English

Sums of Possibly Associated Bernoulli Variables: The Conway-Maxwell-Binomial Distribution

Methodology 2014-04-08 v1

Abstract

The study of sums of possibly associated Bernoulli random variables has been hampered by an asymmetry between positive correlation and negative correlation. The Conway-Maxwell Binomial (COMB) distribution and its multivariate extension, the Conway-Maxwell Multinomial (COMM) distribution, gracefully model both positive and negative association. Sufficient statistics and a family of proper conjugate distributions are found. The relationship of this distribution to the exchangeable special case is explored, and two applications are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1404.1856,
  title  = {Sums of Possibly Associated Bernoulli Variables: The Conway-Maxwell-Binomial Distribution},
  author = {Joseph B. Kadane},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.1856},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

17 pages, 4 figures