Bayesian inference for network Poisson models - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2019

Bayesian inference for network Poisson models

Sophie Donnet
Stéphane Robin

Résumé

This work is motivated by the analysis of ecological interaction networks. Poisson stochastic blockmodels are widely used in this field to decipher the structure that underlies a weighted network, while accounting for covariate effects. Efficient algorithms based on variational approximations exist for frequentist inference, but without statistical guaranties as for the resulting estimates. In absence of variational Bayes estimates, we show that a good proxy of the posterior distribution can be straightforwardly derived from the frequentist variational estimation procedure, using a Laplace approximation. We use this proxy to sample from the true posterior distribution via a sequential Monte-Carlo algorithm. As shown in the simulation study, the efficiency of the posterior sampling is greatly improved by the accuracy of the approximate posterior distribution. The proposed procedure can be easily extended to other latent variable models. We use this methodology to assess the influence of available covariates on the organization of two ecological networks, as well as the existence of a residual interaction structure.

Dates et versions

hal-02192621 , version 1 (24-07-2019)

Identifiants

Citer

Sophie Donnet, Stéphane Robin. Bayesian inference for network Poisson models. 2019. ⟨hal-02192621⟩
44 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More