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Lecture

Statistical Theory: Decision Theory Framework

In course

MATH-442: Statistical theory

This course gives a mostly rigourous treatment of some statistical methods outside the context of standard likelihood theory. ...

Description

This lecture covers the Decision Theory Framework in Statistical Theory, where statistics is viewed as a random game with Nature and a statistician playing. It discusses point estimation, interval estimation, and hypothesis testing within this framework, exploring concepts like admissibility, inadmissibility, minimax rules, Bayes rules, and randomized rules.

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Instructor

Yoav Zemel

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Related concepts (32)

Statistical hypothesis testing

A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis. Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters. While hypothesis testing was popularized early in the 20th century, early forms were used in the 1700s. The first use is credited to John Arbuthnot (1710), followed by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1770s), in analyzing the human sex ratio at birth; see .

Estimation theory

Estimation theory is a branch of statistics that deals with estimating the values of parameters based on measured empirical data that has a random component. The parameters describe an underlying physical setting in such a way that their value affects the distribution of the measured data. An estimator attempts to approximate the unknown parameters using the measurements.

Admissible decision rule

In statistical decision theory, an admissible decision rule is a rule for making a decision such that there is no other rule that is always "better" than it (or at least sometimes better and never worse), in the precise sense of "better" defined below. This concept is analogous to Pareto efficiency. Define sets , and , where are the states of nature, the possible observations, and the actions that may be taken. An observation of is distributed as and therefore provides evidence about the state of nature .

Statistical inference

Statistical inference is the process of using data analysis to infer properties of an underlying distribution of probability. Inferential statistical analysis infers properties of a population, for example by testing hypotheses and deriving estimates. It is assumed that the observed data set is sampled from a larger population. Inferential statistics can be contrasted with descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics is solely concerned with properties of the observed data, and it does not rest on the assumption that the data come from a larger population.

Decision theory

Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory and analytic philosophy concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical consequences to the outcome. There are three branches of decision theory: Normative decision theory: Concerned with the identification of optimal decisions, where optimality is often determined by considering an ideal decision-maker who is able to calculate with perfect accuracy and is in some sense fully rational.

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