Abstract
It is standard Bayesian practice that when more data become available, the posterior distribution is updated with new information and the posterior becomes the prior for the next posterior analysis. It is also standard Bayesian philosophy that an analysis be performed on the experiment that was actually run, and not on experiments that might have been run. Yet in experiments with informative interim stopping decisions, standard practice is not to condition the sampling density on interim decisions that are made. The consequence is that the likelihood is invariant to the decision. Information about the decision is not utilized. We examine the consequences of conditioning the sampling density on the interim decision for subsequent posterior analyses in the context of a two-stage design with an early stopping option.
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01 August 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00362-023-01450-z
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Flournoy, N., Tarima, S. Posterior alternatives with informative early stopping. Stat Papers 64, 1329–1341 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00362-023-01429-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00362-023-01429-w