A hurdle model is a class of statistical models where a random variable is modelled using two parts, the first which is the probability of attaining value 0, and the second part models the probability of the non-zero values. The use of hurdle models are often motivated by an excess of zeroes in the data, that is not sufficiently accounted for in more standard statistical models.
In a hurdle model, a random variable x is modelled as
where [math]\displaystyle{ p_{x \ne 0}(x) }[/math] is a truncated probability distribution function, truncated at 0.
Hurdle models were introduced by John G. Cragg in 1971,[1] where the non-zero values of x were modelled using a normal model, and a probit model was used to model the zeros. The probit part of the model was said to model the presence of "hurdles" that must be overcome for the values of x to attain non-zero values, hence the designation hurdle model. Hurdle models were later developed for count data, with Poisson, geometric,[2] and negative binomial[3] models for the non-zero counts .
Hurdle models differ from zero-inflated models in that zero-inflated models model the zeros using a two-component mixture model. With a mixture model, the probability of the variable being zero is determined by both the main distribution function [math]\displaystyle{ p(x = 0) }[/math] and the mixture weight [math]\displaystyle{ \pi }[/math]. Specifically, a zero-inflated model for a random variable x is
where [math]\displaystyle{ \pi }[/math] is the mixture weight that determines the amount of zero-inflation. A zero-inflated model can only increase the probability of [math]\displaystyle{ \Pr (x = 0) }[/math], but this is not a restriction in hurdle models.[4]
Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdle model.
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