EXACT FORMULAS FOR THE NORMALIZING CONSTANTS OF WISHART DISTRIBUTIONS FOR GRAPHICAL MODELS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Uhler, Caroline; Lenkoski, Alex; Richards, Donald
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
• 刊物名称: ANNALS OF STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0090-5364
• DOI: 10.1214/17-AOS1543
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 90-118
• 关键词: product moment distribution; bayesian-inference

摘要

Gaussian graphical models have received considerable attention during the past four decades from the statistical and machine learning communities. In Bayesian treatments of this model, the G-Wishart distribution serves as the conjugate prior for inverse covariance matrices satisfying graphical constraints. While it is straightforward to posit the unnormalized densities, the normalizing constants of these distributions have been known only for graphs that are chordal, or decomposable. Up until now, it was unknown whether the normalizing constant for a general graph could be represented explicitly, and a considerable body of computational literature emerged that attempted to avoid this apparent intractability. We close this question by providing an explicit representation of the G-Wishart normalizing constant for general graphs.