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Computes comprehensive diagnostics for the first stick-breaking weight. This is the KEY diagnostic for RN-07 concerns about unintended prior behavior.

Usage

compute_weight_diagnostics(
  a,
  b,
  thresholds = c(0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9),
  M = .QUAD_NODES_DEFAULT
)

Arguments

a

Numeric; shape parameter of the Gamma prior (> 0).

b

Numeric; rate parameter of the Gamma prior (> 0).

thresholds

Numeric vector; thresholds for computing P(w1 > t). Default is c(0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9). All values must be in (0, 1).

M

Integer; number of quadrature nodes for moment computation (default: 80).

Value

A list with components: mean (expected value of the first weight), median, quantiles (named vector), prob_exceeds (named vector of exceedance probabilities for each threshold), and dominance_risk (character: "low", "moderate", or "high").

Details

The weight w1 is the first stick-breaking weight in GEM order (size-biased permutation), representing the asymptotic cluster share of a randomly chosen unit.

Dominance risk classification:

  • "low": P(w1 > 0.5) < 0.2

  • "moderate": 0.2 <= P(w1 > 0.5) < 0.4

  • "high": P(w1 > 0.5) >= 0.4

References

Lee, J. (2025). RN-07: Unintended Prior Diagnostic.

Examples

# Lee et al. DP-inform prior (known high dominance)
compute_weight_diagnostics(1.60, 1.22)
#> $mean
#> [1] 0.508368
#> 
#> $median
#> [1] 0.4839219
#> 
#> $quantiles
#>         q5        q25        q50        q75        q95 
#> 0.03896534 0.21361987 0.48392192 0.81393615 0.99878645 
#> 
#> $prob_exceeds
#> prob_gt_0.3 prob_gt_0.5 prob_gt_0.7 prob_gt_0.9 
#>   0.6634195   0.4868311   0.3333737   0.1833147 
#> 
#> $dominance_risk
#> [1] "high"
#> 

# Lower dominance case
compute_weight_diagnostics(5, 1)
#> $mean
#> [1] 0.1915145
#> 
#> $median
#> [1] 0.138171
#> 
#> $quantiles
#>         q5        q25        q50        q75        q95 
#> 0.01025848 0.05750422 0.13817096 0.27349354 0.55981677 
#> 
#> $prob_exceeds
#> prob_gt_0.3 prob_gt_0.5 prob_gt_0.7 prob_gt_0.9 
#> 0.217581005 0.071866491 0.019229538 0.002545247 
#> 
#> $dominance_risk
#> [1] "low"
#>