... In this paper we present two general types of Gibbs samplers that can be used to fit posteriors of Bayesian hierarchical models based on stick-breaking priors. The first type of Gibbs sampler, referred to as a Polya urn Gibbs sampler, is a generalized version of a widely used Gibbs sampling method currently employed for Dirichlet process computing. This method applies to stick-breaking priors with a known P'olya urn characterization; that is priors with an explicit and simple prediction rule. Our second method, the blocked Gibbs sampler, is based on a entirely different approach that works by directly sampling values from the posterior of the random measure. The blocked Gibbs sampler can be viewed as a more general approach as it works without requiring an explicit prediction rule. We find that the blocked Gibbs avoids some of the limitations seen with the Polya urn approach and should be simpler for non-experts to use.

Widely used parametric generalizedlinear models are, unfortunately,a somewhat limited class of speci � cations. Nonparametric aspects are often introduced to enrich this class, resultingin semiparametricmodels. Focusing on single or k-sample problems,many classical nonparametricapproachesare limited to hypothesistesting. Those that allow estimation are limited to certain functionals of the underlying distributions. Moreover, the associated inference often relies upon asymptotics when nonparametric speci � cations are often most appealing for smaller sample sizes. Bayesian nonparametricapproachesavoid asymptotics but have, to date, been limited in the range of inference. Working with Dirichlet process priors, we overcome the limitations of existing simulation-basedmodel � tting approaches which yield inference that is con � ned to posterior moments of linear functionals of the population distribution.This article provides a computationalapproach to obtain the entire posterior distribution for more general functionals. We illustrate with three applications: investigation of extreme value distributions associated with a single population, comparison of medians in a k-sample problem, and comparison of survival times from different populations under fairly heavy censoring.

Abstract not found

We develop computational procedures for a class of Bayesian nonparametric and semiparametric multiplicative intensity models incorporating kernel mixtures of spatial weighted gamma measures. A key feature of our approach is that explicit expressions for posterior distributions of these models share many common structural features with the posterior distributions of Bayesian hierarchical models using the Dirichlet process. Using this fact, along with an approximation for the weighted gamma process, we show that with some care, one can adapt efficient algorithms used for the Dirichlet process to this setting. We discuss blocked Gibbs sampling procedures and Pólya urn Gibbs samplers. We illustrate our methods with applications to proportional hazard models, Poisson spatial regression models, recurrent events, and panel count data.

In parametric hierarchical models, it is standard practice to place mean and variance con-straints on the latent variable distributions for sake of identifiability and interpretability. Because incorporation of such constraints is challenging in semiparametric models that allow latent variable distributions to be unknown, previous methods either constrain the median or avoid constraints. In this article, we propose a centered stick-breaking process (CSBP), which induces mean and variance constraints on an unknown distribution in a hierarchi-cal model. This is accomplished by viewing an unconstrained stick-breaking process as a parameter-expanded version of a CSBP. An efficient blocked Gibbs sampler is developed for posterior computation. The methods are illustrated through a simulated example and an epidemiologic application.