Bayesian Statistics: An Introduction

Description

Bayesian Statistics is the school of thought that combines prior beliefs with the likelihood of a hypothesis to arrive at posterior beliefs. The first edition of Peter Lees book appeared in 1989, but the subject has moved ever onwards, with increasing emphasis on Monte Carlo based techniques. This new fourth edition looks at recent techniques such as variational methods, Bayesian importance sampling, approximate Bayesian computation and Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC), providing a concise account of the way in which the Bayesian approach to statistics develops as well as how it contrasts with the conventional approach. The theory is built up step by step, and important notions such as sufficiency are brought out of a discussion of the salient features of specific examples. This edition: Includes expanded coverage of Gibbs sampling, including more numerical examples and treatments of OpenBUGS, R2WinBUGS and R2OpenBUGS. Presents significant new material on recent techniques such