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Most bandit algorithm designs are purely theoretical. Therefore, they have strong regret guarantees, but also are often too conservative in practice. In this work, we pioneer the idea of algorithm design by minimizing the empirical Bayes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-12 Chih-Wei Hsu , Branislav Kveton , Ofer Meshi , Martin Mladenov , Csaba Szepesvari

In the usual Bayesian setting, a full probabilistic model is required to link the data and parameters, and the form of this model and the inference and prediction mechanisms are specified via de Finetti's representation. In general, such a…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-21 Yu Luo , David A. Stephens , Daniel J. Graham , Emma J. McCoy

In Bayesian analysis, reference priors are widely recognized for their objective nature. Yet, they often lead to intractable and improper priors, which complicates their application. Besides, informed prior elicitation methods are penalized…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-09-23 Antoine Van Biesbroeck

Recent decades have seen an interest in prediction problems for which Bayesian methodology has been used ubiquitously. Sampling from or approximating the posterior predictive distribution in a Bayesian model allows one to make inferential…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-09-12 Giri Gopalan

Following the critical review of Seaman et al. (2012), we reflect on what is presumably the most essential aspect of Bayesian statistics, namely the selection of a prior density. In some cases, Bayesian inference remains fairly stable under…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-07-23 Kaniav Kamary , Christian P. Robert

We study the convergence rates of empirical Bayes posterior distributions for nonparametric and high-dimensional inference. We show that as long as the hyperparameter set is discrete, the empirical Bayes posterior distribution induced by…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-09-10 Fengshuo Zhang , Chao Gao

When prior information is lacking, the go-to strategy for probabilistic inference is to combine a "default prior" and the likelihood via Bayes's theorem. Objective Bayes, (generalized) fiducial inference, etc. fall under this umbrella. This…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-05 Ryan Martin

We consider nonparametric Bayesian inference in a multidimensional diffusion model with reflecting boundary conditions based on discrete high-frequency observations. We prove a general posterior contraction rate theorem in $L^2$-loss, which…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-08-12 Marc Hoffmann , Kolyan Ray

We consider the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with a prior distribution on the reward distributions. We are interested in studying prior-free and prior-dependent regret bounds, very much in the same spirit as the usual…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-10-04 Sébastien Bubeck , Che-Yu Liu

The prior distribution on parameters of a sampling distribution is the usual starting point for Bayesian uncertainty quantification. In this paper, we present a different perspective which focuses on missing observations as the source of…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-11-23 Edwin Fong , Chris Holmes , Stephen G. Walker

Especially when facing reliability data with limited information (e.g., a small number of failures), there are strong motivations for using Bayesian inference methods. These include the option to use information from physics-of-failure or…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-10-27 Qinglong Tian , Colin Lewis-Beck , Jarad Niemi , William Meeker

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

An imprecise Bayesian nonparametric approach to system reliability with multiple types of components is developed. This allows modelling partial or imperfect prior knowledge on component failure distributions in a flexible way through…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-09-19 Gero Walter , Louis J. M. Aslett , Frank P. A. Coolen

We consider discrete nonparametric priors which induce Gibbs-type exchangeable random partitions and investigate their posterior behavior in detail. In particular, we deduce conditional distributions and the corresponding Bayesian…

Probability · Mathematics 2008-08-22 Antonio Lijoi , Igor Prünster , Stephen G. Walker

We present a new approach to semiparametric inference using corrected posterior distributions. The method allows us to leverage the adaptivity, regularization and predictive power of nonparametric Bayesian procedures to estimate…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-06-21 Andrew Yiu , Edwin Fong , Chris Holmes , Judith Rousseau

The notion of confidence distributions is applied to inference about the parameter in a simple autoregressive model, allowing the parameter to take the value one. This makes it possible to compare to asymptotic approximations in both the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-03-28 Rolf Larsson

Nested error regression models are useful tools for analysis of grouped data, especially in the case of small area estimation. This paper suggests a nested error regression model using uncertain random effects in which the random effect in…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-02-28 Shonosuke Sugasawa , Tatsuya Kubokawa

We consider nonparametric Bayesian estimation inference using a rescaled smooth Gaussian field as a prior for a multidimensional function. The rescaling is achieved using a Gamma variable and the procedure can be viewed as choosing an…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2009-08-26 A. W. van der Vaart , J. H. van Zanten

Bayesian optimization usually assumes that a Bayesian prior is given. However, the strong theoretical guarantees in Bayesian optimization are often regrettably compromised in practice because of unknown parameters in the prior. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-26 Zi Wang , Beomjoon Kim , Leslie Pack Kaelbling

We investigate the problem of continuous-time causal estimation under a minimax criterion. Let $X^T = \{X_t,0\leq t\leq T\}$ be governed by the probability law $P_{\theta}$ from a class of possible laws indexed by $\theta \in \Lambda$, and…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2014-07-09 Albert No , Tsachy Weissman