Systematic Bayes prior-assignment by coupling the mini-max entropy and moment-matching methods

摘要

The prior is chosen somewhat conservatively, but not arbitrarily, in Bayes analysis for the event whose characteristics are not well understood. It is desirable to get the prior through an objective procedure for the given information. The author's approach of assigning the pre-prior is by coupling the principle of maximum entropy with the moment-matching method; i.e., to find upper and lower bounds of the population parameter sets-based on upper and lower bounds of the entropy for the given information. The methodology is demonstrated by applying it to the data sets of initiating events taken from the performance of nuclear power plants.