Abstract
In a seminal article, Berger, De Oliveira and Sansó [J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 96 (2001) 1361–1374] compare several objective prior distributions for the parameters of Gaussian process models with isotropic correlation kernel. The reference prior distribution stands out among them insofar as it always leads to a proper posterior. They prove this result for rough correlation kernels: Spherical, Exponential with power , Matérn with smoothness . This paper provides a proof for smooth correlation kernels: Exponential with power , Matérn with smoothness , Rational Quadratic, along with tail rates of the reference prior for these kernels.
Funding Statement
The author acknowledges the support of the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), under grant ANR-13-MONU-0005 (project CHORUS).
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank his PhD advisor, Professor Josselin Garnier (École Polytechnique, Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées), for his guidance, Loic Le Gratiet (EDF R&D, Chatou) and Anne Dutfoy (EDF R&D, Saclay) for their advice and helpful suggestions. He also thanks the Editor, the Associate Editor and the referees for their comments which substantially improved this article.
Citation
Joseph Muré. "Propriety of the reference posterior distribution in Gaussian process modeling." Ann. Statist. 49 (4) 2356 - 2377, August 2021. https://doi.org/10.1214/20-AOS2040
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