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Prior Distributions on Symmetric Groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Jayanti Gupta  and
Paul Damien
Jayanti Gupta
Affiliation:
Merck Research Laboratories
Paul Damien*
Affiliation:
McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, TX
*
Requests for reprint should be sent to Paul Damien, McCombs School of Business, MSIS Dept. B6500, UT-Austin, Austin, TX 78712. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Fully and partially ranked data arise in a variety of contexts. From a Bayesian perspective, attention has focused on distance-based models; in particular, the Mallows model and extensions thereof. In this paper, a class of prior distributions, the Binary Tree, is developed on the symmetric group. The attractive features of the class are: it provides a closed-form solution to the posterior distribution; and a simple way to interpret the parameters of the prior distribution. The advantages of the proposed method are illustrated by comparing it to metric-based models using data analyzed by other researchers in this context.

Keywords

coset spacespermutation groupranked dataterminal sets
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 2005 , pp. 169 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 The Psychometric Society

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