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In problems with large amounts of missing data one must model two distinct data generating processes: the outcome process which generates the response and the missing data mechanism which determines the data we observe. Under the…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-11-10 Antonio R. Linero

Although Bayesian inference is an immensely popular paradigm among a large segment of scientists including statisticians, most applications consider objective priors and need critical investigations (Efron, 2013, Science). While it has…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-09-11 Abhik Ghosh , Tuhin Majumder , Ayanendranath Basu

Uncertainty quantification is essential when dealing with ill-conditioned inverse problems due to the inherent nonuniqueness of the solution. Bayesian approaches allow us to determine how likely an estimation of the unknown parameters is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-01-16 Ali Siahkoohi , Gabrio Rizzuti , Felix J. Herrmann

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…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-05-01 David C. Kessler , Peter D. Hoff , David B. Dunson

We marshall the arguments for preferring Bayesian hypothesis testing and confidence sets to frequentist ones. We define admissible solutions to inference problems, noting that Bayesian solutions are admissible. We give seven weaker…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-05-22 Roger Sewell

Bayesian methods are increasingly applied in these days in the theory and practice of statistics. Any Bayesian inference depends on a likelihood and a prior. Ideally one would like to elicit a prior from related sources of information or…

Methodology · Statistics 2011-08-11 Malay Ghosh

We propose a two-component mixture of a noninformative (diffuse) and an informative prior distribution, weighted through the data in such a way to prefer the first component if a prior-data conflict arises. The data-driven approach for…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-08-02 Leonardo Egidi , Francesco Pauli , Nicola Torelli

We distinguish two questions (i) how much information does the prior contain? and (ii) what is the effect of the prior? Several measures have been proposed for quantifying effective prior sample size, for example Clarke [1996] and Morita et…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-01-30 David E Jones , Robert N Trangucci , Yang Chen

Frequentist-style large-sample properties of Bayesian posterior distributions, such as consistency and convergence rates, are important considerations in nonparametric problems. In this paper we give an analysis of Bayesian asymptotics…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-10-02 Ryan Martin , Liang Hong

Between Bayesian and frequentist inference, it's commonly believed that the former is for cases where one has a prior and the latter is for cases where one has no prior. But the prior/no-prior classification isn't exhaustive, and most…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-11-29 Ryan Martin

We present a method of constructing statistical intervals that obtain a natural middle ground between Bayesian and frequentist statistical intervals, previously unexplored in literature: To a p% Bayesian credible interval we should assign a…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-11 Tim Ritmeester

We consider a prior for nonparametric Bayesian estimation which uses finite random series with a random number of terms. The prior is constructed through distributions on the number of basis functions and the associated coefficients. We…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-02-10 Weining Shen , Subhashis Ghosal

Computational convenience has led to widespread use of Bayesian inference with vague or flat priors to analyze state-space models in ecology. Vague priors are claimed to be objective and to let the data speak. Neither of these claims is…

Quantitative Methods · Quantitative Biology 2015-02-03 Subhash R. Lele

A Bayesian nonparametric approach to the study of species diversity based on choosing a random discrete distribution as a prior model for the unknown relative abundances of species has been recently introduced in Lijoi et al. (2007, 2008).…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-03-09 Annalisa Cerquetti

We perform a Bayesian analysis on abundance data for ten species of North American duck, using the results to investigate the evidence in favour of biologically motivated hypotheses about the causes and mechanisms of density dependence in…

A central challenge in statistical inference is the presence of confounding variables that may distort observed associations between treatment and outcome. Conventional "causal" methods, grounded in assumptions such as ignorability, exclude…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-09 Ellis Scharfenaker , Duncan K. Foley

Across the empirical sciences, few statistical procedures rival the popularity of the frequentist t-test. In contrast, the Bayesian versions of the t-test have languished in obscurity. In recent years, however, the theoretical and practical…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-12-17 Quentin F. Gronau , Alexander Ly , Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

In a given problem, the Bayesian statistical paradigm requires the specification of a prior distribution that quantifies relevant information about the unknowns of main interest external to the data. In cases where little such information…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-10-11 Alexander Terenin , David Draper

The main object of Bayesian statistical inference is the determination of posterior distributions. Sometimes these laws are given for quantities devoid of empirical value. This serious drawback vanishes when one confines oneself to…

Statistical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2008-12-02 Federico Bassetti

When modeling a probability distribution with a Bayesian network, we are faced with the problem of how to handle continuous variables. Most previous work has either solved the problem by discretizing, or assumed that the data are generated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-02-21 George H. John , Pat Langley