Stick-breaking processes with exchangeable length variables

Abstract

Our object of study is the general class of stick-breaking processes with exchangeable length variables. These generalize well-known Bayesian non-parametric priors in an unexplored direction. We give conditions to assure the respective species sampling process is proper and the corresponding prior has full support. For a rich sub-class we explain how, by tuning a single -valued parameter, the stochastic ordering of the weights can be modulated, and Dirichlet and Geometric priors can be recovered. A general formula for the distribution of the latent allocation variables is derived and an MCMC algorithm is proposed for density estimation purposes.