IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bes/jnlbes/v9y1991i1p27-39.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Quasi-Bayesian Approach to Estimating Parameters for Mixtures of Normal Distributions

Author

Listed:
  • Hamilton, James D

Abstract

This article proposes a very tractable approach to estimating parameters for mixtures of normal distributions. The analyst proceeds as if, in addition to the data, he or she had observed some pseudo data points drawn from each distribution whose values reflect his or her priors. The approach eliminates the singularities associated with maximum likelihood estimation and offer guidance for choosing among alternative local maximum likelihood estimates. Monte Carlo analysis established its consistent potential to improve mean squared errors. Data sets on which maximum likelihood estimation has presented difficulties are shown to be readily analyzed with the quasi-Bayesian procedure.

Suggested Citation

  • Hamilton, James D, 1991. "A Quasi-Bayesian Approach to Estimating Parameters for Mixtures of Normal Distributions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 9(1), pages 27-39, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bes:jnlbes:v:9:y:1991:i:1:p:27-39
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bes:jnlbes:v:9:y:1991:i:1:p:27-39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.amstat.org/publications/jbes/index.cfm?fuseaction=main .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.