Asymptotic behaviour of the posterior distribution in overfitted mixture models.

Abstract

In this paper we study the asymptotic behaviour of the posterior distribution in a mixture model when the number of components in the mixture is larger than the true number of components, a situation commonly referred to as overfitted mixture. We prove in particular that quite generally the posterior distribution has a stable and interesting behaviour, since it tends to empty the extra components. This stability is achieved under some restriction on the prior, which can be used as a guideline for choosing the prior. Some simulations are presented to illustrate this behaviour.posterior concentration; mixture models; overfitting; Asymptotic; Bayesian;