This is the first PHYSTAT Informal Review event. In this new virtual format, a Tandem consisting of a physicist and a statistician will review a statistical method introduced by one of the parties or a general critical analysis topic from the Physicist's and Statistician's perspectives. The virtual events comprise: two 20+10 min. complementary presentations followed by ~30 minutes of general discussion.
Today Bob Cousins (physicist, UCLA) and Larry Wasserman (Statistician, CMU) will review the topic "Hybrid Bayesian-Frequentist approaches".
Agenda:
- 3.30 pm Opening
- 3.30 pm Presentation Bob Cousins (20'+10')
- 4 pm Presentation Larry Wasserman (20'+10')
- 4.30 pm General Discussion and Closing (30')
We will discuss Bayesian and Frequentist approaches to dealing with nuisance parameters. In particular, we discuss integrated versus profiled likelihood methods. In regular models, with finitely many parameters and large sample sizes, the two approaches are asymptotically equivalent. But, outside this setting, the two methods can lead to different tests and confidence intervals. Assessing which approach is better generally requires comparing the power of the tests or the length of the confidence intervals. This analysis has to be conducted on a case by case basis. In the extreme case where the number of nuisance parameters is very large, possibly infinite, neither approach may be useful.
S. Algeri, O. Behnke, L, Brenner, L. Lyons, N. Wardle
