Estimator selection and combination in scalar-on-function regression

Scalar-on-function regression problems with continuous outcomes arise naturally in many settings, and a wealth of estimation methods now exist. Despite the clear differences in regression model assumptions, tuning parameter selection, and the incorporation of functional structure, it remains common to apply a single method to any dataset of interest. In this paper we develop tools for estimator selection and combination in the context of continuous scalar-on-function regression based on minimizing the cross-validated prediction error of the final estimator. A broad collection of functional and high-dimensional regression methods is used as a library of candidate estimators. We find that the performance of any single method relative to others can vary dramatically across datasets, but that the proposed cross-validation procedure is consistently among the top performers. Four real-data analyses using publicly available benchmark datasets are presented; code implementing these analyses and facilitating the application of proposed methods on future datasets is available in a web supplement. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.