74 – Bayesian Nonparametric Methods and Some Applications
Semi-Parametric Bayesian Method on Spherical Data
Thomas Jiang
National Chengchi University
In many contexts in the earth sciences, astrophysics and other fields, it often needs to analyze spherical data, which can be treated as having positions on spherical surface. Some parametric Bayesian methods have been used to examine spherical data. We give semi-parametric Bayesian method to make statistical inferences. In particular, we show how to use our semi-parametric method to find the Bayesian predictive density and to test whether two samples are from two populations with the same mean. A von Mises-Fisher distribution is shown to be conjugate for the von Mises-Fisher distribution, which is often used in directional statistics. This makes the computations of our semi-parametric Bayesian method easier.