Academic literature on the topic 'Gibbs-type priors'

Accelerated Life Testing (ALT) is an effective technique which has been used in different fields to obtain more failures in a shorter period of time. It is more economical than traditional reliability testing. In this article, we propose Bayesian inference approach for planning optimal constant stress ALT with Type I censoring. The lifetime of a test unit follows an exponentiated Lomax distribution. Bayes point estimates of the model parameters and credible intervals under uniform and log-normal priors are obtained. Besides, optimum test plan based on constant stress ALT under Type I censoring is developed by minimizing the pre-posterior variance of a specified low percentile of the lifetime distribution at use condition. Gibbs sampling method is used to find the optimal stress with changing time. The performance of the estimation methods is demonstrated for both simulated and real data sets. Results indicate that both the priors and the sample size affect the optimal Bayesian plans. Further, informative priors provide better results than non-informative priors.

This paper explores statistical inferences when the lifetime of product follows the inverse Nakagami distribution using progressive Type-II censored data. Likelihood-based and maximum product of spacing (MPS)-based methods are considered for estimating the parameters of the model. In addition, approximate confidence intervals are constructed via the asymptotic theory using both likelihood and product spacing functions. Based on traditional likelihood and the product of spacing functions, Bayesian estimates are also considered under a squared error loss function using non-informative priors, and Gibbs sampling based on the MCMC algorithm is proposed to approximate the Bayes estimates, where the highest posterior density credible intervals of the parameters are obtained. Numerical studies are presented to compare the proposed estimators using Monte Carlo simulations. To demonstrate the proposed methodology in a real-life scenario, a well-known data set on agricultural machine elevators with high defect rates is also analyzed for illustration.

A new three-parameter Type-II Lehmann Fréchet distribution (LFD-TII), as a reparameterized version of the Kumaraswamy–Fréchet distribution, is considered. In this study, using progressive Type-II censoring, different estimation methods of the LFD-TII parameters and its lifetime functions, namely, reliability and hazard functions, are considered. In a frequentist setup, both the likelihood and product of the spacing estimators of the considered parameters are obtained utilizing the Newton–Raphson method. From the normality property of the proposed classical estimators, based on Fisher’s information and the delta method, the asymptotic confidence interval for any unknown parametric function is obtained. In the Bayesian paradigm via likelihood and spacings functions, using independent gamma conjugate priors, the Bayes estimators of the unknown parameters are obtained against the squared-error and general-entropy loss functions. Since the proposed posterior distributions cannot be explicitly expressed, by combining two Markov-chain Monte-Carlo techniques, namely, the Gibbs and Metropolis–Hastings algorithms, the Bayes point/interval estimates are approximated. To examine the performance of the proposed estimation methodologies, extensive simulation experiments are conducted. In addition, based on several criteria, the optimum censoring plan is proposed. In real-life practice, to show the usefulness of the proposed estimators, two applications based on two different data sets taken from the engineering and physics fields are analyzed.

We introduce mixtures of species sampling sequences (mSSS) and discuss how these sequences are related to various types of Bayesian models. As a particular case, we recover species sampling sequences with general (not necessarily diffuse) base measures. These models include some “spike-and-slab” non-parametric priors recently introduced to provide sparsity. Furthermore, we show how mSSS arise while considering hierarchical species sampling random probabilities (e.g., the hierarchical Dirichlet process). Extending previous results, we prove that mSSS are obtained by assigning the values of an exchangeable sequence to the classes of a latent exchangeable random partition. Using this representation, we give an explicit expression of the Exchangeable Partition Probability Function of the partition generated by an mSSS. Some special cases are discussed in detail—in particular, species sampling sequences with general base measures and a mixture of species sampling sequences with Gibbs-type latent partition. Finally, we give explicit expressions of the predictive distributions of an mSSS.

The Topp Leone distribution (TLD) is a lifetime model having finite support and U-shaped hazard rate; these features distinguish it from the famous lifetime models such as gamma, Weibull, or Log-normal distribution. The Bayesian methods are very much linked to the Fuzzy sets. The Fuzzy priors can be used as prior information in the Bayesian models. This paper considers the posterior analysis of TLD, when the samples are doubly censored. The independent informative priors (IPs) which are very close to the Fuzzy priors have been proposed for the analysis. The symmetric and asymmetric loss functions have also been assumed for the analysis. As the marginal PDs are not available in a closed form, therefore, we have used a Quadrature method (QM), Lindley’s approximation (LA), Tierney and Kadane’s approximation (TKA), and Gibbs sampler (GS) for the approximate estimation of the parameters. A simulation study has been conducted to assess and compare the performance of various posterior estimators. In addition, a real dataset has been analyzed for the illustration of the applicability of the results obtained in the study. The study suggests that the TKA performs better than its counterparts.

In this paper, we provide an insight into the emergence of power-law and two-phase behavior in the financial market fluctuations by defining an analytical model for time evolution of stock share prices. The defined model can exhibit bimodal behavior in the supply-demand structure of the market. Moreover, it differs from existing Ising-type models. It turns out that the constructed model is a solution of a thermodynamic limit of a Gibbs probability measure when the number of investors and the number of stock shares approaches the infinity. The energy functional of the Gibbs probability measure is derived from the Nash equilibrium of the underlying game.

The coupling of the Stefan equation for the heat flow with the Gibbs–Thomson law relating the melting temperature to the mean curvature of the phase interface is considered. Solutions, global in time, are constructed which satisfy the natural a priori estimates. Mathematically the main difficulty is to prove a certain regularity in time for the temperature and the indicator function of the phase separately. A capacity type estimate is used to give an L1 bound for fractional time derivatives.

I modelli mistura in ambito Bayesiano nonparametrico sono modelli flessibili per stime di densità e clustering, ormai uno strumento di uso comune in ambito statistico applicato. Il primo modello introdotto in questo ambito è stato il processo di Dirichlet (DP) (Ferguson, 1973) combinato con un kernel Gaussiano(Lo, 1984). Recentemente è cresciuto l’interesse verso la definizione di modelli mistura basati su misure nonparametriche che generalizzano il DP. Tra le misure proposte, il processo di Pitman-Yor (PY) (Perman et al., 1992; Pitman, 1995) e, più in generale, la classe di Gibbs-type prior (see e.g. De Blasi et al., 2015) rappresentano generalizzazioni convenienti in grado di combinare trattabilità matematica, interpretabilità e flessibilità. In questa tesi investighiamo tre aspetti dei modelli mistura nonparametrici, in ordine, proprietà dei modelli, aspetti computazionali e proprietà distributive. La tesi è organizzata come segue. Il primo capitolo propone una revisione coincisa della statistica Bayesiana nonparametrica, con particolare attenzione a strumenti e modelli utili nei capitoli successivi. Introduciamo le nozioni di scambiabilità, partizioni scambiabili e random probability measure. Discutiamo quindi alcuni casi particolari, i processi DP e PY, ingredienti principali rispettivamente nel secondo e nel terzo capitolo. Infine discutiamo brevemente la logica dietro la definizione di classi più generali di priors nonparametriche discrete. Nel secondo capitolo proponiamo uno studio dell’effetto di trasformazioni affini invertibili dei dati sulla distribuzione a posteriori di modelli mistura DP, con particolare attenzione ai modelli con kernel Gaussiano (DPM-G). Introduciamo un risultato riguardante la specificazione dei parametri di un modello in relazione a trasformazioni dei dati. Successivamente formalizziamo la nozione di robustezza asintotica di un modello nel caso di trasformazioni affini dei dati e dimostriamo un risultato asintotico che, basandosi sulla consistenza asintotica di modelli DPM-G, mostra che, sotto alcune assunzioni sulla distribuzione che ha generato i dati, i modelli DPM-G sono asintoticamente robusti. Nel terzo capitolo presentiamo l’Importance Conditional Sampler (ICS), un nuovo schema di campionamento condizionale per modelli mistura PY, basato su una rappresentazione della distribuzione a posteriori di un processo PY (Pitman, 1996) e sull’idea di importance sampling, ispirandosi al passo augmentation del noto Algoritmo 8 di Neal (2000). Il metodo proposto combina convenientemente le migliori caratteristiche dei metodi esistenti, condizionali e marginali, per modelli mistura PY. A differenza di altri algoritmi condizionali, l’efficienza numerica dell’ICS è robusta rispetto alla specificazione dei parametri del PY. Gli step per implementare l’ICS sono descritti in dettaglio e le performance sono comparate con gli algoritmi più popolari. Infine l’ICS viene usato per definire un nuovo algoritmo efficiente per la classe di modelli mistura GM-dipendenti DP (Lijoi et al., 2014a; Lijoi et al., 2014b), per dati parzialmente scambiabili. Nel quarto capitolo studiamo alcune proprietà delle Gibbs-type priors. Il risultato principale riguarda un campione scambiabile estratto da una Gibbs-type prior e propone una rappresentazione conveniente della distribuzione della dimensione del cluster per l’osservazione (m+1)esima, dato un campione non osservato di ampiezza m. Dallo studio di questa distribuzione deriviamo una strategia, semplice ed utile, per elicitare i parametri di una Gibbs-type prior, nel contesto dei modelli mistura con una misura misturante Gibbs-type. I risultati negli ultimi tre capitoli sono supportati da esaustivi studi di simulazioni ed illustrazioni in ambito atronomico.
Bayesian nonparametric mixtures are flexible models for density estimation and clustering, nowadays a standard tool in the toolbox of applied statisticians. The first proposal of such models was the Dirichlet process (DP) (Ferguson, 1973) mixture of Gaussian kernels by Lo (1984), contribution which paved the way to the definition of a wide variety of nonparametric mixture models. In recent years, increasing interest has been dedicated to the definition of mixture models based on nonparametric mixing measures that go beyond the DP. Among these measures, the Pitman-Yor process (PY) (Perman et al., 1992; Pitman, 1995) and, more in general, the class of Gibbs-type priors (see e.g. De Blasi et al., 2015) stand out for conveniently combining mathematical tractability, interpretability and modelling flexibility. In this thesis we investigate three aspects of nonparametric mixture models, which, in turn, concern their modelling, computational and distributional properties. The thesis is organized as follows. The first chapter proposes a coincise review of the area of Bayesian nonparametric statistics, with focus on tools and models that will be considered in the following chapters. We first introduce the notions of exchangeability, exchangeable partitions and discrete random probability measures. We then focus on the DP and the PY case, main ingredients of second and third chapter, respectively. Finally, we briefly discuss the rationale behind the definition of more general classes of discrete nonparametric priors. In the second chapter we propose a thorough study on the effect of invertible affine transformations of the data on the posterior distribution of DP mixture models, with particular attention to DP mixtures of Gaussian kernels (DPM-G). First, we provide an explicit result relating model parameters and transformations of the data. Second, we formalize the notion of asymptotic robustness of a model under affine transformations of the data and prove an asymptotic result which, by relying on the asymptotic consistency of DPM-G models, show that, under mild assumptions on the data-generating distribution, DPM-G are asymptotically robust. The third chapter presents the ICS, a novel conditional sampling scheme for PY mixture models, based on a useful representation of the posterior distribution of a PY (Pitman, 1996) and on an importance sampling idea, similar in spirit to the augmentation step of the celebrated Algorithm 8 of Neal (2000). The proposed method conveniently combines the best features of state-of-the-art conditional and marginal methods for PY mixture models. Importantly, and unlike its most popular conditional competitors, the numerical efficiency of the ICS is robust to the specification of the parameters of the PY. The steps for implementing the ICS are described in detail and its performance is compared with that one of popular competing algorithms. Finally, the ICS is used as a building block for devising a new efficient algorithm for the class of GM-dependent DP mixture models (Lijoi et al., 2014a; Lijoi et al., 2014b), for partially exchangeable data. In the fourth chapter we study some distributional properties Gibbs-type priors. The main result focuses on an exchangeable sample from a Gibbs-type prior and provides a conveniently simple description of the distribution of the size of the cluster the ( m + 1 ) th observation is assigned to, given an unobserved sample of size m. The study of such distribution provides the tools for a simple, yet useful, strategy for prior elicitation of the parameters of a Gibbs-type prior, in the context of Gibbs-type mixture models. The results in the last three chapters are supported by exhaustive simulation studies and illustrated by analysing astronomical datasets.