In a 1935 paper, and in his book Theory of Probability, Jeffreys developed a methodology for quantifying the evidence in favor of a scientific theory. The centerpiece was a number, now called the Bayes factor, which is the posterior odds of the null hypothesis when the prior probability on the null is one-half. Although there has been much discussion of Bayesian hypothesis testing in the context of criticism of P -values, less attention has been given to the Bayes factor as a practical tool of applied statistics. In this paper we review and discuss the uses of Bayes factors in the context of five scientific applications in genetics, sports, ecology, sociology and psychology.

A companion set of lecture slides is available at

Modelling sequential data is important in many areas of science and engineering. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) and Kalman filter models (KFMs) are popular for this because they are simple and flexible. For example, HMMs have been used for speech recognition and bio-sequence analysis, and KFMs have been used for problems ranging from tracking planes and missiles to predicting the economy. However, HMMs and KFMs are limited in their “expressive power”. Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) generalize HMMs by allowing the state space to be represented in factored form, instead of as a single discrete random variable. DBNs generalize KFMs by allowing arbitrary probability distributions, not just (unimodal) linear-Gaussian. In this thesis, I will discuss how to represent many different kinds of models as DBNs, how to perform exact and approximate inference in DBNs, and how to learn DBN models from sequential data. In particular, the main novel technical contributions of this thesis are as follows: a way of representing Hierarchical HMMs as DBNs, which enables inference to be done in O(T) time instead of O(T 3), where T is the length of the sequence; an exact smoothing algorithm that takes O(log T) space instead of O(T); a simple way of using the junction tree algorithm for online inference in DBNs; new complexity bounds on exact online inference in DBNs; a new deterministic approximate inference algorithm called factored frontier; an analysis of the relationship between the BK algorithm and loopy belief propagation; a way of applying Rao-Blackwellised particle filtering to DBNs in general, and the SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) problem in particular; a way of extending the structural EM algorithm to DBNs; and a variety of different applications of DBNs. However, perhaps the main value of the thesis is its catholic presentation of the field of sequential data modelling.

Abstract. In many multivariate domains, we are interested in analyzing the dependency structure of the underlying distribution, e.g., whether two variables are in direct interaction. We can represent dependency structures using Bayesian network models. To analyze a given data set, Bayesian model selection attempts to find the most likely (MAP) model, and uses its structure to answer these questions. However, when the amount of available data is modest, there might be many models that have non-negligible posterior. Thus, we want compute the Bayesian posterior of a feature, i.e., the total posterior probability of all models that contain it. In this paper, we propose a new approach for this task. We first show how to efficiently compute a sum over the exponential number of networks that are consistent with a fixed order over network variables. This allows us to compute, for a given order, both the marginal probability of the data and the posterior of a feature. We then use this result as the basis for an algorithm that approximates the Bayesian posterior of a feature. Our approach uses a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, but over orders rather than over network structures. The space of orders is smaller and more regular than the space of structures, and has much a smoother posterior “landscape”. We present empirical results on synthetic and real-life datasets that compare our approach to full model averaging (when possible), to MCMC over network structures, and to a non-Bayesian bootstrap approach.

This literature review discusses different methods under the general rubric of learning Bayesian networks from data, and includes some overlapping work on more general probabilistic networks. Connections are drawn between the statistical, neural network, and uncertainty communities, and between the different methodological communities, such as Bayesian, description length, and classical statistics. Basic concepts for learning and Bayesian networks are introduced and methods are then reviewed. Methods are discussed for learning parameters of a probabilistic network, for learning the structure, and for learning hidden variables. The presentation avoids formal definitions and theorems, as these are plentiful in the literature, and instead illustrates key concepts with simplified examples. Keywords--- Bayesian networks, graphical models, hidden variables, learning, learning structure, probabilistic networks, knowledge discovery. I. Introduction Probabilistic networks or probabilistic gra...

We discuss Bayesian methods for learning Bayesian networks when data sets are incomplete. In particular, we examine asymptotic approximations for the marginal likelihood of incomplete data given a Bayesian network. We consider the Laplace approximation and the less accurate but more efficient BIC/MDL approximation. We also consider approximations proposed by Draper (1993) and Cheeseman and Stutz (1995). These approximations are as efficient as BIC/MDL, but their accuracy has not been studied in any depth. We compare the accuracy of these approximations under the assumption that the Laplace approximation is the most accurate. In experiments using synthetic data generated from discrete naive-Bayes models having a hidden root node, we find that (1) the BIC/MDL measure is the least accurate, having a bias in favor of simple models, and (2) the Draper and CS measures are the most accurate. 1

We consider the problem of accounting for model uncertainty in linear regression models. Conditioning on a single selected model ignores model uncertainty, and thus leads to the underestimation of uncertainty when making inferences about quantities of interest. A Bayesian solution to this problem involves averaging over all possible models (i.e., combinations of predictors) when making inferences about quantities of

. Learning multiple descriptions for each class in the data has been shown to reduce generalization error but the amount of error reduction varies greatly from domain to domain. This paper presents a novel empirical analysis that helps to understand this variation. Our hypothesis is that the amount of error reduction is linked to the "degree to which the descriptions for a class make errors in a correlated manner." We present a precise and novel definition for this notion and use twenty-nine data sets to show that the amount of observed error reduction is negatively correlated with the degree to which the descriptions make errors in a correlated manner. We empirically show that it is possible to learn descriptions that make less correlated errors in domains in which many ties in the search evaluation measure (e.g. information gain) are experienced during learning. The paper also presents results that help to understand when and why multiple descriptions are a help (irrelevant attribute...

Ways of obtaining approximate Bayes factors for generalized linear models are described, based on the Laplace method for integrals. I propose a new approximation which uses only the output of standard computer programs such as GUM; this appears to be quite accurate. A reference set of proper priors is suggested, both to represent the situation where there is not much prior information, and to assess the sensitivity of the results to the prior distribution. The methods can be used when the dispersion parameter is unknown, when there is overdispersion, to compare link functions, and to compare error distributions and variance functions. The methods can be used to implement the Bayesian approach to accounting for model uncertainty. I describe an application to inference about relative risks in the presence of control factors where model uncertainty is large and important. Software to implement the

Abstract: This paper describes and compares various hierarchical mixture prior formulations of variable selection uncertainty in normal linear regression models. These include the nonconjugate SSVS formulation of George and McCulloch (1993), as well as conjugate formulations which allow for analytical simplification. Hyperparameter settings which base selection on practical significance, and the implications of using mixtures with point priors are discussed. Computational methods for posterior evaluation and exploration are considered. Rapid updating methods are seen to provide feasible methods for exhaustive evaluation using Gray Code sequencing in moderately sized problems, and fast Markov Chain Monte Carlo exploration in large problems. Estimation of normalization constants is seen to provide improved posterior estimates of individual model probabilities and the total visited probability. Various procedures are illustrated on simulated sample problems and on a real problem concerning the construction of financial index tracking portfolios.