As a part of my exploratory data analysis (EDA) prior to further analysis, I'm trying to determine a probability distribution of my pilot dataset's variables. A particular feature of this dataset is a significant share of missing values. I partially alleviated this problem by performing multiple imputation (MI), using Amelia
R package. The MI process resulted in reduction of missing values from 98% to 31%. If it's important, further analysis includes EFA, CFA and SEM-PLS modeling.
I have several questions in this regard. First, and, probably, main, question is: What is the correct (or optimal) approach to distribution fitting in terms of using parametric versus non-parametric methods? Another question is: Does it makes sense to combine both approaches for validation? The final question is: How presence of missing data influences approaches for distribution fitting?
The following are some of my thoughts, based on reading relevant discussions on CrossValidated. I apologize in advance, if they (thoughts) don't display high level of statistical rigor, as I'm not a statistician, but software developer turned social science researcher and aspiring data scientist.
In his answer to this question, @Glen_b suggests that, given large sample, non-parametric approach is easier and better, or, at least, not worse. However, it's not clear to me whether this rule of thumb has any "contraindications", so to speak. It is also not clear what is the consensus, if any, in regard to usefulness of performing automatic or semi-automatic process of distribution fitting.
In this great discussion, @Glen_b demonstrates investigating real data distribution via applying some transformations. In this regard, if the distribution is not multimodal, but just heavily skewed, it's not clear whether it makes sense to determine data distribution versus simply transforming data to conform normal distribution, using Box-Cox transformation.
In this discussion, @jpillow recommends, along with using Q-Q plots, Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical test. However, in his paper "Fitting distributions with R", Vito Ricci states (p. 19): "Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is more powerful than chi-square test when sample size is not too great. For large size sample both the tests have the same power. The most serious limitation of Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is that the distribution must be fully specified, that is, location, scale, and shape parameters can’t be estimated from the data sample. Due to this limitation, many analysts prefer to use the Anderson-Darling goodness-of fit test. However, the Anderson-Darling test is only available for a few specific distributions." Then, there are Shapiro-Wilk and Lilliefors tests. Then there is the above-mentioned chi-square test, which can be applied to non-continuous distributions. Again, I'm rather confused in terms of decision-making process for selecting tests that I should use.
In terms of distribution fitting (DF), I have discovered several R packages, in addition to the ones mentioned in the paper by Ricci and elsewhere, such as 'fitdistrplus' (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/fitdistrplus) for non- and parametric DF and 'kerdiest' (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/kerdiest) for non-parametric DF. This is an FYI, for people who haven't heard about them and are curious. Sorry about the long question and thank you in advance for your attention!
NA
inR
terms). This particular dataset is a pilot one and N=100000. I have access to a dataset with N~1.8M. In terms of the reasons of the data missing, I can say the following. The topic of my research is modeling success of open source software (OSS) development, so I use open data. My guess is that reasons for missing data are mostly lack of desire, time or needed info. However, it can be argued that missing data correlate with projects with(in) certain characteristics (categories) and, thus, is not MCAR. $\endgroup$