ISBA 2021.3

Now on the third day which again started early with a 100% local j-ISBA session. (After a group run to and around Mont Puget, my first real run since 2020!!!) With a second round of talks by junior researchers from master to postdoc level. Again well-attended. A talk about Bayesian non-parametric sequential taxinomy by Alessandro Zito used the BayesANT acronym, which reminded me of the new vave group Adam and the Ants I was listening to forty years ago, in case they need a song as well as a logo! (Note that BayesANT is also used for a robot using Bayesian optimisation!) And more generally a wide variety in the themes. Thanks to the j-organisers of this 100% live session!

The next session was on PDMPs, which I helped organise, with Manon Michel speaking from Marseille, exploiting the symmetry around the gradient, which is distribution-free! Then, remotely, Kengo Kamatani, speaking from Tokyo, who expanded the high-dimensional scaling limit to the Zig-Zag sampler, exhibiting an argument against small refreshment rates, and Murray Pollock, from Newcastle, who exposed quite clearly the working principles of the Restore algorithm, including why coupling from the past was available in this setting. A well-attended session despite the early hour (in the USA).

Another session of interest for me [which I attended by myself as everyone else was at lunch in CIRM!] was the contributed C16 on variational and scalable inference that included a talk on hierarchical Monte Carlo fusion (with my friends Gareth and Murray as co-authors), Darren’s call to adopt functional programming in order to save Bayesian computing from extinction, normalising flows for modularisation, and Dennis’ adversarial solutions for Bayesian design, avoiding the computation of the evidence.

Wes Johnson’s lecture was about stories with setting prior distributions based on experts’ opinions. Which reminded me of the short paper Kaniav Kamary and myself wrote about ten years ago, in response to a paper on the topic in the American Statistician. And could not understand the discrepancy between two Bayes factors based on Normal versus Cauchy priors, until I was told they were mistakenly used repeatedly.

Rushing out of dinner, I attended both the non-parametric session (live with Marta and Antonio!) and the high-dimension computational session on Bayesian model choice (mute!). A bit of a schizophrenic moment, but allowing to get a rough picture in both areas. At once. Including an adaptive MCMC scheme for selecting models by Jim Griffin. Which could be run directly over the model space. With my ever-going wondering at the meaning of neighbour models.

ISBA 20.2.21

A second day which started earlier and more smoothly with a 100% local j-ISBA session. (Not counting the invigorating swim in Morgiou!) With talks by junior researchers from master to postdoc level, as this ISBA mirror meeting was primarily designed for them, so that they could all present their work, towards gaining more visibility for their research and facilitating more interactions with the participants. CIRM also insisted on this aspect of the workshop, which was well-attended.

I alas had to skip the poster session [and the joys of gather.town] despite skipping lunch [BND], due to organisational constraints. Then attended the Approximate Bayesian computation section, including one talk by Geoff Nicholls on confidence estimation for ABC, following upon the talk given by Kate last evening. And one by Florian Maire on learning the bound in accept-reject algorithms on the go, as in Caffo et al. (2002), which I found quite exciting and opening new possibilities, esp. if the Markov chain thus produced can be recycled towards unbiasedness without getting the constant right! For instance, by Rao-Blackwellisation, multiple mixtures, black box importance sampling, whatever. (This also reminded me of the earlier Goffinet et al. 1996.)

Followed by another Bayesian (modeling and) computation session. With my old friend Peter Müller talking about mixture inference with dependent priors (and a saturated colour scheme!), Matteo Ruggieri [who could not make it to CIRM!] on computable Bayesian inference for HMMs. Providing an impressive improvement upon particle filters for approximating the evidence. Also bringing the most realistic Chinese restaurant with conveyor belt! And Ming Yuan Zhou using optimal transport to define distance between distributions. With two different conditional distributions depending on which marginal is first fixed. And a connection with GANs (of course!).

And it was great to watch and listen to my friend Alicia Carriquiry talking on forensic statistics and the case for (or not?!) Bayes factors. And remembering Dennis Lindley. And my friend Jim Berger on frequentism versus Bayes! Consistency seems innocuous as most Bayes procedures are. Empirical coverage is another kind of consistency, isn’t it?

A remark I made when re-typing the program for CIRM is that there are surprisingly few talks about COVID-19 overall, maybe due to the program being mostly set for ISBA 2020 in Kunming. Maybe because we are more cautious than the competition…?!

And, at last, despite a higher density of boars around the CIRM facilities, no one got hurt yesterday! Unless one counts the impact of the French defeat at the Euro 2021 on the football fans here…

statistics with improper posteriors [or not]

Last December, Gunnar Taraldsen, Jarle Tufto, and Bo H. Lindqvist arXived a paper on using priors that lead to improper posteriors and [trying to] getting away with it! The central concept in their approach is Rényi’s generalisation of Kolmogorov’s version to define conditional probability distributions from infinite mass measures by conditioning on finite mass measurable sets. A position adopted by Dennis Lindley in his 1964 book .And already discussed in a few ‘Og’s posts. While the theory thus developed indeed allows for the manipulation of improper posteriors, I have difficulties with the inferential aspects of the construct, since one cannot condition on an arbitrary finite measurable set without prior information. Things get a wee bit more outwardly when considering “data” with infinite mass, in Section 4.2, since they cannot be properly normalised (although I find the example of the degenerate multivariate Gaussian distribution puzzling as it is not a matter of improperness, since the degenerate Gaussian has a well-defined density against the right dominating measure).  The paper also discusses marginalisation paradoxes, by acknowledging that marginalisation is no longer feasible with improper quantities. And the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox, with a resolution that uses the sum of the Dirac mass at the null, δ⁰, and of the Lebesgue measure on the real line, λ, as the dominating measure. This indeed solves the issue of the arbitrary constant in the Bayes factor, since it is “the same” on the null hypothesis and elsewhere, but I do not buy the argument, as I see no reason to favour δ⁰+λ over 3.141516 δ⁰+λ or δ⁰+1.61718 λ… (This section 4.5 also illustrates that the choice of the sequence of conditioning sets has an impact on the limiting measure, in the Rényi sense.) In conclusion, after reading the paper, I remain uncertain as to how to exploit this generalisation from an inferential (Bayesian?) viewpoint, since improper posteriors do not clearly lead to well-defined inferential procedures…

revisiting marginalisation paradoxes [Bayesian reads #1]

As a reading suggestion for my (last) OxWaSP Bayesian course at Oxford, I included the classic 1973 Marginalisation paradoxes by Phil Dawid, Mervyn Stone [whom I met when visiting UCL in 1992 since he was sharing an office with my friend Costas Goutis], and Jim Zidek. Paper that also appears in my (recent) slides as an exercise. And has been discussed many times on this  ‘Og.

Reading the paper in the train to Oxford was quite pleasant, with a few discoveries like an interesting pike at Fraser’s structural (crypto-fiducial?!) distributions that “do not need Bayesian improper priors to fall into the same paradoxes”. And a most fascinating if surprising inclusion of the Box-Müller random generator in an argument, something of a precursor to perfect sampling (?). And a clear declaration that (right-Haar) invariant priors are at the source of the resolution of the paradox. With a much less clear notion of “un-Bayesian priors” as those leading to a paradox. Especially when the authors exhibit a red herring where the paradox cannot disappear, no matter what the prior is. Rich discussion (with none of the current 400 word length constraint), including the suggestion of neutral points, namely those that do identify a posterior, whatever that means. Funny conclusion, as well:

“In Stone and Dawid’s Biometrika paper, B1 promised never to use improper priors again. That resolution was short-lived and let us hope that these two blinkered Bayesians will find a way out of their present confusion and make another comeback.” D.J. Bartholomew (LSE)

and another

“An eminent Oxford statistician with decidedly mathematical inclinations once remarked to me that he was in favour of Bayesian theory because it made statisticians learn about Haar measure.” A.D. McLaren (Glasgow)

and yet another

“The fundamentals of statistical inference lie beneath a sea of mathematics and scientific opinion that is polluted with red herrings, not all spawned by Bayesians of course.” G.N. Wilkinson (Rothamsted Station)

Lindley’s discussion is more serious if not unkind. Dennis Lindley essentially follows the lead of the authors to conclude that “improper priors must go”. To the point of retracting what was written in his book! Although concluding about the consequences for standard statistics, since they allow for admissible procedures that are associated with improper priors. If the later must go, the former must go as well!!! (A bit of sophistry involved in this argument…) Efron’s point is more constructive in this regard since he recalls the dangers of using proper priors with huge variance. And the little hope one can hold about having a prior that is uninformative in every dimension. (A point much more blatantly expressed by Dickey mocking “magic unique prior distributions”.) And Dempster points out even more clearly that the fundamental difficulty with these paradoxes is that the prior marginal does not exist. Don Fraser may be the most brutal discussant of all, stating that the paradoxes are not new and that “the conclusions are erroneous or unfounded”. Also complaining about Lindley’s review of his book [suggesting prior integration could save the day] in Biometrika, where he was not allowed a rejoinder. It reflects on the then intense opposition between Bayesians and fiducialist Fisherians. (Funny enough, given the place of these marginalisation paradoxes in his book, I was mistakenly convinced that Jaynes was one of the discussants of this historical paper. He is mentioned in the reply by the authors.)

p-values and decision-making [reposted]

In a letter to Significance about a review of Robert Matthews’s book, Chancing it, Nicholas Longford recalls a few basic facts about p-values and decision-making earlier made by Dennis Lindley in Making Decisions. Here are some excerpts, worth repeating in the light of the 0.005 proposal:

“A statement of significance based on a p-value is a verdict that is oblivious to consequences. In my view, this disqualifies hypothesis testing, and p-values with it, from making rational decisions. Of course, the p-value could be supplemented by considerations of these consequences, although this is rarely done in a transparent manner. However, the two-step procedure of calculating the p-value and then incorporating the consequences is unlikely to match in its integrity the single-stage procedure in which we compare the expected losses associated with the two contemplated options.”

“At present, [Lindley’s] decision-theoretical approach is difficult to implement in practice. This is not because of any computational complexity or some problematic assumptions, but because of our collective reluctance to inquire about the consequences – about our clients’ priorities, remits and value judgements. Instead, we promote a culture of “objective” analysis, epitomised by the 5% threshold in significance testing. It corresponds to a particular balance of consequences, which may or may not mirror our clients’ perspective.”

“The p-value and statistical significance are at best half-baked products in the process of making decisions, and a distraction at worst, because the ultimate conclusion of a statistical analysis should be a proposal for what to do next in our clients’ or our own research, business, production or some other agenda. Let’s reflect and admit how frequently we abuse hypothesis testing by adopting (sometimes by stealth) the null hypothesis when we fail to reject it, and therefore do so without any evidence to support it. How frequently we report, or are party to reporting, the results of hypothesis tests selectively. The problem is not with our failing to adhere to the convoluted strictures of a popular method, but with the method itself. In the 1950s, it was a great statistical invention, and its popularisation later on a great scientific success. Alas, decades later, it is rather out of date, like the steam engine. It is poorly suited to the demands of modern science, business, and society in general, in which the budget and pocketbook are important factors.”