Lecture

Bayesian Inference: Gaussian Prior for Mean

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In course

EE-209: Elements of statistics for data science

Théorie de l'estimation: estimateurs du maximum de vraisemblance, information de Fisher, inégalité de Cramer-Rao, intervalles de confiance. Tests d'hypothèses: cadre de Neyman-Pearson: test du rapport de vraisemblance, tests paramétriques et non-parmétriq ...

Description

This lecture covers Bayesian inference for the mean of a Gaussian distribution, assuming the variance is known. It discusses the posterior mean, posterior variance, and the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator. The lecture also explains the concept of independence vs. conditional independence and the consecutive updates of the posterior distribution.

Instructor

Florent Gérard Krzakala

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Statistics

Statistical inference: Mathematical statistics, Statistical hypothesis testing

Related concepts (32)

Bayes estimator

In estimation theory and decision theory, a Bayes estimator or a Bayes action is an estimator or decision rule that minimizes the posterior expected value of a loss function (i.e., the posterior expected loss). Equivalently, it maximizes the posterior expectation of a utility function. An alternative way of formulating an estimator within Bayesian statistics is maximum a posteriori estimation. Suppose an unknown parameter is known to have a prior distribution .

Beta distribution

In probability theory and statistics, the beta distribution is a family of continuous probability distributions defined on the interval [0, 1] or (0, 1) in terms of two positive parameters, denoted by alpha (α) and beta (β), that appear as exponents of the variable and its complement to 1, respectively, and control the shape of the distribution. The beta distribution has been applied to model the behavior of random variables limited to intervals of finite length in a wide variety of disciplines.

Maximum likelihood estimation

In statistics, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a method of estimating the parameters of an assumed probability distribution, given some observed data. This is achieved by maximizing a likelihood function so that, under the assumed statistical model, the observed data is most probable. The point in the parameter space that maximizes the likelihood function is called the maximum likelihood estimate. The logic of maximum likelihood is both intuitive and flexible, and as such the method has become a dominant means of statistical inference.

Estimator

In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule (the estimator), the quantity of interest (the estimand) and its result (the estimate) are distinguished. For example, the sample mean is a commonly used estimator of the population mean. There are point and interval estimators. The point estimators yield single-valued results. This is in contrast to an interval estimator, where the result would be a range of plausible values.

Bernoulli distribution

In probability theory and statistics, the Bernoulli distribution, named after Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, is the discrete probability distribution of a random variable which takes the value 1 with probability and the value 0 with probability . Less formally, it can be thought of as a model for the set of possible outcomes of any single experiment that asks a yes–no question. Such questions lead to outcomes that are boolean-valued: a single bit whose value is success/yes/true/one with probability p and failure/no/false/zero with probability q.

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