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An Alternative Conjugate Prior Distribution for Positive Parameters

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new conjugate prior probability distribution to many likelihoods distributions. In particular, we use the weighted Lindley distribution as a conjugate prior distribution. The weighted Lindley distribution can be viewed as a mixture of two gamma distributions with know weights. The weighted Lindley distribution of conjugate priors offers a more flexible class of priors than the class of gamma prior distributions. The results are illustrated for the problem of inference for Poisson and normal parameters.

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Acknowledgements

I thank the two anonymous referees and an associate editor for the constructive suggestions and comments.

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Correspondence to Marcelo Bourguignon.

Appendix. R script

Appendix. R script

The following algorithm calculate the Bayesian estimates of the Poisson parameter.

figure a

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Bourguignon, M. An Alternative Conjugate Prior Distribution for Positive Parameters. Ann. Data. Sci. 6, 237–243 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40745-018-0174-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40745-018-0174-z

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