English
Related papers

Related papers: Can Bayes Factors "Prove" the Null Hypothesis?

200 papers

We look at the distribution of the Bayesian evidence for mock realizations of supernova and baryon acoustic oscillation data. The ratios of Bayesian evidences of different models are often used to perform model selection. The significance…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2022-07-20 Ryan E. Keeley , Arman Shafieloo

In 1957, Lindley published "A statistical paradox" in Biometrika, revealing a fundamental conflict between frequentist and Bayesian inference as sample size approaches infinity. We present a new paradox of a different kind: a conflict…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-01 Miodrag M. Lovric

Recently, several researchers have claimed that conclusions obtained from a Bayes factor (or the posterior odds) may contradict those obtained from Bayesian posterior estimation. In this short paper, we wish to point out that no such…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-10-24 Harlan Campbell , Paul Gustafson

In statistics, there are a variety of methods for performing model selection that all stem from slightly different paradigms of statistical inference. The reasons for choosing one particular method over another seem to be based entirely on…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-01-29 Danica M. Ommen , Christopher P. Saunders

Bayesian and frequentist criteria fundamentally differ, but often posterior and sampling distributions agree asymptotically (e.g., Gaussian with same covariance). For the corresponding single-draw experiment, we characterize the frequentist…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-07-04 David M. Kaplan , Longhao Zhuo

Some scientific research questions ask to guide decisions and others do not. By their nature frequentist hypothesis-tests yield a dichotomous test decision as result, rendering them rather inappropriate for latter types of research…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-10-20 Patrick Schwaferts , Thomas Augustin

The ratio of Bayesian evidences is a popular tool in cosmology to compare different models. There are however several issues with this method: Bayes' ratio depends on the prior even in the limit of non-informative priors, and Jeffrey's…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-12-16 Luca Amendola , Vrund Patel , Ziad Sakr , Elena Sellentin , Kevin Wolz

The quality of a Bayes factor crucially depends on the number of regressors, the sample size and the prior on the regression parameters, and hence it has to be established in a case-by-case basis. In this paper we analyze the consistency of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-05-20 Elías Moreno , J. J. Serrano-Pérez , F. Torres-Ruiz

Bayes factor null hypothesis tests provide a viable alternative to frequentist measures of evidence quantification. Bayes factors for realistic data sets in areas like psychology cannot be calculated exactly and require numerical…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-05-12 Daniel J. Schad , Martin Modrák , Shravan Vasishth

In the Bayesian literature on model comparison, Bayes factors play the leading role. In the classical statistical literature, model selection criteria are often devised used cross-validation ideas. Amalgamating the ideas of Bayes factor and…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-06-12 Debashis Chatterjee , Sourabh Bhattacharya

A staple of Bayesian model comparison and hypothesis testing, Bayes factors are often used to quantify the relative predictive performance of two rival hypotheses. The computation of Bayes factors can be challenging, however, and this has…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-19 František Bartoš , Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

We describe Bayes factors based on z, t, $\chi^2$, and F statistics when non-local moment prior distributions are used to define alternative hypotheses. The non-local alternative prior distributions are centered on standardized effects. The…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-26 Saptati Datta , Rachael Shudde , Valen E. Johnson

In Bayesian hypothesis testing, evidence for a statistical model is quantified by the Bayes factor, which represents the relative likelihood of observed data under that model compared to another competing model. In general, computing Bayes…

Computation · Statistics 2021-12-07 Thomas J. Faulkenberry

Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing is a dominant framework for conducting statistical analysis across the sciences. There remains considerable debate as to whether, and under what circumstances, evidence can be said to be confirmatory of a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-05-28 Reid Dale

Testing the (in)equality of variances is an important problem in many statistical applications. We develop default Bayes factor tests to assess the (in)equality of two or more population variances, as well as a test for whether the…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-08-02 Fabian Dablander , Don van den Bergh , Eric-Jan Wagenmakers , Alexander Ly

Bayes factors for composite hypotheses have difficulty in encoding vague prior knowledge, as improper priors cannot be used and objective priors may be subjectively unreasonable. To address these issues I revisit the posterior Bayes factor,…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-02-29 Frank Dudbridge

In this paper, we consider Bayesian hypothesis testing for the balanced one-way random effects model. A special choice of the prior formulation for the ratio of variance components is shown to yield an explicit closed-form Bayes factor…

Methodology · Statistics 2013-02-27 Min Wang , Xiaoqian Sun

A Bayes factor is proposed for testing whether the effect of a key predictor variable on the dependent variable is linear or nonlinear, possibly while controlling for certain covariates. The test can be used (i) when one is interested in…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-09-16 Joris Mulder

The asymptotically optimal hypothesis testing problem with the general sources as the null and alternative hypotheses is studied under exponential-type error constraints on the first kind of error probability. Our fundamental philosophy in…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Te Sun Han

In the absence of empirical confirmation, scientists may judge a theory's chances of being viable based on a wide range of arguments. The paper argues that such arguments can differ substantially with regard to their structural similarly to…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2017-02-07 Richard Dawid