Related papers: Bayesian analysis of variable-order, reversible Ma…
We introduce a natural conjugate prior for the transition matrix of a reversible Markov chain. This allows estimation and testing. The prior arises from random walk with reinforcement in the same way the Dirichlet prior arises from…
We introduce a three-parameter random walk with reinforcement, called the $(\theta,\alpha,\beta)$ scheme, which generalizes the linearly edge reinforced random walk to uncountable spaces. The parameter $\beta$ smoothly tunes the…
Many popular Bayesian nonparametric priors can be characterized in terms of exchangeable species sampling sequences. However, in some applications, exchangeability may not be appropriate. We introduce a {novel and probabilistically coherent…
Exploration of the intractable posterior distributions associated with Bayesian versions of the general linear mixed model is often performed using Markov chain Monte Carlo. In particular, if a conditionally conjugate prior is used, then…
Predictive constructions are a powerful way of characterizing the probability law of stochastic processes with certain forms of invariance, such as exchangeability or Markov exchangeability. When de Finetti-like representation theorems are…
We propose prior distributions for all parts of the specification of a Markov mesh model. In the formulation we define priors for the sequential neighborhood, for the parametric form of the conditional distributions and for the parameter…
We develop two models for Bayesian estimation and selection in high-order, discrete-state Markov chains. Both are based on the mixture transition distribution, which constructs a transition probability tensor with additive mixing of…
We determine an explicit Gr\"obner basis, consisting of linear forms and determinantal quadrics, for the prime ideal of Raftery's mixture transition distribution model for Markov chains. When the states are binary, the corresponding…
This paper presents a Markov chain Monte Carlo method to generate approximate posterior samples in retrospective multiple changepoint problems where the number of changes is not known in advance. The method uses conjugate models whereby the…
Noninformative priors constructed for estimation purposes are usually not appropriate for model selection and testing. The methodology of integral priors was developed to get prior distributions for Bayesian model selection when comparing…
We propose a Bayesian inference approach for a class of latent Markov models. These models are widely used for the analysis of longitudinal categorical data, when the interest is in studying the evolution of an individual unobservable…
Reversible Markov chains play a central role in stochastic modelling and in algorithms such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Motivated by the fundamental importance of reversibility in classical settings, this paper develops a…
In this paper we propose a prior distribution for the clique set and dependence structure of binary Markov random fields (MRFs). In the formulation we allow both pairwise and higher order interactions. We construct the prior by first…
The proposal and study of dependent prior processes has been a major research focus in the recent Bayesian nonparametric literature. In this paper, we introduce a flexible class of dependent nonparametric priors, investigate their…
We consider evaluation of proper posterior distributions obtained from improper prior distributions. Our context is estimating a bounded function $\phi$ of a parameter when the loss is quadratic. If the posterior mean of $\phi$ is…
We present a nonparametric prior over reversible Markov chains. We use completely random measures, specifically gamma processes, to construct a countably infinite graph with weighted edges. By enforcing symmetry to make the edges undirected…
We study an irreducible Markov chain on the category of finite abelian $p$-groups, whose stationary measure is the Cohen-Lenstra distribution. This Markov chain arises when one studies the cokernel of a random matrix $M$, after conditioning…
We consider evaluating improper priors in a formal Bayes setting according to the consequences of their use. Let $\Phi$ be a class of functions on the parameter space and consider estimating elements of $\Phi$ under quadratic loss. If the…
We introduce the notion of order of magnitude reversibility (OM-reversibility) in Markov chains that are parametrized by a positive parameter $\ep$. OM-reversibility is a weaker condition than reversibility, and requires only the knowledge…
Discrete mixture models are routinely used for density estimation and clustering. While conducting inferences on the cluster-specific parameters, current frequentist and Bayesian methods often encounter problems when clusters are placed too…