Multiscale bernstein polynomials for densities
Our focus is on constructing a multiscale nonparametric prior for densities. The Bayes density estimation literature is dominated by single scale methods, with the exception of Polya trees, which favor overly-spiky densities even when the truth is smooth. We propose a multiscale Bernstein polynomial family of priors, which produce smooth realizations that do not rely on hard partitioning of the support. At each level in an infinitely-deep binary tree, we place a beta dictionary density; within a scale the densities are equivalent to Bernstein polynomials. Using a stick-breaking characterization, stochastically decreasing weights are allocated to the finer scale dictionary elements. A slice sampler is used for posterior computation, and properties are described. The method characterizes densities with locally-varying smoothness, and can produce a sequence of coarse to fine density estimates. An extension for Bayesian testing of group differences is introduced and applied to DNA methylation array data.
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Related Subject Headings
- Statistics & Probability
- 4905 Statistics
- 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
- 0199 Other Mathematical Sciences
- 0104 Statistics
Citation
Published In
DOI
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Statistics & Probability
- 4905 Statistics
- 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
- 0199 Other Mathematical Sciences
- 0104 Statistics