1,345 research outputs found
Calibration of conditional composite likelihood for Bayesian inference on Gibbs random fields
Gibbs random fields play an important role in statistics, however, the
resulting likelihood is typically unavailable due to an intractable normalizing
constant. Composite likelihoods offer a principled means to construct useful
approximations. This paper provides a mean to calibrate the posterior
distribution resulting from using a composite likelihood and illustrate its
performance in several examples.Comment: JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings, 18th International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), San Diego,
California, USA, 9-12 May 2015 (Vol. 38, pp. 921-929). arXiv admin note:
substantial text overlap with arXiv:1207.575
Hidden Gibbs random fields model selection using Block Likelihood Information Criterion
Performing model selection between Gibbs random fields is a very challenging
task. Indeed, due to the Markovian dependence structure, the normalizing
constant of the fields cannot be computed using standard analytical or
numerical methods. Furthermore, such unobserved fields cannot be integrated out
and the likelihood evaluztion is a doubly intractable problem. This forms a
central issue to pick the model that best fits an observed data. We introduce a
new approximate version of the Bayesian Information Criterion. We partition the
lattice into continuous rectangular blocks and we approximate the probability
measure of the hidden Gibbs field by the product of some Gibbs distributions
over the blocks. On that basis, we estimate the likelihood and derive the Block
Likelihood Information Criterion (BLIC) that answers model choice questions
such as the selection of the dependency structure or the number of latent
states. We study the performances of BLIC for those questions. In addition, we
present a comparison with ABC algorithms to point out that the novel criterion
offers a better trade-off between time efficiency and reliable results
Bayesian model selection for exponential random graph models via adjusted pseudolikelihoods
Models with intractable likelihood functions arise in areas including network
analysis and spatial statistics, especially those involving Gibbs random
fields. Posterior parameter es timation in these settings is termed a
doubly-intractable problem because both the likelihood function and the
posterior distribution are intractable. The comparison of Bayesian models is
often based on the statistical evidence, the integral of the un-normalised
posterior distribution over the model parameters which is rarely available in
closed form. For doubly-intractable models, estimating the evidence adds
another layer of difficulty. Consequently, the selection of the model that best
describes an observed network among a collection of exponential random graph
models for network analysis is a daunting task. Pseudolikelihoods offer a
tractable approximation to the likelihood but should be treated with caution
because they can lead to an unreasonable inference. This paper specifies a
method to adjust pseudolikelihoods in order to obtain a reasonable, yet
tractable, approximation to the likelihood. This allows implementation of
widely used computational methods for evidence estimation and pursuit of
Bayesian model selection of exponential random graph models for the analysis of
social networks. Empirical comparisons to existing methods show that our
procedure yields similar evidence estimates, but at a lower computational cost.Comment: Supplementary material attached. To view attachments, please download
and extract the gzzipped source file listed under "Other formats
Bayesian Nonstationary Spatial Modeling for Very Large Datasets
With the proliferation of modern high-resolution measuring instruments
mounted on satellites, planes, ground-based vehicles and monitoring stations, a
need has arisen for statistical methods suitable for the analysis of large
spatial datasets observed on large spatial domains. Statistical analyses of
such datasets provide two main challenges: First, traditional
spatial-statistical techniques are often unable to handle large numbers of
observations in a computationally feasible way. Second, for large and
heterogeneous spatial domains, it is often not appropriate to assume that a
process of interest is stationary over the entire domain.
We address the first challenge by using a model combining a low-rank
component, which allows for flexible modeling of medium-to-long-range
dependence via a set of spatial basis functions, with a tapered remainder
component, which allows for modeling of local dependence using a compactly
supported covariance function. Addressing the second challenge, we propose two
extensions to this model that result in increased flexibility: First, the model
is parameterized based on a nonstationary Matern covariance, where the
parameters vary smoothly across space. Second, in our fully Bayesian model, all
components and parameters are considered random, including the number,
locations, and shapes of the basis functions used in the low-rank component.
Using simulated data and a real-world dataset of high-resolution soil
measurements, we show that both extensions can result in substantial
improvements over the current state-of-the-art.Comment: 16 pages, 2 color figure
Noisy Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for doubly-intractable distributions
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has been progressively incorporated within the
statistician's toolbox as an alternative sampling method in settings when
standard Metropolis-Hastings is inefficient. HMC generates a Markov chain on an
augmented state space with transitions based on a deterministic differential
flow derived from Hamiltonian mechanics. In practice, the evolution of
Hamiltonian systems cannot be solved analytically, requiring numerical
integration schemes. Under numerical integration, the resulting approximate
solution no longer preserves the measure of the target distribution, therefore
an accept-reject step is used to correct the bias. For doubly-intractable
distributions -- such as posterior distributions based on Gibbs random fields
-- HMC suffers from some computational difficulties: computation of gradients
in the differential flow and computation of the accept-reject proposals poses
difficulty. In this paper, we study the behaviour of HMC when these quantities
are replaced by Monte Carlo estimates
Constructing A Flexible Likelihood Function For Spectroscopic Inference
We present a modular, extensible likelihood framework for spectroscopic
inference based on synthetic model spectra. The subtraction of an imperfect
model from a continuously sampled spectrum introduces covariance between
adjacent datapoints (pixels) into the residual spectrum. For the high
signal-to-noise data with large spectral range that is commonly employed in
stellar astrophysics, that covariant structure can lead to dramatically
underestimated parameter uncertainties (and, in some cases, biases). We
construct a likelihood function that accounts for the structure of the
covariance matrix, utilizing the machinery of Gaussian process kernels. This
framework specifically address the common problem of mismatches in model
spectral line strengths (with respect to data) due to intrinsic model
imperfections (e.g., in the atomic/molecular databases or opacity
prescriptions) by developing a novel local covariance kernel formalism that
identifies and self-consistently downweights pathological spectral line
"outliers." By fitting many spectra in a hierarchical manner, these local
kernels provide a mechanism to learn about and build data-driven corrections to
synthetic spectral libraries. An open-source software implementation of this
approach is available at http://iancze.github.io/Starfish, including a
sophisticated probabilistic scheme for spectral interpolation when using model
libraries that are sparsely sampled in the stellar parameters. We demonstrate
some salient features of the framework by fitting the high resolution -band
spectrum of WASP-14, an F5 dwarf with a transiting exoplanet, and the moderate
resolution -band spectrum of Gliese 51, an M5 field dwarf.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. Incorporated referees' comments. New figures 1, 8,
10, 12, and 14. Supplemental website: http://iancze.github.io/Starfish
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