## Computational Bayesian Statistics [book review]

Posted in Books, Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 1, 2019 by xi'an

This Cambridge University Press book by M. Antónia Amaral Turkman, Carlos Daniel Paulino, and Peter Müller is an enlarged translation of a set of lecture notes in Portuguese. (Warning: I have known Peter Müller from his PhD years in Purdue University and cannot pretend to perfect objectivity. For one thing, Peter once brought me frozen-solid beer: revenge can also be served cold!) Which reminds me of my 1994 French edition of Méthodes de Monte Carlo par chaînes de Markov, considerably upgraded into Monte Carlo Statistical Methods (1998) thanks to the input of George Casella. (Re-warning: As an author of books on the same topic(s), I can even less pretend to objectivity.)

“The “great idea” behind the development of computational Bayesian statistics is the recognition that Bayesian inference can be implemented by way of simulation from the posterior distribution.”

The book is written from a strong, almost militant, subjective Bayesian perspective (as, e.g., when half-Bayesians are mentioned!). Subjective (and militant) as in Dennis Lindley‘s writings, eminently quoted therein. As well as in Tony O’Hagan‘s. Arguing that the sole notion of a Bayesian estimator is the entire posterior distribution. Unless one brings in a loss function. The book also discusses the Bayes factor in a critical manner, which is fine from my perspective.  (Although the ban on improper priors makes its appearance in a very indirect way at the end of the last exercise of the first chapter.)

Somewhat at odds with the subjectivist stance of the previous chapter, the chapter on prior construction only considers non-informative and conjugate priors. Which, while understandable in an introductory book, is a wee bit disappointing. (When mentioning Jeffreys’ prior in multidimensional settings, the authors allude to using univariate Jeffreys’ rules for the marginal prior distributions, which is not a well-defined concept or else Bernardo’s and Berger’s reference priors would not have been considered.) The chapter also mentions the likelihood principle at the end of the last exercise, without a mention of the debate about its derivation by Birnbaum. Or Deborah Mayo’s recent reassessment of the strong likelihood principle. The following chapter is a sequence of illustrations in classical exponential family models, classical in that it is found in many Bayesian textbooks. (Except for the Poison model found in Exercise 3.3!)

Nothing to complain (!) about the introduction of Monte Carlo methods in the next chapter, especially about the notion of inference by Monte Carlo methods. And the illustration by Bayesian design. The chapter also introduces Rao-Blackwellisation [prior to introducing Gibbs sampling!]. And the simplest form of bridge sampling. (Resuscitating the weighted bootstrap of Gelfand and Smith (1990) may not be particularly urgent for an introduction to the topic.) There is furthermore a section on sequential Monte Carlo, including the Kalman filter and particle filters, in the spirit of Pitt and Shephard (1999). This chapter is thus rather ambitious in the amount of material covered with a mere 25 pages. Consensus Monte Carlo is even mentioned in the exercise section.

“This and other aspects that could be criticized should not prevent one from using this [Bayes factor] method in some contexts, with due caution.”

Chapter 5 turns back to inference with model assessment. Using Bayesian p-values for model assessment. (With an harmonic mean spotted in Example 5.1!, with no warning about the risks, except later in 5.3.2.) And model comparison. Presenting the whole collection of xIC information criteria. from AIC to WAIC, including a criticism of DIC. The chapter feels somewhat inconclusive but methinks this is the right feeling on the current state of the methodology for running inference about the model itself.

“Hint: There is a very easy answer.”

Chapter 6 is also a mostly standard introduction to Metropolis-Hastings algorithms and the Gibbs sampler. (The argument given later of a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm with acceptance probability one does not work.) The Gibbs section also mentions demarginalization as a [latent or auxiliary variable] way to simulate from complex distributions [as we do], but without defining the notion. It also references the precursor paper of Tanner and Wong (1987). The chapter further covers slice sampling and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, the later with sufficient details to lead to reproducible implementations. Followed by another standard section on convergence assessment, returning to the 1990’s feud of single versus multiple chain(s). The exercise section gets much larger than in earlier chapters with several pages dedicated to most problems. Including one on ABC, maybe not very helpful in this context!

“…dimension padding (…) is essentially all that is to be said about the reversible jump. The rest are details.”

The next chapter is (somewhat logically) the follow-up for trans-dimensional problems and marginal likelihood approximations. Including Chib’s (1995) method [with no warning about potential biases], the spike & slab approach of George and McCulloch (1993) that I remember reading in a café at the University of Wyoming!, the somewhat antiquated MC³ of Madigan and York (1995). And then the much more recent array of Bayesian lasso techniques. The trans-dimensional issues are covered by the pseudo-priors of Carlin and Chib (1995) and the reversible jump MCMC approach of Green (1995), the later being much more widely employed in the literature, albeit difficult to tune [and even to comprehensively describe, as shown by the algorithmic representation in the book] and only recommended for a large number of models under comparison. Once again the exercise section is most detailed, with recent entries like the EM-like variable selection algorithm of Ročková and George (2014).

The book also includes a chapter on analytical approximations, which is also the case in ours [with George Casella] despite my reluctance to bring them next to exact (simulation) methods. The central object is the INLA methodology of Rue et al. (2009) [absent from our book for obvious calendar reasons, although Laplace and saddlepoint approximations are found there as well]. With a reasonable amount of details, although stopping short of implementable reproducibility. Variational Bayes also makes an appearance, mostly following the very recent Blei et al. (2017).

The gem and originality of the book are primarily to be found in the final and ninth chapter where four software are described, all with interfaces to R: OpenBUGS, JAGS, BayesX, and Stan, plus R-INLA which is processed in the second half of the chapter (because this is not a simulation method). As in the remainder of the book, the illustrations are related to medical applications. Worth mentioning is the reminder that BUGS came in parallel with Gelfand and Smith (1990) Gibbs sampler rather than as a consequence. Even though the formalisation of the Markov chain Monte Carlo principle by the later helped in boosting the power of this software. (I also appreciated the mention made of Sylvia Richardson’s role in this story.) Since every software is illustrated in depth with relevant code and output, and even with the shortest possible description of its principle and modus vivendi, the chapter is 60 pages long [and missing a comparative conclusion]. Given my total ignorance of the very existence of the BayesX software, I am wondering at the relevance of its inclusion in this description rather than, say, other general R packages developed by authors of books such as Peter Rossi. The chapter also includes a description of CODA, with an R version developed by Martin Plummer [now a Warwick colleague].

In conclusion, this is a high-quality and all-inclusive introduction to Bayesian statistics and its computational aspects. By comparison, I find it much more ambitious and informative than Albert’s. If somehow less pedagogical than the thicker book of Richard McElreath. (The repeated references to Paulino et al.  (2018) in the text do not strike me as particularly useful given that this other book is written in Portuguese. Unless an English translation is in preparation.)

Disclaimer: this book was sent to me by CUP for endorsement and here is what I wrote in reply for a back-cover entry:

An introduction to computational Bayesian statistics cooked to perfection, with the right mix of ingredients, from the spirited defense of the Bayesian approach, to the description of the tools of the Bayesian trade, to a definitely broad and very much up-to-date presentation of Monte Carlo and Laplace approximation methods, to an helpful description of the most common software. And spiced up with critical perspectives on some common practices and an healthy focus on model assessment and model selection. Highly recommended on the menu of Bayesian textbooks!

And this review is likely to appear in CHANCE, in my book reviews column.

## JSM 2018 [#3]

Posted in Mountains, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 1, 2018 by xi'an

As I skipped day #2 for climbing, here I am on day #3, attending JSM 2018, with a [fully Canadian!] session on (conditional) copula (where Bruno Rémillard talked of copulas for mixed data, with unknown atoms, which sounded like an impossible target!), and another on four highlights from Bayesian Analysis, (the journal), with Maria Terres defending the (often ill-considered!) spectral approach within Bayesian analysis, modelling spectral densities (Fourier transforms of correlations functions, not probability densities), an advantage compared with MCAR modelling being the automated derivation of dependence graphs. While the spectral ghost did not completely dissipate for me, the use of DIC that she mentioned at the very end seems to call for investigation as I do not know of well-studied cases of complex dependent data with clearly specified DICs. Then Chris Drobandi was speaking of ABC being used for prior choice, an idea I vaguely remember seeing quite a while ago as a referee (or another paper!), paper in BA that I missed (and obviously did not referee). Using the same reference table works (for simple ABC) with different datasets but also different priors. I did not get first the notion that the reference table also produces an evaluation of the marginal distribution but indeed the entire simulation from prior x generative model gives a Monte Carlo representation of the marginal, hence the evidence at the observed data. Borrowing from Evans’ fringe Bayesian approach to model choice by prior predictive check for prior-model conflict. I remain sceptic or at least agnostic on the notion of using data to compare priors. And here on using ABC in tractable settings.

The afternoon session was [a mostly Australian] Advanced Bayesian computational methods,  with Robert Kohn on variational Bayes, with an interesting comparison of (exact) MCMC and (approximative) variational Bayes results for some species intensity and the remark that forecasting may be much more tolerant to the approximation than estimation. Making me wonder at a possibility of assessing VB on the marginals manageable by MCMC. Unless I miss a complexity such that the decomposition is impossible. And Antonietta Mira on estimating time-evolving networks estimated by ABC (which Anto first showed me in Orly airport, waiting for her plane!). With a possibility of a zero distance. Next talk by Nadja Klein on impicit copulas, linked with shrinkage properties I was unaware of, including the case of spike & slab copulas. Michael Smith also spoke of copulas with discrete margins, mentioning a version with continuous latent variables (as I thought could be done during the first session of the day), then moving to variational Bayes which sounds quite popular at JSM 2018. And David Gunawan made a presentation of a paper mixing pseudo-marginal Metropolis with particle Gibbs sampling, written with Chris Carter and Robert Kohn, making me wonder at their feature of using the white noise as an auxiliary variable in the estimation of the likelihood, which is quite clever but seems to get against the validation of the pseudo-marginal principle. (Warning: I have been known to be wrong!)

## how many academics does it take to change… a p-value threshold?

Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , on August 22, 2017 by xi'an

“…a critical mass of researchers now endorse this change.”

The answer to the lightpulp question seems to be 72: Andrew sent me a short paper recently PsyarXived and to appear in Nature Human Behaviour following on the .005 not .05 tune we criticised in PNAS a while ago. (Actually a very short paper once the names and affiliations of all authors are taken away.) With indeed 72 authors, many of them my Bayesian friends! I figure the mass signature is aimed at convincing users of p-values of a consensus among statisticians. Or a “critical mass” as stated in the note. On the next week, Nature had an entry on this proposal. (With a survey on whether the p-value threshold should change!)

The argument therein [and hence my reservations] is about the same as in Val Johnson’s original PNAS paper, namely that .005 should become the reference cutoff when using p-values for discovering new effects. The tone of the note is mostly Bayesian in that it defends the Bayes factor as a better alternative I would call the b-value. And produces graphs that relate p-values to some minimax Bayes factors. In the simplest possible case of testing for the nullity of a normal mean. Which I do not think is particularly convincing when considering more realistic settings with (many) nuisance parameters and possible latent variables where numerical answers diverge between p-values and [an infinity of] b-values. And of course the unsolved issue of scaling the Bayes factor. (This without embarking anew upon a full-fledged criticism of the Bayes factor.) As usual, I am also skeptical of mentions of power, since I never truly understood the point of power, which depends on the alternative model, increasingly so with the complexity of this alternative. As argued in our letter to PNAS, the central issue that this proposal fails to address is the urgency in abandoning the notion [indoctrinated in generations of students that a single quantity and a single bound are the answers to testing issues. Changing the bound sounds like suggesting to paint afresh a building on the verge of collapsing.

## Goodness-of-fit statistics for ABC

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , on February 1, 2016 by xi'an

“Posterior predictive checks are well-suited to Approximate Bayesian Computation”

Louisiane Lemaire and her coauthors from Grenoble have just arXived a new paper on designing a goodness-of-fit statistic from ABC outputs. The statistic is constructed from a comparison between the observed (summary) statistics and replicated summary statistics generated from the posterior predictive distribution. This is a major difference with the standard ABC distance, when the replicated summary statistics are generated from the prior predictive distribution. The core of the paper is about calibrating a posterior predictive p-value derived from this distance, since it is not properly calibrated in the frequentist sense that it is not uniformly distributed “under the null”. A point I discussed in an ‘Og entry about Andrews’ book a few years ago.

The paper opposes the average distance between ABC acceptable summary statistics and the observed realisation to the average distance between ABC posterior predictive simulations of summary statistics and the observed realisation. In the simplest case (e.g., without a post-processing of the summary statistics), the main difference between both average distances is that the summary statistics are used twice in the first version: first to select the acceptable values of the parameters and a second time for the average distance. Which makes it biased downwards. The second version is more computationally demanding, especially when deriving the associated p-value. It however produces a higher power under the alternative. Obviously depending on how the alternative is defined, since goodness-of-fit is only related to the null, i.e., to a specific model.

From a general perspective, I do not completely agree with the conclusions of the paper in that (a) this is a frequentist assessment and partakes in the shortcomings of p-values and (b) the choice of summary statistics has a huge impact on the decision about the fit since hardly varying statistics are more likely to lead to a good fit than appropriately varying ones.

## Posterior predictive p-values and the convex order

Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , on December 22, 2014 by xi'an

Patrick Rubin-Delanchy and Daniel Lawson [of Warhammer fame!] recently arXived a paper we had discussed with Patrick when he visited Andrew and I last summer in Paris. The topic is the evaluation of the posterior predictive probability of a larger discrepancy between data and model

$\mathbb{P}\left( f(X|\theta)\ge f(x^\text{obs}|\theta) \,|\,x^\text{obs} \right)$

which acts like a Bayesian p-value of sorts. I discussed several times the reservations I have about this notion on this blog… Including running one experiment on the uniformity of the ppp while in Duke last year. One item of those reservations being that it evaluates the posterior probability of an event that does not exist a priori. Which is somewhat connected to the issue of using the data “twice”.

“A posterior predictive p-value has a transparent Bayesian interpretation.”

Another item that was suggested [to me] in the current paper is the difficulty in defining the posterior predictive (pp), for instance by including latent variables

$\mathbb{P}\left( f(X,Z|\theta)\ge f(x^\text{obs},Z^\text{obs}|\theta) \,|\,x^\text{obs} \right)\,,$

which reminds me of the multiple possible avatars of the BIC criterion. The question addressed by Rubin-Delanchy and Lawson is how far from the uniform distribution stands this pp when the model is correct. The main result of their paper is that any sub-uniform distribution can be expressed as a particular posterior predictive. The authors also exhibit the distribution that achieves the bound produced by Xiao-Li Meng, Namely that

$\mathbb{P}(P\le \alpha) \le 2\alpha$

where P is the above (top) probability. (Hence it is uniform up to a factor 2!) Obviously, the proximity with the upper bound only occurs in a limited number of cases that do not validate the overall use of the ppp. But this is certainly a nice piece of theoretical work.