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The posterior probability distribution of one random variable given the value of another can be calculated with Bayes' theorem by multiplying the prior probability distribution by the likelihood function, and then dividing by the normalizing constant, as follows:
These posterior probabilities are proportional to the product of the prior and the marginal likelihood, where the marginal likelihood is the integral of the sampling density over the prior distribution of the parameters. In complex models, marginal likelihoods are generally computed numerically. [11]
An informative prior expresses specific, definite information about a variable. An example is a prior distribution for the temperature at noon tomorrow. A reasonable approach is to make the prior a normal distribution with expected value equal to today's noontime temperature, with variance equal to the day-to-day variance of atmospheric temperature, or a distribution of the temperature for ...
The choice of the prior distribution is used to impose restrictions on , e.g. , with the beta distribution as a common choice due to (i) being defined between 0 and 1, (ii) being able to produce a variety of shapes, and (iii) yielding a posterior distribution of the standard form if combined with the likelihood function ().
Bayesian probability (/ ˈ b eɪ z i ə n / BAY-zee-ən or / ˈ b eɪ ʒ ən / BAY-zhən) [1] is an interpretation of the concept of probability, in which, instead of frequency or propensity of some phenomenon, probability is interpreted as reasonable expectation [2] representing a state of knowledge [3] or as quantification of a personal belief.
The posterior probability of a model depends on the evidence, or marginal likelihood, which reflects the probability that the data is generated by the model, and on the prior belief of the model. When two competing models are a priori considered to be equiprobable, the ratio of their posterior probabilities corresponds to the Bayes factor .
Bayesian-specific workflow stratifies this approach to include three sub-steps: (b)–(i) formalizing prior distributions based on background knowledge and prior elicitation; (b)–(ii) determining the likelihood function based on a nonlinear function ; and (b)–(iii) making a posterior inference. The resulting posterior inference can be used ...
where (|) denotes the posterior, (|) the likelihood, () the prior, and () the evidence (also referred to as the marginal likelihood or the prior predictive probability of the data). Note that the denominator p ( D ) {\displaystyle p(D)} is normalizing the total probability of the posterior density p ( θ | D ) {\displaystyle p(\theta |D)} to ...