论文标题
贝叶斯线性多级模型的直观联合先验:R2D2M2先验
Intuitive Joint Priors for Bayesian Linear Multilevel Models: The R2D2M2 prior
论文作者
论文摘要
对稀疏数据的高维回归模型的培训是一个重要但复杂的主题,尤其是当模型参数多于数据中的观察值多。从贝叶斯的角度来看,在这种情况下,至少对于广义线性模型,可以在这种情况下进行推断。但是,现实世界中的数据通常具有多级结构,例如重复测量或个人的自然分组,而现有的收缩先验并非构建来处理。我们概括并扩展其中一种先验,Zhang等人的R2D2先验。 (2020),到线性多级模型,导致我们称之为R2D2M2之前。所提出的先验使模型参数的本地和全局收缩。它带有可解释的超参数,我们证明这与先前的重要特性本质上有关,例如围绕原点的浓度率,尾巴行为和缩小量的收缩量。我们提供了如何通过得出收缩因子并测量有效数量非零模型系数来选择“先验的超参数”的指南。因此,用户可以轻松地评估和解释特定的超参数选择所隐含的收缩量。最后,我们对模拟和真实数据进行了广泛的实验,表明我们对先验的推理程序经过了良好的校准,具有理想的全球和局部正则化属性,并实现了比以前可能更复杂的贝叶斯多级模型的可靠且可解释的估计。
The training of high-dimensional regression models on comparably sparse data is an important yet complicated topic, especially when there are many more model parameters than observations in the data. From a Bayesian perspective, inference in such cases can be achieved with the help of shrinkage prior distributions, at least for generalized linear models. However, real-world data usually possess multilevel structures, such as repeated measurements or natural groupings of individuals, which existing shrinkage priors are not built to deal with. We generalize and extend one of these priors, the R2D2 prior by Zhang et al. (2020), to linear multilevel models leading to what we call the R2D2M2 prior. The proposed prior enables both local and global shrinkage of the model parameters. It comes with interpretable hyperparameters, which we show to be intrinsically related to vital properties of the prior, such as rates of concentration around the origin, tail behavior, and amount of shrinkage the prior exerts. We offer guidelines on how to select the prior's hyperparameters by deriving shrinkage factors and measuring the effective number of non-zero model coefficients. Hence, the user can readily evaluate and interpret the amount of shrinkage implied by a specific choice of hyperparameters. Finally, we perform extensive experiments on simulated and real data, showing that our inference procedure for the prior is well calibrated, has desirable global and local regularization properties and enables the reliable and interpretable estimation of much more complex Bayesian multilevel models than was previously possible.