2,781 research outputs found
Dynamic density estimation with diffusive Dirichlet mixtures
We introduce a new class of nonparametric prior distributions on the space of
continuously varying densities, induced by Dirichlet process mixtures which
diffuse in time. These select time-indexed random functions without jumps,
whose sections are continuous or discrete distributions depending on the choice
of kernel. The construction exploits the widely used stick-breaking
representation of the Dirichlet process and induces the time dependence by
replacing the stick-breaking components with one-dimensional Wright-Fisher
diffusions. These features combine appealing properties of the model, inherited
from the Wright-Fisher diffusions and the Dirichlet mixture structure, with
great flexibility and tractability for posterior computation. The construction
can be easily extended to multi-parameter GEM marginal states, which include,
for example, the Pitman--Yor process. A full inferential strategy is detailed
and illustrated on simulated and real data.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/14-BEJ681 in the Bernoulli
(http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical
Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm
Sparse covariance estimation in heterogeneous samples
Standard Gaussian graphical models (GGMs) implicitly assume that the
conditional independence among variables is common to all observations in the
sample. However, in practice, observations are usually collected form
heterogeneous populations where such assumption is not satisfied, leading in
turn to nonlinear relationships among variables. To tackle these problems we
explore mixtures of GGMs; in particular, we consider both infinite mixture
models of GGMs and infinite hidden Markov models with GGM emission
distributions. Such models allow us to divide a heterogeneous population into
homogenous groups, with each cluster having its own conditional independence
structure. The main advantage of considering infinite mixtures is that they
allow us easily to estimate the number of number of subpopulations in the
sample. As an illustration, we study the trends in exchange rate fluctuations
in the pre-Euro era. This example demonstrates that the models are very
flexible while providing extremely interesting interesting insights into
real-life applications
A Simple Class of Bayesian Nonparametric Autoregression Models
We introduce a model for a time series of continuous outcomes, that can be expressed as fully nonparametric regression or density regression on lagged terms. The model is based on a dependent Dirichlet process prior on a family of random probability measures indexed by the lagged covariates. The approach is also extended to sequences of binary responses. We discuss implementation and applications of the models to a sequence of waiting times between eruptions of the Old Faithful Geyser, and to a dataset consisting of sequences of recurrence indicators for tumors in the bladder of several patients.MIUR 2008MK3AFZFONDECYT 1100010NIH/NCI R01CA075981Mathematic
Particle Learning for General Mixtures
This paper develops particle learning (PL) methods for the estimation of general mixture models. The approach is distinguished from alternative particle filtering methods in two major ways. First, each iteration begins by resampling particles according to posterior predictive probability, leading to a more efficient set for propagation. Second, each particle tracks only the "essential state vector" thus leading to reduced dimensional inference. In addition, we describe how the approach will apply to more general mixture models of current interest in the literature; it is hoped that this will inspire a greater number of researchers to adopt sequential Monte Carlo methods for fitting their sophisticated mixture based models. Finally, we show that PL leads to straight forward tools for marginal likelihood calculation and posterior cluster allocation.Business Administratio
Scalable Bayesian nonparametric regression via a Plackett-Luce model for conditional ranks
We present a novel Bayesian nonparametric regression model for covariates X
and continuous, real response variable Y. The model is parametrized in terms of
marginal distributions for Y and X and a regression function which tunes the
stochastic ordering of the conditional distributions F(y|x). By adopting an
approximate composite likelihood approach, we show that the resulting posterior
inference can be decoupled for the separate components of the model. This
procedure can scale to very large datasets and allows for the use of standard,
existing, software from Bayesian nonparametric density estimation and
Plackett-Luce ranking estimation to be applied. As an illustration, we show an
application of our approach to a US Census dataset, with over 1,300,000 data
points and more than 100 covariates
Bayesian Nonparametric Calibration and Combination of Predictive Distributions
We introduce a Bayesian approach to predictive density calibration and
combination that accounts for parameter uncertainty and model set
incompleteness through the use of random calibration functionals and random
combination weights. Building on the work of Ranjan, R. and Gneiting, T. (2010)
and Gneiting, T. and Ranjan, R. (2013), we use infinite beta mixtures for the
calibration. The proposed Bayesian nonparametric approach takes advantage of
the flexibility of Dirichlet process mixtures to achieve any continuous
deformation of linearly combined predictive distributions. The inference
procedure is based on Gibbs sampling and allows accounting for uncertainty in
the number of mixture components, mixture weights, and calibration parameters.
The weak posterior consistency of the Bayesian nonparametric calibration is
provided under suitable conditions for unknown true density. We study the
methodology in simulation examples with fat tails and multimodal densities and
apply it to density forecasts of daily S&P returns and daily maximum wind speed
at the Frankfurt airport.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1305.2026 by other author
A Bayesian Nonparametric Markovian Model for Nonstationary Time Series
Stationary time series models built from parametric distributions are, in
general, limited in scope due to the assumptions imposed on the residual
distribution and autoregression relationship. We present a modeling approach
for univariate time series data, which makes no assumptions of stationarity,
and can accommodate complex dynamics and capture nonstandard distributions. The
model for the transition density arises from the conditional distribution
implied by a Bayesian nonparametric mixture of bivariate normals. This implies
a flexible autoregressive form for the conditional transition density, defining
a time-homogeneous, nonstationary, Markovian model for real-valued data indexed
in discrete-time. To obtain a more computationally tractable algorithm for
posterior inference, we utilize a square-root-free Cholesky decomposition of
the mixture kernel covariance matrix. Results from simulated data suggest the
model is able to recover challenging transition and predictive densities. We
also illustrate the model on time intervals between eruptions of the Old
Faithful geyser. Extensions to accommodate higher order structure and to
develop a state-space model are also discussed
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