Parametric Bayesian Estimation of Differential Entropy and Relative Entropy

Given iid samples drawn from a distribution with known parametric form, we propose the minimization of expected Bregman divergence to form Bayesian estimates of differential entropy and relative entropy, and derive such estimators for the uniform, Gaussian, Wishart, and inverse Wishart distributions...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Maya Gupta, Santosh Srivastava
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2010-04-01
Series:Entropy
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/12/4/818/
Description
Summary:Given iid samples drawn from a distribution with known parametric form, we propose the minimization of expected Bregman divergence to form Bayesian estimates of differential entropy and relative entropy, and derive such estimators for the uniform, Gaussian, Wishart, and inverse Wishart distributions. Additionally, formulas are given for a log gamma Bregman divergence and the differential entropy and relative entropy for the Wishart and inverse Wishart. The results, as always with Bayesian estimates, depend on the accuracy of the prior parameters, but example simulations show that the performance can be substantially improved compared to maximum likelihood or state-of-the-art nonparametric estimators.
ISSN:1099-4300