Markov Chain Monte Carlo With Mixtures of Mutually Singular Distributions

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_FF8AE322E5DF
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Title
Markov Chain Monte Carlo With Mixtures of Mutually Singular Distributions
Journal
Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics
Author(s)
Gottardo Raphael, Raftery Adrian E
ISSN
1061-8600
1537-2715
Publication state
Published
Issued date
12/2008
Volume
17
Number
4
Pages
949-975
Language
english
Abstract
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for Bayesian computation are mostly used when the dominating measure is the Lebesgue measure, the counting measure, or a product of these. Many Bayesian problems give rise to distributions that are not dominated by the Lebesgue measure or the counting measure alone. In this article we introduce a simple framework for using MCMC algorithms in Bayesian computation with mixtures of mutually singular distributions. The idea is to find a common dominating measure that allows the use of traditional Metropolis-Hastings algorithms. In particular, using our formulation, the Gibbs sampler can be used whenever the full conditionals are available. We compare Our formulation with the reversible jump approach and show that the two are closely related. We give results for three examples, involving testing a normal mean, variable selection in regression, and hypothesis testing for differential gene expression under multiple conditions. This allows us to compare the three methods considered: Metropolis-Hastings with mutually singular distributions, Gibbs sampler with mutually Singular distributions, and reversible jump. In our examples, we found the Gibbs sampler to be more precise and to need considerably less computer time than the other methods. In addition, the full conditionals used in the Gibbs sampler call be used to further improve the estimates of the model posterior probabilities via Rao-Blackwellization, at no extra cost.
Keywords
Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty, Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics, Statistics and Probability
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Create date
28/02/2022 11:45
Last modification date
23/03/2024 7:24
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