Cluster analysis is the automated search for groups of related observations in a data set. Most clustering done in practice is based largely on heuristic but intuitively reasonable procedures and most clustering methods available in commercial software are also of this type. However, there is little systematic guidance associated with these methods for solving important practical questions that arise in cluster analysis, such as \How many clusters are there?", "Which clustering method should be used?" and \How should outliers be handled?". We outline a general methodology for model-based clustering that provides a principled statistical approach to these issues. We also show that this can be useful for other problems in multivariate analysis, such as discriminant analysis and multivariate density estimation. We give examples from medical diagnosis, mineeld detection, cluster recovery from noisy data, and spatial density estimation. Finally, we mention limitations of the methodology, a...

In this paper, we propose a general algorithm to sample sequentially from a sequence of probability distributions known up to a normalizing constant and de ned on a common space. A sequence of increasingly large arti cial joint distributions is built; each of these distributions admits a marginal which is a distribution of interest. To sample from these distributions, we use sequential Monte Carlo methods. We show that these methods can be interpreted as interacting particle approximations of a nonlinear Feynman-Kac ow in distribution space. One interpretation of the Feynman-Kac ow corresponds to a nonlinear Markov kernel admitting a speci ed invariant distribution and is a natural nonlinear extension of the standard Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. Many theoretical results have already been established for such ows and their particle approximations. We demonstrate the use of these algorithms through simulation.

Various notions of geometric ergodicity for Markov chains on general state spaces exist. In this paper, we review certain relations and implications among them. We then apply these results to a collection of chains commonly used in Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation algorithms, the so-called hybrid chains. We prove that under certain conditions, a hybrid chain will "inherit" the geometric ergodicity of its constituent parts. 1 Introduction A question of increasing importance in the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature (Gelfand and Smith, 1990; Smith and Roberts, 1993) is the issue of geometric ergodicity of Markov chains (Tierney, 1994, Section 3.2; Meyn and Tweedie, 1993, Chapters 15 and 16; Roberts and Tweedie, 1996). However, there are a number of different notions of the phrase "geometrically ergodic", depending on perspective (total variation distance vs. in L 2 ; with reference to a particular V -function; etc.). One goal of this paper is to review and clarify the relationship...

In this paper we introduce an approach and algorithms for model mixing in large prediction problems with correlated predictors. We focus on the choice of predictors in linear models, and mix over possible subsets of candidate predictors. Our approach is based on expressing the space of models in terms of an orthogonalization of the design matrix. Advantages are both statistical and computational. Statistically, orthogonalization often leads to a reduction in the number of competing models by eliminating correlations. Computationally, large model spaces cannot be enumerated; recent approaches are based on sampling models with high posterior probability via Markov chains. Based on orthogonalization of the space of candidate predictors, we can approximate the posterior probabilities of models by products of predictor-specific terms. This leads to an importance sampling function for sampling directly from the joint distribution over the model space, without resorting to Markov chains. Comp...

In this paper, we address the problem of sequential Bayesian model selection. This problem does not usually admit any closed-form analytical solution. We propose here an original sequential simulation-based method to solve the associated Bayesian computational problems. This method combines sequential importance sampling, a resampling procedure and reversible jump MCMC moves. We describe a generic algorithm and then apply it to the problem of sequential Bayesian model order estimation of autoregressive (AR) time series observed in additive noise. 1 Introduction Model selection is a fundamental data analysis task. It has many applications in various fields of science and engineering. Over the past two decades many of these problems have been addressed using information criteria such as AIC or MDL. The widespread use of these criteria is mainly due to their intrinsic simplicity. AIC and MDL are applied by evaluating two terms: a data term which requires the maximization of the likeliho...

The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is a method of constructing a reversible Markov transition kernel with a specified invariant distribution. This note describes necessary and sufficient conditions on the candidate generation kernel and the acceptance probability function for the resulting transition kernel and invariant distribution to satisfy the detailed balance conditions. A simple general formulation is used that covers a range of special cases treated separately in the literature. In addition, results on a useful partial ordering of finite state space reversible transition kernels are extended to general state spaces and used to compare the performance of two approaches to using mixtures in Metropolis-Hastings kernels. Short Title Metropolis-Hastings Kernels Keywords Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Peskun's Theorem, Mixture Kernels AMS Classifications 60J05,65C05,62-04 1 Introduction The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm (Metropolis et al., 1953; Hastings, 1970) is a method of construct...

In this paper, the problem of joint Bayesian model selection and parameter estimation for sinusoids in white Gaussian noise is addressed. An original Bayesian model is proposed that allows us to define a posterior distribution on the parameter space. All Bayesian inference is then based on this distribution. Unfortunately, a direct evaluation of this distribution and of its features, including posterior model probabilities, requires evaluation of some complicated high-dimensional integrals. We develop an efficient stochastic algorithm based on reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to perform the Bayesian computation. A convergence result for this algorithm is established. In simulation, it appears that the performance of detection based on posterior model probabilities outperforms conventional detection schemes.

This thesis addresses a number of issues concerned with the restoration of one type of image sequence, namely archived black and white motion pictures. These are often a valuable historical record, but because of the physical nature of the film they can suffer from a variety of degradations which reduce their usefulness. The main visual defects are `dirt and sparkle' due to dust and dirt becoming attached to the film, or abrasion removing the emulsion, and `line scratches' due to the film running against foreign bodies in the camera or projector. For an image

MCMC sampling is a methodology that is becoming increasingly important in statistical signal processing. It has been of particular importance to the Bayesian-based approaches to signal processing since it extends significantly the range of problems that they can address. MCMC techniques generate samples from desired distributions by embedding them as limiting distributions of Markov chains. There are many ways of categorizing MCMC methods, but the simplest one is to classify them in one of two groups: the first is used in estimation problems where the unknowns are typically parameters of a model, which is assumed to have generated the observed data; the second is employed in more general scenarios where the unknowns are not only model parameters, but models as well. In this paper, we address the MCMC methods from the second group, which allow for generation of samples from probability distributions de"ned on unions of disjoint spaces of di!erent dimensions. More speci"cally, we show why ...

this paper are motivated and aimed at analyzing some common types of survival data from different medical studies. We will center our attention to the following topics.