A nonparametric Bayesian prediction interval for a finite population mean

作     者：Nandram, Balgobin Yin, Jiani 

作者机构：Worcester Polytech Inst Dept Math Sci Worcester MA 01609 USA 

出 版 物：《JOURNAL OF STATISTICAL COMPUTATION AND SIMULATION》 (统计计算与模拟杂志)

年 卷 期：2016年第86卷第16期

页      面：3141-3157页

核心收录：

学科分类：0202[经济学-应用经济学] 02[经济学] 020208[经济学-统计学] 07[理学] 0714[理学-统计学（可授理学、经济学学位）] 0812[工学-计算机科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 

主　　题：Correlation exchangeability nonparametric procedure normality Polya posterior sampling-based method 

摘      要：Given a sample from a finite population, we provide a nonparametric Bayesian prediction interval for a finite population mean when a standard normal assumption may be tenuous. We will do so using a Dirichlet process (DP), a nonparametric Bayesian procedure which is currently receiving much attention. An asymptotic Bayesian prediction interval is well known but it does not incorporate all the features of the DP. We show how to compute the exact prediction interval under the full Bayesian DP model. However, under the DP, when the population size is much larger than the sample size, the computational task becomes expensive. Therefore, for simplicity one might still want to consider useful and accurate approximations to the prediction interval. For this purpose, we provide a Bayesian procedure which approximates the distribution using the exchangeability property (correlation) of the DP together with normality. We compare the exact interval and our approximate interval with three standard intervals, namely the design-based interval under simple random sampling, an empirical Bayes interval and a moment-based interval which uses the mean and variance under the DP. However, these latter three intervals do not fully utilize the posterior distribution of the finite population mean under the DP. Using several numerical examples and a simulation study we show that our approximate Bayesian interval is a good competitor to the exact Bayesian interval for different combinations of sample sizes and population sizes.