MENTORS: Copy this template!

Aster models for life history analysis are generalized generalized linear models (G^2LM). They also generalize discrete-time survival analysis, life table analysis, zero-inflated Poisson regression, and are a special case of graphical models. CRAN packages aster and aster2 provide statistical inference for these models. This project only works with R package aster. The basic papers are cited on the help page for R generic function aster in R package aster. There is also a web site for a special topics course on aster models http://users.stat.umn.edu/geyer/8931aster/. Slide decks one and two of the course slides provide sufficient background for this project.

Aster models have not become popular with statisticians despite their possible applications in many areas. The are widely used by biologists.

This work is about the aster model subsampling problem, which is important because many biologists do their experiments with subsampling.

No other R packages (except the aforementioned aster2) have aster functionality.

** Related work

What other R packages with similar functionality already exist? Why aren't they good enough?

** Details of your coding project

What exactly do you want your student to code in the 3-month deadline? What functions? What do they do? Docs? Tests? Vignettes?

** Expected impact

Mentors, please explain how this project will produce a useful package for the R community.

** Mentors

Students, please contact mentors below after completing at least one of the tests below.

MENTORS: fill in this part. each project needs 2 mentors. One should be an expert R programmer with previous package development experience, and the other can be a domain expert in some other field or application area (optimization, bioinformatics, machine learning, data viz, etc). Ideally one of the two mentors should have previous experience with GSOC (either as a student or mentor). Please provide contact info for each mentor, along with qualifications. Example:

• Toby Hocking [email protected] is the author of R packages X and Y.
• Other Dev [email protected] is an expert in machine learning, and has previous GSOC experience with NAME_OF_OPEN_SOURCE_ORGANIZATION in 2015-2016.

** Tests

Students, please do one or more of the following tests before contacting the mentors above.

MENTORS: write several tests that potential students can do to demonstrate their capabilities for this particular project. Ask some hard questions that will give you insight about how the students write code to solve problems. You'll see that the harder the questions that you ask, the easier it will be for you to choose between the students that apply for your project! Please modify the suggestions below to make them specific for your project.

• Easy: something that any useR should be able to do, e.g. download some existing package listed in the Related Work, and run it on some example data.
• Medium: something a bit more complicated. You can encourage students to write a script or some functions that show their R coding abilities.
• Hard: Can the student write a package with Rd files, tests, and vigettes? If your package interfaces with non-R code, can the student write in that other language?

** Solutions of tests

Students, please post a link to your test results here.