e case of location and scale parameters, rate constants, and in Bernoulli trials with unknown probability of success. In realistic problems, both the transformation group analysis and the principle of maximum entropy are needed to determine the prior. The distributions thus found are uniquely determined by the prior information, independently of the choice of parameters. In a certain class of problems, therefore, the prior distributions may now be claimed to be fully as "objective" as the sampling distributions. I. Background of the problem Since the time of Laplace, applications of probability theory have been hampered by difficulties in the treatment of prior information. In realistic problems of decision or inference, we often have prior information which is highly relevant to the question being asked; to fail to take it into account is to commit the most obvious inconsistency of reasoning and may lead to absurd or dangerously misleading results. As an extreme examp

We present a Bayesian approach for blind separation of linear instantaneous mixtures of sources having a sparse representation in a given basis. The distributions of the coefficients of the sources in the basis are modeled by a Student t distribution, which can be expressed as a Scale Mixture of Gaussians, and a Gibbs sampler is derived to estimate the sources, the mixing matrix, the input noise variance and also the hyperparameters of the Student t distributions. The method allows for separation of underdetermined (more sources than sensors) noisy mixtures. Results are presented with audio signals using a Modified Discrete Cosine Transfrom basis and compared with a finite mixture of Gaussians prior approach. These results show the improved sound quality obtained with the Student t prior and the better robustness to mixing matrices close to singularity of the Markov Chains Monte Carlo approach.

page 14 Declaration - page 15 Notes of copyright and the ownership of intellectual property rights - page 15 The Author - page 16 Acknowledgements - page 16 1 - Introduction - page 17 1.1 - Background - page 17 1.2 - The Style of Approach - page 18 1.3 - Motivation - page 19 1.4 - Style of Presentation - page 20 1.5 - Outline of the Thesis - page 21 2 - Models and Modelling - page 23 2.1 - Some Types of Models - page 25 2.2 - Combinations of Models - page 28 2.3 - Parts of the Modelling Apparatus - page 33 2.4 - Models in Machine Learning - page 38 2.5 - The Philosophical Background to the Rest of this Thesis - page 41 Syntactic Measures of Complexity - page 3 - 3 - Problems and Properties - page 44 3.1 - Examples of Common Usage - page 44 3.1.1 - A case of nails - page 44 3.1.2 - Writing a thesis - page 44 3.1.3 - Mathematics - page 44 3.1.4 - A gas - page 44 3.1.5 - An ant hill - page 45 3.1.6 - A car engine - page 45 3.1.7 - A cell as part of an organism -...

We are interested in understanding the relationship between Bayesian inference and evidence theory, in particular imprecise and paradoxical reasoning. The concept of a set of probability distributions is central both in robust Bayesian analysis and in some versions of Dempster-Shafer theory. Most of the literature regards these two theories as incomparable. We interpret imprecise probabilities as imprecise posteriors obtainable from imprecise likelihoods and priors, both of which can be considered as evidence and represented with, e.g., DS-structures. The natural and simple robust combination operator makes all pairwise combinations of elements from the two sets. The DS-structures can represent one particular family of imprecise distributions, Choquet capacities. These are not closed under our combination rule, but can be made so by rounding. The proposed combination operator is unique, and has interesting normative and factual properties. We compare its behavior on Zadeh's example with other proposed fusion rules. We also show how the paradoxical reasoning method appears in the robust framework.

We are interested in understanding the relationship between Bayesian inference and evidence theory. The concept of a set of probability distributions is central both in robust Bayesian analysis and in some versions of Dempster-Shafer’s evidence theory. We interpret imprecise probabilities as imprecise posteriors obtainable from imprecise likelihoods and priors, both of which are convex sets that can be considered as evidence and represented with, e.g., DS-structures. Likelihoods and prior are in Bayesian analysis combined with Laplace’s parallel composition. The natural and simple robust combination operator makes all pairwise combinations of elements from the two sets representing prior and likelihood. Our proposed combination operator is unique, and it has interesting normative and factual properties. We compare its behavior with other proposed fusion rules, and earlier efforts to reconcile Bayesian analysis and evidence theory. The behavior of the robust rule is consistent with the behavior of Fixsen/Mahler’s modified Dempster’s (MDS) rule, but not with Dempster’s rule. The Bayesian framework is liberal in allowing all significant uncertainty concepts to be modeled and taken care of and is therefore a viable, but probably not the only, unifying structure that can be economically taught and in which alternative solutions can be modeled, compared and explained. Manuscript received April 20, 2006; released for publication April

While Bayes’ theorem has a 250-year history, and the method of inverse probability that flowed from it dominated statistical thinking into the twentieth century, the adjective “Bayesian” was not part of the statistical lexicon until relatively recently. This paper provides an overview of key Bayesian developments, beginning with Bayes’ posthumously published 1763 paper and continuing up through approximately 1970, including the period of time when “Bayesian” emerged as the label of choice for those who advocated Bayesian methods.

In this paper I investigate the relation between simplicity and prediction. I firstly discuss several classical ideas about the concept of simplicity and how it is related to the acceptability of scientific theories. I further investigate a formal simplicity definition that stems from research in machine learning. In that approach simplicity plays an important role in the probability of predictions, as explicated by Ray Solomonoff. According to Solomonoff we should trust the theory which implications can be generated by the shortest computer-programme that can generate a description of our known observational data. A shorter computer-programme uses more patterns from that data, and hence provides more probable predictions. It is proved that this simplicity measure is reasonably independent of the computer-language that is used. I demonstrate that the approach of Solomonoff subsumes most of the other approaches and ideas, and solves most of their problems. My general conclu...

Marine Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol Scientific inference and experiment in Ecosystem Based Fishery

Reproductive ecology and scientific inference of steepness: a fundamental metric of population dynamics and strategic fisheries management

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