Wishart distributions for decomposable graphs
Letac, Gérard ; Massam, Hélène
arXiv, 0708.2380 / Harvested from arXiv
When considering a graphical Gaussian model ${\mathcal{N}}_G$ Markov with respect to a decomposable graph $G$, the parameter space of interest for the precision parameter is the cone $P_G$ of positive definite matrices with fixed zeros corresponding to the missing edges of $G$. The parameter space for the scale parameter of ${\mathcal{N}}_G$ is the cone $Q_G$, dual to $P_G$, of incomplete matrices with submatrices corresponding to the cliques of $G$ being positive definite. In this paper we construct on the cones $Q_G$ and $P_G$ two families of Wishart distributions, namely the Type I and Type II Wisharts. They can be viewed as generalizations of the hyper Wishart and the inverse of the hyper inverse Wishart as defined by Dawid and Lauritzen [Ann. Statist. 21 (1993) 1272--1317]. We show that the Type I and II Wisharts have properties similar to those of the hyper and hyper inverse Wishart. Indeed, the inverse of the Type II Wishart forms a conjugate family of priors for the covariance parameter of the graphical Gaussian model and is strong directed hyper Markov for every direction given to the graph by a perfect order of its cliques, while the Type I Wishart is weak hyper Markov. Moreover, the inverse Type II Wishart as a conjugate family presents the advantage of having a multidimensional shape parameter, thus offering flexibility for the choice of a prior.
Publié le : 2007-08-17
Classification:  Mathematics - Statistics Theory,  62H99 (Primary),  62E15 (Secondary)
@article{0708.2380,
     author = {Letac, G\'erard and Massam, H\'el\`ene},
     title = {Wishart distributions for decomposable graphs},
     journal = {arXiv},
     volume = {2007},
     number = {0},
     year = {2007},
     language = {en},
     url = {http://dml.mathdoc.fr/item/0708.2380}
}
Letac, Gérard; Massam, Hélène. Wishart distributions for decomposable graphs. arXiv, Tome 2007 (2007) no. 0, . http://gdmltest.u-ga.fr/item/0708.2380/