A Class of Conjugate Priors Defined on the Unit Simplex

Abstract

Dirichlet distribution and Dirichlet process as its infinite dimensional generalization are primarily used conjugate prior of categorical and multinomial distributions in Bayesian statistics. Extensions have been proposed to broaden applications for different purposes. In this article, we explore a class of prior distributions closely related to Dirichlet distribution incorporating additional information on the data generating mechanism. Examples are given to show potential use of the models.