In this paper, we study the problem of estimating the covariance matrix [Sigma] and the precision matrix [Omega] (the inverse of the covariance matrix) in a star-shape model with missing data. By considering a type of Cholesky decomposition of the precision matrix [Omega]=[Psi]'[Psi], where...

In this paper, we consider estimating the Cholesky decomposition (the lower triangular squared root) of the covariance matrix for a conditional independent normal model under four equivariant loss functions. Closed-form expressions of the maximum likelihood estimator and an unbiased estimator of...

The use of hierarchical Bayesian spatial models in the analysis of ecological data is increasingly prevalent. The implementation of these models has been heretofore limited to specifically written software that required extensive programming knowledge to create. The advent of WinBUGS provides...

The existence of the posterior distribution for one-way random effect probit models has been investigated when the uniform prior is applied to the overall mean and a class of noninformative priors are applied to the variance parameter. The sufficient conditions to ensure the propriety of the...