Abstract
Recurrence data arise from multi-disciplinary domains spanning reliability, cyber security, healthcare, online retailing, etc. This paper investigates an additive-tree-based approach, known as Boost-R (Boosting for Recurrence Data), for recurrent event data with both static and dynamic features. Boost-R constructs an ensemble of gradient boosted additive trees to estimate the cumulative intensity function of the recurrent event process, where a new tree is added to the ensemble by minimizing the regularized L 2 distance between the observed and predicted cumulative intensity. Unlike conventional regression trees, a time-dependent function is constructed by Boost-R on each tree leaf. The sum of these functions, from multiple trees, yields the ensemble estimator of the cumulative intensity. The divide-and-conquer nature of tree-based methods is appealing when hidden sub-populations exist within a heterogeneous population. The non-parametric nature of regression trees helps to avoid parametric assumptions on the complex interactions between event processes and features. Critical insights and advantages of Boost-R are investigated through comprehensive numerical examples. Datasets and computer code of Boost-R are made available on GitHub. To our best knowledge, Boost-R is the first gradient boosted additive-tree-based approach for modeling large-scale recurrent event data with both static and dynamic feature information.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 545-565 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Journal of Quality Technology |
Volume | 53 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- additive trees
- feature selection
- gradient boosting
- recurrent event data
- reliability
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
- Strategy and Management
- Management Science and Operations Research
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering