Sparse Bayesian linear regression using generalized normal priors

Abstract

A sparse Bayesian linear regression model is proposed that generalizes the Bayesian Lasso to a class of Bayesian models with scale mixtures of normal distributions as priors for the regression coefficients. We assume a hierarchical Bayesian model with a binary indicator for whether a predictor variable is included in the model, a generalized normal prior distribution for the coefficients of the included variables, and a Student-t error model for robustness to heavy tailed noise. Our model out-performs other popular sparse regression estimators on synthetic and real data.