Related papers: Wrong Priors
We propose a new method for conducting Bayesian prediction that delivers accurate predictions without correctly specifying the unknown true data generating process. A prior is defined over a class of plausible predictive models. After…
The basic statistical methods of data representation did not change since their emergence. Their simplicity was dictated by the intricacies of computations in the before computers epoch. It turns out that such approach is not uniquely…
The results of several papers concerning the \v{C}ern\'y conjecture are deduced as consequences of a simple idea that I call the averaging trick. This idea is implicitly used in the literature, but no attempt was made to formalize the proof…
Today, science have a powerful tool for the description of reality - the numbers. However, the concept of number was not immediately, lets try to trace the evolution of the concept. The numbers emerged as the need for accurate estimates of…
Dirichlet distribution and Dirichlet process as its infinite dimensional generalization are primarily used conjugate prior of categorical and multinomial distributions in Bayesian statistics. Extensions have been proposed to broaden…
In this paper I show the equivalence, under appropriate assumptions, of two alternative methods to account for the presence of selection biases (also called selection effects) in population studies: one is to include the selection effects…
Since cheating is obviously wrong, arguments against it (it provides an unfair advantage, it hinders learning) need only be mentioned in passing. But the argument of unfair advantage absurdly takes education to be essentially a race of all…
Since its introduction two decades ago, there has been increasing interest in the problem of early classification of time series. This problem generalizes classic time series classification to ask if we can classify a time series…
We show that the incorporation of any new piece of information allows for improved decision making in the sense that the expected costs of an optimal decision decrease (or, in boundary cases where no or not enough new information is…
The ongoing unprecedented exponential explosion of available computing power, has radically transformed the methods of statistical inference. What used to be a small minority of statisticians advocating for the use of priors and a strict…
Consider a set of order statistics that arise from sorting samples from two different populations, each with their own, possibly different distribution function. The probability that these order statistics fall in disjoint, ordered…
I review the problem of the choice of the priors from the point of view of a physicist interested in measuring a physical quantity, and I try to show that the reference priors often recommended for the purpose (Jeffreys priors) do not fit…
As artificial intelligence and machine learning tools become more accessible, and scientists face new obstacles to data collection (e.g., rising costs, declining survey response rates), researchers increasingly use predictions from…
When using complex Bayesian models to combine information, the checking for consistency of the information being combined is good statistical practice. Here a new method is developed for detecting prior-data conflicts in Bayesian models…
The study of associations and their causal explanations is a central research activity whose methodology varies tremendously across fields. Even within specialized subfields, comparisons across textbooks and journals reveals that the basics…
Signal processing makes extensive use of point estimators and accompanying error bounds. These work well up until the likelihood function has two or more high peaks. When it is important for an estimator to remain reliable, it becomes…
We derive some simple relations that demonstrate how the posterior convergence rate is related to two driving factors: a "penalized divergence" of the prior, which measures the ability of the prior distribution to propose a nonnegligible…
The difference between a model forecast and actual observations is called forecast bias. This bias is due to either incomplete model assumptions and/or poorly known parameter values and initial/boundary conditions. In this paper we discuss…
The Weibull distribution is one of the most used tools in reliability analysis. In this paper, assuming a Bayesian approach, we propose necessary and sufficient conditions to verify when improper priors lead to proper posteriors for the…
Most of the stochastic orders for comparing random variables, considered in the literature, are afflicted with two main drawbacks: (i) lack of connex property and (ii) lack of consideration of any dependence structure between the random…