JSM 2005 Online Program

Abstract #304390

This is the preliminary program for the 2005 Joint Statistical Meetings in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Currently included in this program is the "technical" program, schedule of invited, topic contributed, regular contributed and poster sessions; Continuing Education courses (August 7-10, 2005); and Committee and Business Meetings. This on-line program will be updated frequently to reflect the most current revisions.

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Activity Number:	396
Type:	Contributed
Date/Time:	Wednesday, August 10, 2005 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Sponsor:	Section on Bayesian Statistical Science
Abstract - #304390
Title:	Bayesian CART: Prior Specification and Posterior Simulation
Author(s):	Yuhong Wu*+ and Haakon Tjelmeland and Mike West
Companies:	Duke University and Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Duke University
Address:	Box 90251, Durham, NC, 27708, United States
Keywords:	Bayesian CART ; Tree prior specification ; Pinball prior ; Restructure moves
Abstract:	We present advances in Bayesian modeling and computation for CART (classification and regression tree) models. The modeling innovations include a formal prior distributional structure for tree generation---the "pinball prior"---that allows for the combination of an explicit specification of a distribution for both the tree "size" and the tree "shape." The core computational innovations involve a novel Metropolis-Hastings method that can dramatically improve the convergence and mixing properties of MCMC methods of Bayesian CART analysis. Earlier MCMC methods have simulated Bayesian CART models using local MCMC moves, proposing only small changes to a "current" CART model. Our new Metropolis-Hastings move makes large changes in the CART tree, but is at the same time local in that it leaves unchanged the partition of observations to terminal nodes. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in two examples: one with a constructed dataset and one concerning analysis of a published breast cancer dataset.

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