Sets of Priors Reflecting Prior-Data Conflict and Agreement

Abstract

In Bayesian statistics, the choice of prior distribution is often debatable, especially if prior knowledge is limited or data are scarce. In imprecise probability, sets of priors are used to accurately model and reflect prior knowledge. This has the advantage that prior-data conflict sensitivity can be modelled: Ranges of posterior inferences should be larger when prior and data are in conflict. We propose a new method for generating prior sets which, in addition to prior-data conflict sensitivity, allows to reflect strong prior-data agreement by decreased posterior imprecision.