Skip to main content
Log in

Block unimodality for multivariate Bayesian robustness

  • Published:
Journal of the Italian Statistical Society Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Summary

The development of Bayesian robustness has been growing in the last decade. The theory has extensively dealt with the univariate parameter case. Among the vast amount of proposals in the literature, only a few of them have a straightforward extension to the multivariate case. In this paper we consider the multidimensional version of the class of ε-contaminated prior distributions, with unimodal contaminations. In the multivariate case there is not a unique definition of unimodality and one's choice must be based on statistical ground. Here we propose the use of the block unimodal distributions, which proved to be very suitable for modelling situations where the coordinates of the parameter ϑ are deemed, a priori, weakly correlated.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Berger, J. O. andBernardo, J. M. (1989). Estimating the product of means: Bayesian analysis with reference priors.Journal of the American Statistical Association 84, 200–207.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, J. O. andMoreno, E. (1993). Bayesian Robustness in bidimensional models: prior independence.Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference (to appear).

  • Bose, S. (1990). Bayesian Robustness with Shape-Constrained Priors and Mixture Priors.Ph. D. Thesis, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue University.

  • Cox, D. R. andHinkley, D. V. (1974).Theoretical Statistics, Chapman and Hall, London.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • DasGupta, A., Ghosh, J. K. andZen, M. M. (1990). Bayesian analysis of a multivariate normal mean with flat tailed priors.Technical Report 90-22. Dept. of Statistics, Purdue University.

  • Dharmadhikari, S. andJoag-Dev, K. (1988).Unimodality, Convexity and Applications, Academic Press, San Diego.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Huber, P. J. (1973).The use of Choquet capacities in statistics.Bull. Int. Statist. Inst. 45, 181–191.

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Kass, R. andGreenhouse, J. (1989). Investigating therapies of potentially great benefit: A Bayesian perspective. Comments on «Investigating therapies of potentially great benefit: ECMO», by J. H. Ware.Statistical Science 4, 310–317.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lavine, M. (1991). An approach to Robust Bayesian Analysis for Multidimensional Parameter Spaces.Journal of the American Statistical Association 86, 400–403.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Lavine, M., Wasserman, L. andWolpert, R. (1991). Bayesian Inference with specified prior marginals.Journal of the American Statistical Association 86, 964–971.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Shepp, L. A. (1962). Symmetric Random Walk.Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 104, 144–153.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Sivaganesan, S. andBerger, J. O. (1989). Ranges of posterior measures for priors with unimodal contaminations.Annals of Statistics 17, 868–889.

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Ware, J. H. (1989). Investigating therapies of potentially great benefit: ECMO.Statistical Science 4, 310–317.

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Wassermann, L. (1992). Recent Methodological Advances in Robust Bayesian Inference.Bayesian Statistics 4, pp. 483–502 (J. M. Bernardo, J. O. Berger, A. P. Dawid, A. F. M. Smith Eds.). Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Liseo, B., Petrella, L. & Salinetti, G. Block unimodality for multivariate Bayesian robustness. J. It. Statist. Soc. 2, 55–71 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02589075

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02589075

Keywords

Navigation