0000000000178109
AUTHOR
Morris H. Degroot
Optimal Reporting of Predictions
Abstract Consider a problem in which you and a group of other experts must report your individual predictive distributions for an observable random variable X to some decision maker. Suppose that the report of each expert is assigned a prior weight by the decision maker and that these weights are then updated based on the observed value of X. In this situation you will try to maximize your updated, or posterior, weight by appropriately choosing the distribution that you report, rather than necessarily simply reporting your honest predictive distribution. We study optimal reporting strategies under various conditions regarding your knowledge and beliefs about X and the reports of the other e…
Truncation, Information, and the Coefficient of Variation
The Fisher information in a random sample from the truncated version of a distribution that belongs to an exponential family is compared with the Fisher information in a random sample from the un- truncated distribution. Conditions under which there is more information in the selection sample are given. Examples involving the normal and gamma distributions with various selection sets, and the zero-truncated binomial, Poisson, and negative binomial distributions are discussed. A property pertaining to the coefficient of variation of certain discrete distributions on the non-negative integers is introduced and shown to be satisfied by all binomial, Poisson, and negative binomial distributions.
What Bayesians Expect of Each Other
Abstract Our goal is to study general properties of one Bayesian's subjective beliefs about the behavior of another Bayesian's subjective beliefs. We consider two Bayesians, A and B, who have different subjective distributions for a parameter θ, and study Bayesian A's expectation of Bayesian B's posterior distribution for θ given some data Y. We show that when θ can take only two values, Bayesian A always expects Bayesian B's posterior distribution to lie between the prior distributions of A and B. Conditions are given under which a similar result holds for an arbitrary real-valued parameter θ. For a vector parameter θ we present useful expressions for the mean vector and covariance matrix …