Related papers: When Ignorance is Bliss
Data-driven risk analysis involves the inference of probability distributions from measured or simulated data. In the case of a highly reliable system, such as the electricity grid, the amount of relevant data is often exceedingly limited,…
We introduce a model of persuasion in which a sender without any commitment power privately gathers information about an unknown state of the world and then chooses what to verifiably disclose to a receiver. The receiver does not know how…
The key distinguishing property of a Bayesian approach is marginalization instead of optimization, not the prior, or Bayes rule. Bayesian inference is especially compelling for deep neural networks. (1) Neural networks are typically…
Does the asymptotic variance of the maximum composite likelihood estimator of a parameter of interest always decrease when the nuisance parameters are known? Will a composite likelihood necessarily become more efficient by incorporating…
The Bayesian method is noted to produce spuriously high posterior probabilities for phylogenetic trees in analysis of large datasets, but the precise reasons for this over-confidence are unknown. In general, the performance of Bayesian…
We introduce a novel rule-based approach for handling regression problems. The new methodology carries elements from two frameworks: (i) it provides information about the uncertainty of the parameters of interest using Bayesian inference,…
We define the information threshold as the point of maximum curvature in the prior vs. posterior Bayesian curve, both of which are described as a function of the true positive and negative rates of the classification system in question. The…
Bayesian probability theory is used to analyze the oft-made assumption that humans are typical observers in the universe. Some theoretical calculations make the {\it selection fallacy} that we are randomly chosen from a class of objects by…
We consider the problem of integrating a small probability sample (ps) and a non-probability sample (nps). By definition, for the nps, there are no survey weights, but for the ps, there are survey weights. The key issue is that the nps,…
Bayes' theorem incorporates distinct types of information through the likelihood and prior. Direct observations of state variables enter the likelihood and modify posterior probabilities through consistent updating. Information in terms of…
Astronomers are often confronted with funky populations and distributions of objects: brighter objects are more likely to be detected; targets are selected based on colour cuts; imperfect classification yields impure samples. Failing to…
Information theory provides a mathematical foundation to measure uncertainty in belief. Belief is represented by a probability distribution that captures our understanding of an outcome's plausibility. Information measures based on…
Bayesian inference provides a powerful tool for leveraging observational data to inform model predictions and uncertainties. However, when such data is limited, Bayesian inference may not adequately constrain uncertainty without the use of…
This paper shows that the common method used for making predictions under uncertainty in A1 and science is in error. This method is to use currently available data to select the best model from a given class of models-this process is called…
An analyst observes an agent take a sequence of actions. The analyst does not have access to the agent's information and ponders whether the observed actions could be justified through a rational Bayesian model with a known utility…
Selective classification is a powerful tool for automated decision-making in high-risk scenarios, allowing classifiers to act only when confident and abstain when uncertainty is high. Given a target accuracy, our goal is to minimize…
Causal inference with observational data can be performed under an assumption of no unobserved confounders (unconfoundedness assumption). There is, however, seldom clear subject-matter or empirical evidence for such an assumption. We…
Recent work in cognitive science has uncovered a diversity of explanatory values, or dimensions along which we judge explanations as better or worse. We propose a Bayesian account of how these values fit together to guide explanation. The…
For many classification and regression problems, a large number of features are available for possible use - this is typical of DNA microarray data on gene expression, for example. Often, for computational or other reasons, only a small…
Bayesian and frequentist methods differ in many aspects, but share some basic optimality properties. In practice, there are situations in which one of the methods is more preferred by some criteria. We consider the case of inference about a…