相关论文: Of priors and prejudice
Dirichlet distribution and Dirichlet process as its infinite dimensional generalization are primarily used conjugate prior of categorical and multinomial distributions in Bayesian statistics. Extensions have been proposed to broaden…
We consider primitive divisors of terms of integer sequences defined by quadratic polynomials. Apart from some small counterexamples, when a term has a primitive divisor, that primitive divisor is unique. It seems likely that the number of…
The number of extant individuals within a lineage, as exemplified by counts of species numbers across genera in a higher taxonomic category, is known to be a highly skewed distribution. Because the sublineages (such as genera in a clade)…
At an early stage in pre-biotic evolution, groups of replicating molecules must coordinate their reproduction to form aggregated units of selection. Mechanisms that enable this to occur are currently not well understood. In this paper we…
In Bayesian statistics, the choice of prior distribution is often debatable, especially if prior knowledge is limited or data are scarce. In imprecise probability, sets of priors are used to accurately model and reflect prior knowledge.…
The ranking problem is to order a collection of units by some unobserved parameter, based on observations from the associated distribution. This problem arises naturally in a number of contexts, such as business, where we may want to rank…
A central issue in ecology today is that of the factors determining the relative abundance of species within a natural community. The proper application of the principles of statistical physics to the problem of species abundance…
In a language corpus, the probability that a word occurs $n$ times is often proportional to $1/n^2$. Assigning rank, $s$, to words according to their abundance, $\log s$ vs $\log n$ typically has a slope of minus one. That simple Zipf's law…
We consider a population of N individuals, whose dynamics through time is represented by a biparental Moran model with two types: an advantaged type and a disadvantaged type. The advantage is due to a mutation, transmitted in a Mendelian…
A class of probability distributions is characterized via equalities in law between two order statistics shifted by independent exponential variables. An explicit formula for the quintile function of the identified family of distributions…
In a (two-type) Wright-Fisher diffusion with directional selection and two-way mutation, let $x$ denote today's frequency of the beneficial type, and given $x$, let $h(x)$ be the probability that, among all individuals of today's…
The prior distribution for the unknown model parameters plays a crucial role in the process of statistical inference based on Bayesian methods. However, specifying suitable priors is often difficult even when detailed prior knowledge is…
We investigate the statistics of trees grown from some initial tree by attaching links to preexisting vertices, with attachment probabilities depending only on the valence of these vertices. We consider the asymptotic mass distribution that…
We consider the Moran model in continuous time with two types, mutation, and selection. We concentrate on the ancestral line and its stationary type distribution. Building on work by Fearnhead (J. Appl. Prob. 39 (2002), 38-54) and Taylor…
It is shown that the first-order term of the asymptotic bias of the posterior mean is removed by a suitable choice of a prior density. In regular statistical models including exponential families, and linear and logistic regression models,…
We derive the Jeffreys prior for the parameter of the Multivariate Ewens Distribution and study some of its properties. In particular, we show that this prior is proper and has no finite moments. We also investigate the impact of this…
Time evolution of number of species (genera, families, and others), population of them, and size distribution of present ones and life times are studied in terms of a new model, where population of each genetic taxon increases by a (random)…
Priors allow us to robustify inference and to incorporate expert knowledge in Bayesian hierarchical models. This is particularly important when there are random effects that are hard to identify based on observed data. The challenge lies in…
All priors are not created equal. There are right and there are wrong priors. That is the main conclusion of this contribution. I use, a cooked-up example designed to create drama, and a typical textbook example to show the pervasiveness of…
We study a population of $N$ individuals evolving according to a biparental Moran model with two types, one being advantaged compared to the other. The advantage is conferred by a Mendelian mutation, which reduces the death probability of…