Comparing Bayesian Model Class Selection Criteria by Discrete Finite Mixtures
Petri Kontkanen, Petri Myllymäki, Henry R. Tirri · 1996
: We investigate the problem of computing the posterior probability of a model class, given a data sample and a prior distribution for possible parameter settings. By a model class we mean a group of models which all share the same parametric form. In general this posterior may be very hard to compute for high-dimensional parameter spaces, which is usually the case with real-world applications. In the literature several methods for computing the posterior approximately have been proposed, but the quality of the approximations may depend heavily on the size of the available data sample. In this work we are interested in testing how well the approximative methods perform in real-world problem domains. In order to conduct such a study, we have chosen the model family of finite mixture distributions. With certain assumptions, we are able to derive the model class posterior analytically for this model family. We report a series of model class selection experiments on real-world data sets, w...