Related papers: Priors for New Physics
Bayesian inferences in high energy physics often use uniform prior distributions for parameters about which little or no information is available before data are collected. The resulting posterior distributions are therefore sensitive to…
This report introduces general ideas and some basic methods of the Bayesian probability theory applied to physics measurements. Our aim is to make the reader familiar, through examples rather than rigorous formalism, with concepts such as:…
A key sticking point of Bayesian analysis is the choice of prior distribution, and there is a vast literature on potential defaults including uniform priors, Jeffreys' priors, reference priors, maximum entropy priors, and weakly informative…
Specifying a Bayesian prior is notoriously difficult for complex models such as neural networks. Reasoning about parameters is made challenging by the high-dimensionality and over-parameterization of the space. Priors that seem benign and…
Constraints are a natural choice for prior information in Bayesian inference. In various applications, the parameters of interest lie on the boundary of the constraint set. In this paper, we use a method that implicitly defines a…
We develop simple methods for constructing likelihoods and parameter priors for learning about the parameters and structure of a Bayesian network. In particular, we introduce several assumptions that permit the construction of likelihoods…
Bayesian inference gets its name from *Bayes's theorem*, expressing posterior probabilities for hypotheses about a data generating process as the (normalized) product of prior probabilities and a likelihood function. But Bayesian inference…
Bayesian analyses require that all variable model parameters are given a prior probability distribution. This can pose a challenge for analyses where multiple experiments are combined if these experiments use different parametrisations for…
We discuss Bayesian inference for parameters selected using the data. First, we provide a critical analysis of the existing positions in the literature regarding the correct Bayesian approach under selection. Second, we propose two types of…
Bayesian field theory denotes a nonparametric Bayesian approach for learning functions from observational data. Based on the principles of Bayesian statistics, a particular Bayesian field theory is defined by combining two models: a…
In this paper, we introduce the notion of Gaussian processes indexed by probability density functions for extending the Mat\'ern family of covariance functions. We use some tools from information geometry to improve the efficiency and the…
Prior specification for nonparametric Bayesian inference involves the difficult task of quantifying prior knowledge about a parameter of high, often infinite, dimension. Realistically, a statistician is unlikely to have informed opinions…
We describe the application of model inference based on reference priors to two concrete examples in high energy physics: the determination of the CKM matrix parameters rhobar and etabar and the determination of the parameters m_0 and m_1/2…
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 ongoing replication crisis in science has increased interest in the methodology of replication studies. We propose a novel Bayesian analysis approach using power priors: The likelihood of the original study's data is raised to the power…
This is an introduction to Bayesian inference with a focus on hierarchical models and hyper-parameters. We write primarily for an audience of Bayesian novices, but we hope to provide useful insights for seasoned veterans as well. Examples…
We develop a novel data-driven approach to the inverse problem of classical statistical mechanics: given experimental data on the collective motion of a classical many-body system, how does one characterise the free energy landscape of that…
Nonparametric Bayesian models are used routinely as flexible and powerful models of complex data. Many times, a statistician may have additional informative beliefs about data distribution of interest, e.g., its mean or subset components,…
We propose a novel approach to perform approximate Bayesian inference in complex models such as Bayesian neural networks. The approach is more scalable to large data than Markov Chain Monte Carlo, it embraces more expressive models than…
Bayesian inference --- although becoming popular in physics and chemistry --- is hampered up to now by the vagueness of its notion of prior probability. Some of its supporters argue that this vagueness is the unavoidable consequence of the…