Approximate tolerance intervals for nonparametric regression models

Tolerance intervals in regression allow the user to quantify, with a specified degree of confidence, bounds for a specified proportion of the sampled population when conditioned on a set of covariate values. While methods are available for tolerance intervals in fully-parametric regression settings, the construction of tolerance intervals for nonparametric regression models has been treated in a limited capacity. This paper fills this gap and develops likelihood-based approaches for the construction of pointwise one-sided and two-sided tolerance intervals for nonparametric regression models. A numerical approach is also presented for constructing simultaneous tolerance intervals. An appealing facet of this work is that the resulting methodology is consistent with what is done for fully-parametric regression tolerance intervals. Extensive coverage studies are presented, which demonstrate very good performance of the proposed methods. The proposed tolerance intervals are calculated and interpreted for analyses involving a fertility dataset and a triceps measurement dataset.