Search results for "Inference"
showing 10 items of 478 documents
Bayesian assessment of times to diagnosis in breast cancer screening
2008
Breast cancer is one of the diseases with the most profound impact on health in developed countries and mammography is the most popular method for detecting breast cancer at a very early stage. This paper focuses on the waiting period from a positive mammogram until a confirmatory diagnosis is carried out in hospital. Generalized linear mixed models are used to perform the statistical analysis, always within the Bayesian reasoning. Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms are applied for estimation by simulating the posterior distribution of the parameters and hyperparameters of the model through the free software WinBUGS.
Intrinsic credible regions: An objective Bayesian approach to interval estimation
2005
This paper definesintrinsic credible regions, a method to produce objective Bayesian credible regions which only depends on the assumed model and the available data.Lowest posterior loss (LPL) regions are defined as Bayesian credible regions which contain values of minimum posterior expected loss: they depend both on the loss function and on the prior specification. An invariant, information-theory based loss function, theintrinsic discrepancy is argued to be appropriate for scientific communication. Intrinsic credible regions are the lowest posterior loss regions with respect to the intrinsic discrepancy loss and the appropriate reference prior. The proposed procedure is completely general…
Generalized Symmetry Models for Hypercubic Concordance Tables
2000
Summary Frequency data obtained classifying a sample of 'units' by the same categorical variable repeatedly over 'components', can be arranged in a hypercubic concordance table (h.c.t.). This kind of data naturally arises in a number of different areas such as longitudinal studies, studies using matched and clustered data, item-response analysis, agreement analysis. In spite of the substantial diversity of the mechanisms that can generate them, data arranged in a h.c.t. can all be analyzed via models of symmetry and quasi-symmetry, which exploit the special structure of the h.c.t. The paper extends the definition of such models to any dimension, introducing the class of generalized symmetry…
Bayesian analysis of a disability model for lung cancer survival
2016
Bayesian reasoning, survival analysis and multi-state models are used to assess survival times for Stage IV non-small-cell lung cancer patients and the evolution of the disease over time. Bayesian estimation is done using minimum informative priors for the Weibull regression survival model, leading to an automatic inferential procedure. Markov chain Monte Carlo methods have been used for approximating posterior distributions and the Bayesian information criterion has been considered for covariate selection. In particular, the posterior distribution of the transition probabilities, resulting from the multi-state model, constitutes a very interesting tool which could be useful to help oncolog…
MCMC methods to approximate conditional predictive distributions
2006
Sampling from conditional distributions is a problem often encountered in statistics when inferences are based on conditional distributions which are not of closed-form. Several Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms to simulate from them are proposed. Potential problems are pointed out and some suitable modifications are suggested. Approximations based on conditioning sets are also explored. The issues are illustrated within a specific statistical tool for Bayesian model checking, and compared in an example. An example in frequentist conditional testing is also given.
Criteria for Bayesian model choice with application to variable selection
2012
In objective Bayesian model selection, no single criterion has emerged as dominant in defining objective prior distributions. Indeed, many criteria have been separately proposed and utilized to propose differing prior choices. We first formalize the most general and compelling of the various criteria that have been suggested, together with a new criterion. We then illustrate the potential of these criteria in determining objective model selection priors by considering their application to the problem of variable selection in normal linear models. This results in a new model selection objective prior with a number of compelling properties.
Exponential and bayesian conjugate families: Review and extensions
1997
The notion of a conjugate family of distributions plays a very important role in the Bayesian approach to parametric inference. One of the main features of such a family is that it is closed under sampling, but a conjugate family often provides prior distributions which are tractable in various other respects. This paper is concerned with the properties of conjugate families for exponential family models. Special attention is given to the class of natural exponential families having a quadratic variance function, for which the theory is particularly fruitful. Several classes of conjugate families have been considered in the literature and here we describe some of their most interesting feat…
Optimal Reporting of Predictions
1989
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…
Bayesian analysis of a Gibbs hard-core point pattern model with varying repulsion range
2014
A Bayesian solution is suggested for the modelling of spatial point patterns with inhomogeneous hard-core radius using Gaussian processes in the regularization. The key observation is that a straightforward use of the finite Gibbs hard-core process likelihood together with a log-Gaussian random field prior does not work without penalisation towards high local packing density. Instead, a nearest neighbour Gibbs process likelihood is used. This approach to hard-core inhomogeneity is an alternative to the transformation inhomogeneous hard-core modelling. The computations are based on recent Markovian approximation results for Gaussian fields. As an application, data on the nest locations of Sa…
PValues for Composite Null Models
2000
Abstract The problem of investigating compatibility of an assumed model with the data is investigated in the situation when the assumed model has unknown parameters. The most frequently used measures of compatibility are p values, based on statistics T for which large values are deemed to indicate incompatibility of the data and the model. When the null model has unknown parameters, p values are not uniquely defined. The proposals for computing a p value in such a situation include the plug-in and similar p values on the frequentist side, and the predictive and posterior predictive p values on the Bayesian side. We propose two alternatives, the conditional predictive p value and the partial…