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There has been significant progress in Bayesian inference based on sparsity-inducing (e.g., spike-and-slab and horseshoe-type) priors for high-dimensional regression models. The resulting posteriors, however, in general do not possess…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-12-11 Qihui Chen , Zheng Fang , Ruixuan Liu

Models with intractable normalizing functions arise frequently in statistics. Common examples of such models include exponential random graph models for social networks and Markov point processes for ecology and disease modeling. Inference…

Computation · Statistics 2018-08-03 Jaewoo Park , Murali Haran

In this work, we develop an objective Bayesian framework for the Dhillon probability distribution. We explicitly derive three objective priors: the Jeffreys prior, the overall reference prior, and the maximal data information prior. We show…

Bayesian learning in undirected graphical models|computing posterior distributions over parameters and predictive quantities is exceptionally difficult. We conjecture that for general undirected models, there are no tractable MCMC (Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-19 Iain Murray , Zoubin Ghahramani

We consider the shape of the posterior distribution to be used when fitting cosmological models to power spectra measured from galaxy surveys. At very large scales, Gaussian posterior distributions in the power do not approximate the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2022-11-25 Benedict Bahr-Kalus , Will J. Percival , Lado Samushia

Bayesian methods provide a natural means for uncertainty quantification, that is, credible sets can be easily obtained from the posterior distribution. But is this uncertainty quantification valid in the sense that the posterior credible…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-10-02 Ryan Martin , Bo Ning

Approximate Bayesian computation allows for statistical analysis in models with intractable likelihoods. In this paper we consider the asymptotic behaviour of the posterior distribution obtained by this method. We give general results on…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-05-09 David T. Frazier , Gael M. Martin , Christian P. Robert , Judith Rousseau

This paper considers a Bayesian approach for inclusion detection in nonlinear inverse problems using two known and popular push-forward prior distributions: the star-shaped and level set prior distributions. We analyze the convergence of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-08-29 Babak Maboudi Afkham , Kim Knudsen , Aksel Kaastrup Rasmussen , Tanja Tarvainen

We propose a general method to carry out a valid Bayesian analysis of a finite-dimensional `targeted' parameter in the presence of a finite-dimensional nuisance parameter. We apply our methods to causal inference based on estimating…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-03 Magid Sabbagh , David A. Stephens

Bayesian inference for inverse problems hinges critically on the choice of priors. In the absence of specific prior information, population-level distributions can serve as effective priors for parameters of interest. With the advent of…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2025-02-11 Gabriel Missael Barco , Alexandre Adam , Connor Stone , Yashar Hezaveh , Laurence Perreault-Levasseur

Optimization is widely used in statistics, and often efficiently delivers point estimates on useful spaces involving structural constraints or combinatorial structure. To quantify uncertainty, Gibbs posterior exponentiates the negative loss…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-23 Cheng Zeng , Eleni Dilma , Jason Xu , Leo L Duan

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods form one of the algorithmic foundations of Bayesian inverse problems. The recent development of likelihood-informed subspace (LIS) methods offers a viable route to designing efficient MCMC methods for…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2023-03-07 Tiangang Cui , Xin Tong , Olivier Zahm

In this work, we investigate the use of Besov priors in the context of Bayesian inverse problems. The solution to Bayesian inverse problems is the posterior distribution which naturally enables us to interpret the uncertainties. Besov…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-06-23 Andreas Horst , Babak Maboudi Afkham , Yiqiu Dong , Jakob Lemvig

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…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-11-22 Andrew Gelman , Daniel Simpson , Michael Betancourt

In this paper, we consider objective Bayesian inference of the generalized exponential distribution using the independence Jeffreys prior and validate the propriety of the posterior distribution under a family of structured priors. We…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-26 Aojun Li , Keying Ye , Min Wang

Many statistical models can be simulated forwards but have intractable likelihoods. Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) methods are used to infer properties of these models from data. Traditionally these methods approximate the posterior…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-04-03 George Papamakarios , Iain Murray

We consider a novel paradigm for Bayesian testing of hypotheses and Bayesian model comparison. Our alternative to the traditional construction of posterior probabilities that a given hypothesis is true or that the data originates from a…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-01-01 Kaniav Kamary , Kerrie Mengersen , Christian P. Robert , Judith Rousseau

Approximate Bayesian Computation is a family of likelihood-free inference techniques that are well-suited to models defined in terms of a stochastic generating mechanism. In a nutshell, Approximate Bayesian Computation proceeds by computing…

Computation · Statistics 2010-07-28 Michael Blum

Posterior sampling is a task of central importance in Bayesian inference. For many applications in Bayesian meta-analysis and Bayesian transfer learning, the prior distribution is unknown and needs to be estimated from samples. In practice,…

Computation · Statistics 2024-08-06 Chenyang Zhong , Shouxuan Ji , Tian Zheng

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques are now widely used for cosmological parameter estimation. Chains are generated to sample the posterior probability distribution obtained following the Bayesian approach. An important issue is how…