The assessment of the relationship between risk factors and survival time
in the presence of biased data, particularly length-biased right-censored (LBRC)
data, has long been a statistical challenge. Since the structure of observed length-
biased data differs from that of the target population, using traditional methods to
estimate covariate effects based on the observed length-biased data is inappropriate.
This chapter focuses on discussing existing methods for estimating regression
coefficients under commonly used semiparametric models, specifically the Cox
proportional hazard (Cox) and accelerated failure time (AFT) models, when dealing
with LBRC data. To compare the efficacy of available methods, a simulation study
is conducted. In summary, the results indicate that all the estimating methods
proposed to accommodate LBRC data exhibit better performance than the tradi-
tional approach for estimating coefficients of Cox model, which ignores bias in
sampling. Furthermore, the composite partial likelihood method outperforms all
other methods in terms of bias and standard error. For the AFT model, the inverse
weighted estimating equation approach is more efficient in the presence of LBRC
data compared to other existing methods. Additionally, to illustrate the practical
performance of these methods, a real dataset is analyzed.
In Chap. 4, Yue Cui and Solomon Harrar present nonparametric models for
incomplete multivariate data in quality of life outcomes. They state that in studies
of efficacies of intervention modalities, outcomes measured in ordinal scales such
as Quality of Life (QOL) outcomes are routinely used as primary endpoints. The
standard data analysis strategy computes composite overall and domain scores, and
conducts a mixed-model analysis for evaluating efficacy or monitoring medical
conditions as if these scores were in continuous metric scale. However, assumptions
of parametric models like continuity and homoscedasticity can be severely violated
in these cases. Furthermore, it is more challenging when there are missing values
on some of the variables. In this chapter, they proposed a purely nonparametric
approach in the sense that meaningful and, yet, nonparametric effect size measures
are developed. They proposed an estimator for the effect size and developed its
asymptotic properties. The Asthma Randomized Trial of Indoor Wood Smoke data
were used to illustrate applications of the proposed methods.
In Chap. 5, Tshiamo Kgoale, Albert Whata, Justine Nasejje, Najmeh Nakhaei
Ra, and Tshilidzi Mulaudzi discuss the causal inference in the survival analysis
framework to evaluate the survival probabilities under the influence of time-
dependent covariates. Incorporating potential outcomes and propensity scores in
survival analysis, they examined treatment effects at both a population level and an
individual level, leading to a more nuanced comprehension of treatment outcomes.
The accuracy of the treatment effect estimators within the framework is assessed,
focusing on the DeepSurv, DeepHit, and the multi-task learning deep neural
network (MTL-DNN) models. Notably, the DeepHit model applied to both real and
simulated datasets outperformed with an average concordance statistic (C-statistic)
of 0.9997. This surpasses the C-statistic of DeepSurv and MTL-DNN, which are
0.8928 and 0.9996, respectively. These results showed that the deep learning models
have exceptional discrimination and agreement between observed and predicted
survival probabilities. In addition, the bias values for DeepSurv (0.0174), DeepHit
viii Preface

(0.0114), and MTL-DNN (0.0108) are notably small and comparable, indicating
that these models provide accurate and unbiased estimates of treatment effects.
Consequently, this research underscores the superior predictive accuracy of these
deep learning models, suggesting their potential to enhance decision-making and
deepen our understanding of treatment outcomes in survival analysis.
Part II (Imaging Data Analysis) includes two chapters. In Chap. 6, Xuze
Zhang, Yuichi Goto, Benjamin Kedem, and Shuo Chen discuss the detection and
testing of the significance of quadratic interactions in brain functional connectivity
with applications to blood oxygen level-dependent signals or time series from
schizophrenia patients and from healthy controls. The underlying tool is the measure
of lagged coherence which extends the pervasive and widely used measure of
coherence between time series pairs from different brain regions.
In Chap. 7, Habte Tadesse Likassa and Ding-Geng Chen present the recent
concerns in biomedical image processing which revolve around robustly detecting
outliers and noise. To address these concerns, they proposed a robust principal com-
ponent analysis (RPCA) with affine transformation (AT) and rank prior information
(RPI). This method leverages convex optimization to enhance the quality of retinal
images while mitigating the impact of outliers and occlusions. Simulation results
demonstrated the superiority of our proposed methods over state-of-the-art works,
which is particularly evident in three different retinal images sourced from public
databases.
Part III (Public Health Applications) includes five chapters. In Chap. 8, Denekew
Bitew Belay, Ding-Geng Chen, and Sintayehu Agegnehu Matintu present a
Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered-Death (SEIRD) mathematical modeling
and its four extensions with two scenarios for modeling the malaria transmission
with monthly malaria cases along with death rates obtained from WHO reports as
an initial value. They applied these models with and without intervention scenarios
to study the malaria disease transmission dynamics. With this mathematical malaria
transmission modeling, they showed that the disease continues to be the leading
cause of morbidity and mortality in the region unless strict intervention and control
mechanisms are taken with increased efforts. In addition, they found that the basic
reproduction number (R0 ) is greater than one, which showed that malaria will
continue to be a public health problem and requires a tangible improvement in the
eradication of the epidemic.
In Chap. 9, Mohammad Arashi and Samuel Manda discuss the difficulties from
the process of selecting variables for generalized longitudinal predictive modeling
due to potential connections among observations and issues related to the true
distribution of the response variable. In this chapter, they employ an efficient selec-
tion mechanism within the flexible generalized semiparametric longitudinal model,
where they consider the possibility of nonlinear connections between predictors
and the response variable. They focus on modeling CD4 levels in the Human
Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and address the current limitations in selecting
variables for regression modeling. Their analysis revealed noteworthy interaction
effects that must be considered when conducting CD4 regression modeling.
Preface ix

In Chap. 10, Haile Mekonnen Fenta, Ding-Geng Chen, and Temesgen Zewotir
brought our attention to the important point in analyzing the spatial data in
accounting the spatial autocorrelation through the weight matrix. In the Bayesian
context, the intrinsic conditional autocorrelation prior distribution has been used
to model spatial autocorrelation. The authors used the most recent Demographic
and Health Surveys (DHS) data from 33 sub-Saharan African (sSA) countries. The
Bayesian generalized geo-additive mixed effects model was fitted to incorporate the
linear, nonlinear, and spatial effects of childhood mortality. The spatial components
were smoothed by the two-dimensional spline and the continuous variables were
modeled by penalized splines. The model inference was made based on Integrated
Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA), and the parameter sensitivity for priors was
validated. A total of 352,322 under-five children were included in the study. The
overall prevalence of under-five mortality in sSA was 6.04% with countries Chad
(9.79%), Nigeria (9.68%), and Sierra Leon (8.99%) recording the highest preva-
lence. The likelihood of dying was prominently high among children decreasing
in urban residence (AOR = 0.94; 95% CI = 0.90–0.99). Similarly, a significant
association with risk of U5M was found which includes child-level covariates (sex,
birth order, place of delivery, and dietary diversity) and household-level covariates
(mother education, wealth index, autonomy of mothers, source of water, sanitation
facilities, and cooking fuels).
In Chap. 11, Tsirizani Kaombe and Gracious Hamuza discuss the survey design
effect. If regression methods are used for prediction of under-five mortality, not
much is known about the effect of ignoring the sample design in the estimates. This
chapter is concerned with estimating and comparing the bias a researcher commits
when using unweighted and weighted logistic regression methods to predict under-
five mortality rate in Malawi through the national survey. They used data from 2004,
2010, and 2015–2016 Malawi demographic and health surveys, as well as UNICEF
annual mortality monitoring data. The survey weights were considered at two
stages: during model fitting and when computing overall predicted mortality rate.
The results showed that there was higher accuracy in estimation when the weights
were applied during calculation of overall predicted probability of child death given
a fitted logit model, than during model fitting. They recommend incorporating
survey cluster-weights when computing the overall predicted probability of event,
without regard of the weights during model fitting, for binary data models whose
goal is the prediction of event probability.
In Chap. 12, Sheyla Rodrigues Cassy and Samuel Manda present multivariate
spatial analysis. It is noted that most spatial analyses of health survey data have
employed univariate spatial modeling for specific diseases even if the studies
diseases are epidemiologically interrelated. Joint spatial modeling of several interre-
lated outcomes has both epidemiological and statistical benefits including identify-
ing specific and shared spatial risk patterns and improvement in the statistical power
by borrowing strength from neighboring areas. Also, despite recent methodological
research in spatial analyses of complex health survey data, a majority of the analyses
do not account for the survey designs. This chapter brings these two issues in an
x Preface

integrated approach with an application to estimate the geographic distribution of

childhood-related diseases in sub-Saharan Africa based on health survey data.
The successful publication of this book would have been impossible without the
invaluable support and contributions of many people. We would like to express our
heartfelt gratitude to them. Firstly, and most importantly, we extend our sincere
appreciation to all the chapter authors listed in the “List of Contributors” for
their high-quality contributions to this book. Secondly, and most sincerely, we
like to thank the reviewers for their professional service and contribution to this
book. Thirdly, we sincerely thank Anne Rubio for her professional assistance to
communicate with contributing authors on all aspects of reviewing and production.
Furthermore, we owe a special debt of gratitude to Faith Su, the Editor for Statistics
Books at Springer, for her exceptional guidance and support throughout the entire
publication process. Their expertise and dedication were instrumental in bringing
this book to fruition.
This book was initiated as a professional product, when Professor Ding-Geng
Chen was invited by “The Centro de Matemática e Aplicações” of Nova University
of Lisbon (NOVA Math) for his academic visit during the period from April 30,
2023, to May 12, 2023. With this publication, Professor Chen would like to thank
all the researchers and staff members of NOVA Math for their hospitality and
professional collaborations.
To strive for continuous improvement, we are open to receiving suggestions from
our readers for further enhancements. Please feel free to contact the editors. Your
input is always invaluable and we look forward to receiving your comments on this
book.

Phoenix, AZ, USA Ding-Geng Chen

Caparica, Portugal Carlos A. Coelho
List of Reviewers

Masoumeh Akbari
Department of Statistics, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran
Email: m.akbari@umz.ac.ir.

Lubna Amro
Department of Statistics, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany.
Email: lubna.amro@tu-dortmund.de

Patrícia Bermudez
Centre of Statistics and its Applications (CEAUL), Faculty of Sciences of the
University of Lisbon. Lisbon, Portugal
Email: pcbermudez@fc.ul.pt

Zelalem G. Dessie
Department of Statistics, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, College of Agriculture
Engineering and Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Email: zelalem_getahune@yahoo.com

Hassan Doosti
School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, Faculty
of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University
Email: hassan.doosti@mq.edu.au

Konstantinos Fokianos
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Cyprus
Nicosia 1678, CYPRUS
Email: fokianos@ucy.ac.cy

xi
xii List of Reviewers

K. Krishnamoorthy
Mathematics Department
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Lafayette, LA 70504, USA
E-mail: krishna@louisiana.edu

Fairouz Makhlouf
Division of Biometrics VIII, US FDA
10903 New Hampshire Ave
Silver Spring, MD 20993, USA
E-mail: fairouz.makhlouf@fda.hhs.gov

Malick Mbodj
Office of Biostatistics, US FDA
10903 New Hampshire Ave
Silver Spring, MD 20993, USA
E-mail: Malick.Mbodj@fda.hhs.gov

Justine B. Nasejje
University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg: Johannesburg, Gauteng, South
Africa.
Email address: justine.nasejje@wits.ac.za

Luigi Salmaso
Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, Vicenza, Italy
Email: luigi.salmaso@unipd.it

Awoke Seyoum
Department of Statistics, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Email address: bisrategebrail@yahoo.com

Yegnanew A. Shiferaw
Department of Statistics, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Email address: yegnanews@uj.ac.za

Giovani Silva
Centre of Statistics and its Applications (CEAUL), Instituto Superior Técnico.
University of Lisbon. Lisbon, Portugal.
Email: giovani.silva@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Paula Simões
Center for Mathematics and Applications (NOVA Math), NOVA University of
Lisbon. Lisbon, Portugal;
List of Reviewers xiii

Centro de Investigação, Desenvolvimento e Inovação da Academia Militar

(CINAMIL), Instituto Universitário Militar. Lisbon, Portugal
Email: pc.simoes@campus.fct.unl.pt

Georg Zimmerman
Team Biostatistics and Big Medical Data, Lab for Intelligent Data Analytics
Salzburg, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria
Research and Innovation Management, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg,
Austria.
Email: georg.zimmermann@pmu.ac.at
Contents

Part I Biostatistical Modeling

1 Bootstrap Calibrated Tests for Average Bioequivalence and
Scaled Average Bioequivalence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Rabab Elnaiem, Thomas Mathew, and Xiaoyu Dong
2 Hypothesis Testing Within Bayesian Inference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Isabel Natário
3 Regression Estimation for Length-Biased Data: A Review
and Comparative Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Mahboubeh Akbari, Najmeh Nakhaei Rad, Ding-Geng Chen,
and Vahid Fakoor
4 Nonparametric Methods for Incomplete Multivariate Data:
Applications to Quality of Life Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Yue Cui and Solomon W. Harrar
5 Estimating Average and Individual Treatment Effects in the
Presence of Time-Dependent Covariates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Tshiamo Kgoale, Albert Whata, Justine B. Nasejje, Najmeh Nakhaei
Rad, and Tshilidzi Mulaudzi

Part II Imaging Data Analysis

6 Detection of Quadratic Interactions in Brain Functional
Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Xuze Zhang, Yuichi Goto, Benjamin Kedem, and Shuo Chen
7 Robust Principal Component Analysis for Retinal Image
Enhancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Habte Tadesse Likassa and Ding-Geng Chen

xv
xvi Contents

Part III Public Health Applications

8 SEIRD Mathematical Modeling of Malaria Transmission
Dynamics in Ethiopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Denekew Bitew Belay, Ding-Geng Chen,
and Sintayehu Agegnehu Matintu
9 Variable Selection in Generalized Semiparametric
Longitudinal Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Mohammad Arashi and Samuel Manda
10 Geostatistical Analysis of Under-Five Children Mortality
and Associated Factors Across Sub-Saharan African Countries. . . . . . 231
Haile Mekonnen Fenta, Ding-Geng Chen, and Temesgen T. Zewotir
11 Survey Design Effect in the Prediction of Events for
Categorical Health Outcomes Through Regression Methods:
Evidence from Malawi Under-Five Mortality Survey Data:
2000–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Tsirizani M. Kaombe and Gracious A. Hamuza
12 Issues in Multivariate Spatial Analysis of Multiple Diseases
Using Complex Health Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Sheyla Rodrigues Cassy and Samuel Manda

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Ding-Geng Chen is a Fellow of the American

Statistical Association and is currently the Executive
Director and Professor of Biostatistics in the College
of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. He
is also an Extraordinary Professor and the SARChI
Research Chair in Biostatistics at the University of
Pretoria and an Honorary Professor at the University
of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Dr. Chen was a
Professor of biostatistics at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Professor of Biostatistics
at the University of Rochester Medical School, and
the Karl E. Peace Endowed Eminent Scholar Chair in
Biostatistics at Georgia Southern University. He is a
senior biostatistics consultant for biopharmaceuticals
and government agencies with extensive expertise in
biostatistics, clinical trials, and public health statistics
and data sciences. Dr. Chen has more than 200 referred
professional publications and co-authored/co-edited 40
books on clinical trial methodology, meta-analysis, data
science, causal inference, and public health research.

xvii
xviii Editors and Contributors

Carlos A. Coelho is a Full Professor of Statistics in the

Mathematics Department of NOVA School of Science
and Technology at NOVA University of Lisbon. He
holds a Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, where he was a Fulbrighter.
His main area of research is Multivariate Analysis,
namely the development of likelihood ratio tests for
elaborate covariance structures and for MANOVA mod-
els, also with elaborate covariance structures, together
with the study of the exact distribution and the develop-
ment of near-exact distributions for the associated test
statistics. Related to this area, other areas of interest are
Mathematical Statistics and Distribution Theory, as well
as Estimation, Univariate and Multivariate Linear, and
Generalized Linear and Mixed Models. More recently,
he also got interested in tests for high dimensionality
and the application of Multivariate Analysis techniques
to Statistical Disclosure Control problems. Carlos A.
Coelho has served as Associate Editor on the Edito-
rial Boards of Discussiones Mathematicae—Probability
and Statistics, REVSTAT-Statistical Journal, the Journal
of Interdisciplinary Mathematics, and the Journal of
Applied Statistics, and currently serves on the Edito-
rial Boards of the Journal of Statistical Theory and
Practice and the American Journal of Mathematical
and Management Sciences. He is also Associate Edi-
tor of the Springer Book series Emerging Topics in
Statistics and Biostatistics and a member of the Interna-
tional Council of the “Business World” Library of the
Tsenov Academy of Economics (Svishtov, Bulgaria).
Currently, Carlos A. Coelho also serves as President of
Fulbrighters Portugal, the Portuguese Fulbright Alumni
Association.
Editors and Contributors xix

Contributors

Mahboubeh Akbari Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria,

South Africa
Mohammad Arashi Department of Statistics, Faculty of Mathematical Sciences,
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Department of Statistics, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University
of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Denekew Bitew Belay Department of Statistics, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar,
Ethiopia
Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Sheyla Rodrigues Cassy DMI, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade Eduardo
Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique
Ding-Geng Chen Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South
Africa
College of Health Solution, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA
Shuo Chen Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, School of Medicine, University
of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Yue Cui Department of Mathematics, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO,
USA
Xiaoyu Dong Data Sciences Institute, Takeda, Cambridge, MA, USA
Rabab Elnaiem University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA
Vahid Fakoor Department of Statistics, School of Mathematical Sciences, Fer-
dowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Haile Mekonnen Fenta Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria,
South Africa
Department of Statistics, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Yuichi Goto Faculty of Mathematics, Kyushu University, Japan
Gracious A. Hamuza National Statistics Office, Zomba, Malawi
Solomon W. Harrar Dr. Bing Zhang Department of Statistics, University of
Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
Tsirizani M. Kaombe Department of Mathematical Sciences, School of Natural
and Applied Sciences, University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi
Benjamin Kedem Department of Mathematics and Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
xx Editors and Contributors

Tshiamo Kgoale Department of Mathematical Sciences, Sol Plaatje University,

Kimberley, South Africa
Habte Tadesse Likassa College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University,
Phoenix, AZ, USA
Samuel Manda Department of Statistics, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural
Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Thomas Mathew University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA
Sintayehu Agegnehu Matintu Department of Mathematics, Injibara University,
Injibara, Ethiopia
Tshilidzi Mulaudzi University of Venda, Limpopo, South Africa
Justine B. Nasejje School of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Isabel Natário Department of Mathematics of NOVA School of Sciences and
Technology & NOVA MATH, Caparica, Portugal
Najmeh Nakhaei Rad Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria,
South Africa
Albert Whata Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South
Africa
Temesgen T. Zewotir School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science,
College of Agriculture Engineering and Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal,
Durban, South Africa
Xuze Zhang Department of Mathematics and Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland, College Park, USA