Posts tagged parameter estimation

Bayesian copula estimation: Describing correlated joint distributions

When we deal with multiple variables (e.g. \(a\) and \(b\)) we often want to describe the joint distribution \(P(a, b)\) parametrically. If we are lucky, then this joint distribution might be ‘simple’ in some way. For example, it could be that \(a\) and \(b\) are statistically independent, in which case we can break down the joint distribution into \(P(a, b) = P(a) P(b)\) and so we just need to find appropriate parametric descriptions for \(P(a)\) and \(P(b)\). Even if this is not appropriate, it may be that \(P(a, b)\) could be described well by a simple multivariate distribution, such as a multivariate normal distribution for example.

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Estimating parameters of a distribution from awkwardly binned data

Let us say that we are interested in inferring the properties of a population. This could be anything from the distribution of age, or income, or body mass index, or a whole range of different possible measures. In completing this task, we might often come across the situation where we have multiple datasets, each of which can inform our beliefs about the overall population.

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