Home > fiducial inference, reviews > The generalized fiducial distribution: A kinder, more objective posterior?

The generalized fiducial distribution: A kinder, more objective posterior?

1 June 2017

MR3561954

Hannig, Jan; Iyer, Hari; Lai, Randy C. S.; Lee, Thomas C. M.
Generalized fiducial inference: a review and new results. (English summary)
J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 111 (2016), no. 515, 1346–1361.
62A01 (62F99 62G05 62J05)
This review article introduces generalized fiducial inference, the flavor of fiducial statistics developed by the authors and their collaborators since the beginning of the millennium. This research program has been driven by a vision of fiducial distributions as posterior distributions untainted by the subjectivity seen in prior distributions.
Other approaches to fiducial inference bring subjectivity more to the forefront. For example, G. N. Wilkinson had highlighted the incoherence of fiducial distributions formulated in a more Fisherian flavor [J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 39 (1977), no. 2, 119–171; MR0652326]. More recently, R. J. Bowater [AStA Adv. Stat. Anal. 101 (2017), no. 2, 177–197] endorsed an explicitly subjective interpretation of fiducial probability. For the place of generalized fiducial inference in the context of other fiducial approaches, see [D. L. Sonderegger and J. Hannig, in Contemporary developments in statistical theory, 155–189, Springer Proc. Math. Stat., 68, Springer, Cham, 2014; MR3149921] and the papers it {MR3149921} cites.
In addition to providing an inspiring exposition of generalized fiducial inference, the authors report these new contributions:
  1. A weak-limit definition of a generalized fiducial distribution.
  2. Sufficient conditions for a generalized fiducial distribution to have asymptotic frequentist coverage.
  3. Novel formulas for computing a generalized fiducial distribution and a fiducial probability of a model.

The fiducial probability of a model is applicable to both model selection and model averaging. A seemingly different fiducial method of averaging statistical models was independently proposed by D. R. Bickel [“A note on fiducial model averaging as an alternative to checking Bayesian and frequentist models”, preprint, Fac. Sci. Math. Stat., Univ. Ottawa, 2015].

Reviewed by David R. Bickel

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This list reflects references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible with no attempt to correct error.
This review first appeared at “Generalized fiducial inference: a review and new results. (English summary)” (Mathematical Reviews) with the exception of the clarifying “{MR3149921}” and is used with permission from the American Mathematical Society.
Categories: fiducial inference, reviews