Information and Covariance Matrices for Multivariate Burr III and Logistic distributions

Main result of this paper is to derive the exact analytical expressions of information and covariance matrices for multivariate Burr III and logistic distributions. These distributions arise as tractable parametric models in price and income distributions, reliability, economics, populations growth and survival data. We showed that all the calculations can be obtained from one main moment multi dimensional integral whose expression is obtained through some particular change of variables. Indeed, we consider that this calculus technique for improper integral has its own importance in applied probability calculus.Comment: submitted to Communications in Statistic

On the Independence Jeffreys prior for skew--symmetric models with applications

We study the Jeffreys prior of the skewness parameter of a general class of scalar skew--symmetric models. It is shown that this prior is symmetric about 0, proper, and with tails $O(\lambda^{-3/2})$ under mild regularity conditions. We also calculate the independence Jeffreys prior for the case with unknown location and scale parameters. Sufficient conditions for the existence of the corresponding posterior distribution are investigated for the case when the sampling model belongs to the family of skew--symmetric scale mixtures of normal distributions. The usefulness of these results is illustrated using the skew--logistic model and two applications with real data

A new specification of generalized linear models for categorical data

Regression models for categorical data are specified in heterogeneous ways. We propose to unify the specification of such models. This allows us to define the family of reference models for nominal data. We introduce the notion of reversible models for ordinal data that distinguishes adjacent and cumulative models from sequential ones. The combination of the proposed specification with the definition of reference and reversible models and various invariance properties leads to a new view of regression models for categorical data.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figure

Asymptotic inference for semiparametric association models

Association models for a pair of random elements $X$ and $Y$ (e.g., vectors) are considered which specify the odds ratio function up to an unknown parameter \bolds\theta. These models are shown to be semiparametric in the sense that they do not restrict the marginal distributions of $X$ and $Y$. Inference for the odds ratio parameter \bolds\theta may be obtained from sampling either $Y$ conditionally on $X$ or vice versa. Generalizing results from Prentice and Pyke, Weinberg and Wacholder and Scott and Wild, we show that asymptotic inference for \bolds\theta under sampling conditional on $Y$ is the same as if sampling had been conditional on $X$. Common regression models, for example, generalized linear models with canonical link or multivariate linear, respectively, logistic models, are association models where the regression parameter \bolds\beta is closely related to the odds ratio parameter \bolds\theta. Hence inference for \bolds\beta may be drawn from samples conditional on $Y$ using an association model.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOS572 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Reflecting about Selecting Noninformative Priors

Following the critical review of Seaman et al. (2012), we reflect on what is presumably the most essential aspect of Bayesian statistics, namely the selection of a prior density. In some cases, Bayesian inference remains fairly stable under a large range of noninformative prior distributions. However, as discussed by \citet{Hd}, there may also be unintended consequences of a choice of a noninformative prior and, these authors consider this problem ignored in Bayesian studies. As they based their argumentation on four examples, we reassess these examples and their Bayesian processing via different prior choices. Our conclusion is to lower the degree of worry about the impact of the prior, exhibiting an overall stability of the posterior distributions. We thus consider that the warnings of Seaman et al. (2012), while commendable, do not jeopardize the use of most noninformative priors.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, 5 table

On the correspondence from Bayesian log-linear modelling to logistic regression modelling with gg-priors

Consider a set of categorical variables where at least one of them is binary. The log-linear model that describes the counts in the resulting contingency table implies a specific logistic regression model, with the binary variable as the outcome. Within the Bayesian framework, the $g$-prior and mixtures of $g$-priors are commonly assigned to the parameters of a generalized linear model. We prove that assigning a $g$-prior (or a mixture of $g$-priors) to the parameters of a certain log-linear model designates a $g$-prior (or a mixture of $g$-priors) on the parameters of the corresponding logistic regression. By deriving an asymptotic result, and with numerical illustrations, we demonstrate that when a $g$-prior is adopted, this correspondence extends to the posterior distribution of the model parameters. Thus, it is valid to translate inferences from fitting a log-linear model to inferences within the logistic regression framework, with regard to the presence of main effects and interaction terms.Comment: 27 page