Nonlinear models, statistical validation

PCM modeling aims to find an empirical relation (a PCM equation or model) that describes the interaction activities of the biopolymer-molecule pairs as accurate as possible. To this end, various linear and nonlinear correlation methods can be used. Nonlinear methods have hitherto been used to only a limited extent. The method of prime choice has been partial least-squares projection to latent structures (PLS), which has been found to work very satisfactorily in PCM. PCA is also an important data-preprocessing tool in PCM modeling. Modeling includes statistical model-validation techniques such as cross validation, external prediction, and variable-selection and signal-correction methods to obtain statistically valid models. (For general overviews of modeling methods see [10]). 

The first QSPR models for skin tried to establish linear relationships between the descriptors and the permeability coefficient. In many cases validation of these models using, for example, external data sets was not performed. Authors of more recent models took advantage of the progress in statistical methods and used nonlinear relationships between descriptors and predicted permeability and often tried to assess their predictive quality using some validation method. 

Beyond pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, population modeling and parameter estimation are applications of a statistical model that has general validity, the nonlinear mixed effects model. The model has wide applicability in all areas, in the biomedical science and elsewhere, where a parametric functional relationship between some input and some response is studied and where random variability across individuals is of concern [458]. 

The preciseness of the primary parameters can be estimated from the final fit of the multiexponential function to the data, but they are of doubtful validity if the model is severely nonlinear (35). The preciseness of the secondary parameters (in this case variability) are likely to be even less reliable. Consequently, the results of statistical tests carried out with preciseness estimated from the hnal ht could easily be misleading—thus the need to assess the reliability of model estimates. A possible way of reducing bias in parameter estimates and of calculating realistic variances for them is to subject the data to the jackknife technique (36, 37). The technique requires little by way of assumption or analysis. A naive Student t approximation for the standardized jackknife estimator (34) or the bootstrap (31,38,39) (see Chapter 15 of this text) can be used. 

---