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arXiv 1809.08449stat.MEstat.AP
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回归系数的缺省先验

A default prior for regression coefficients

Erik van Zwet

摘要:

当样本量不太小时,回归系数的M-估计量是近似正态且无偏的。这导致了熟悉的基于正态性的置信区间和p值的频率论推断。从贝叶斯的角度来看,使用(不适当的)均匀先验会产生匹配结果,在这个意义上,后验分位数与单侧置信界限一致。由于这个原因和其他各种原因,统一先验通常被认为是客观的或非信息性的。尽管如此,我们认为,统一的先验是不适合作为一个默认的先验推断的回归系数的背景下,生物医学和社会科学。我们建议更合适的缺省选择是均值为零且标准差等于M-估计量的标准误的正态分布。我们的建议基于两个论点。首先,我们表明,这种先验是非信息的回归系数的符号的推断。其次,我们表明,这一先验与MEDLINE数据库中50篇文章的荟萃分析一致。

英文摘要:

When the sample size is not too small, M-estimators of regression coefficients are approximately normal and unbiased. This leads to the familiar frequentist inference in terms of normality-based confidence intervals and p-values. From a Bayesian perspective, use of the (improper) uniform prior yields matching results in the sense that posterior quantiles agree with one-sided confidence bounds. For this, and various other reasons, the uniform prior is often considered objective or non-informative. In spite of this, we argue that the uniform prior is not suitable as a default prior for inference about a regression coefficient in the context of the bio-medical and social sciences. We propose that a more suitable default choice is the normal distribution with mean zero and standard deviation equal to the standard error of the M-estimator. We base this recommendation on two arguments. First, we show that this prior is non-informative for inference about the sign of the regression coefficient. Secondly, we show that this prior agrees well with a meta-analysis of 50 articles from the MEDLINE database.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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