Prior Intensified Information Criterion

Abstract

The widely applicable information criterion (WAIC) has been used as a model selection criterion for Bayesian statistics in recent years. It is an asymptotically unbiased estimator of the Kullback-Leibler divergence between a Bayesian predictive distribution and the true distribution. Not only is the WAIC theoretically more sound than other information criteria, its usefulness in practice has also been reported. On the other hand, the WAIC is intended for settings in which the prior distribution does not have an asymptotic influence, and as we set the class of the prior distribution to be more complex, it never fails to select the most complex one. To alleviate these concerns, this paper proposed the prior intensified information criterion (PIIC). In addition, it customizes this criterion to incorporate sparse estimation and causal inference. Numerical experiments show that the PIIC clearly outperforms the WAIC in terms of prediction performance when the above concerns are manifested. A real data analysis confirms that the results of variable selection and Bayesian estimators of the WAIC and PIIC differ significantly.

arXiv comment30 pages, 4 tables

References in corpus (13)

• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Rejoinder to "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Least Angle Regression
• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Discussion of "Least angle regression" by Efron et al
• Nearly unbiased variable selection under minimax concave penalty
• Asymptotic Equivalence of Bayes Cross Validation and Widely Applicable Information Criterion in Singular Learning Theory
• Likelihood ratio tests and singularities