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 distribution family and parameter


Analytical Conjugate Priors for Subclasses of Generalized Pareto Distributions

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This article is written for pedagogical purposes aiming at practitioners trying to estimate the finite support of continuous probability distributions, i.e., the minimum and the maximum of a distribution defined on a finite domain. Generalized Pareto distribution GP({\theta}, {\sigma}, {\xi}) is a three-parameter distribution which plays a key role in Peaks-Over-Threshold framework for tail estimation in Extreme Value Theory. Estimators for GP often lack analytical solutions and the best known Bayesian methods for GP involves numerical methods. Moreover, existing literature focuses on estimating the scale {\sigma} and the shape {\xi}, lacking discussion of the estimation of the location {\theta} which is the lower support of (minimum value possible in) a GP. To fill the gap, we analyze four two-parameter subclasses of GP whose conjugate priors can be obtained analytically, although some of the results are known. Namely, we prove the conjugacy for {\xi} > 0 (Pareto), {\xi} = 0 (Shifted Exponential), {\xi} < 0 (Power), and {\xi} = -1 (Two-parameter Uniform).


Dr. Neurosymbolic, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept Statistics

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The symbolic AI community is increasingly trying to embrace machine learning in neuro-symbolic architectures, yet is still struggling due to cultural barriers. To break the barrier, this rather opinionated personal memo attempts to explain and rectify the conventions in Statistics, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning from the viewpoint of outsiders. It provides a step-by-step protocol for designing a machine learning system that satisfies a minimum theoretical guarantee necessary for being taken seriously by the symbolic AI community, i.e., it discusses "in what condition we can stop worrying and accept statistical machine learning." Unlike most textbooks which are written for students trying to specialize in Stat/ML/DL and willing to accept jargons, this memo is written for experienced symbolic researchers that hear a lot of buzz but are still uncertain and skeptical. Information on Stat/ML/DL is currently too scattered or too noisy to invest in. This memo prioritizes compactness, citations to old papers (many in early 20th century), and concepts that resonate well with symbolic paradigms in order to offer time savings. It prioritizes general mathematical modeling and does not discuss any specific function approximator, such as neural networks (NNs), SVMs, decision trees, etc. Finally, it is open to corrections. Consider this memo as something similar to a blog post taking the form of a paper on Arxiv.