Specify priors for model parameters. Supports both PC (penalized complexity) priors for variance components and standard distributions for other parameters.
Usage
tulpa_priors(
beta = NULL,
sigma = NULL,
phi = NULL,
rho_temporal = NULL,
rho_spatial = NULL
)Arguments
- beta
Prior for fixed effects. Default:
prior_normal(0, 2.5).- sigma
Prior for random effect SDs. Default: PC prior with P(sigma > 1) = 0.01.
- phi
Prior for overdispersion parameter. Default: PC prior with P(phi > 10) = 0.01.
- rho_temporal
Prior for temporal autocorrelation. Default:
prior_beta(2, 2)centered at 0.5.- rho_spatial
Prior for spatial proportion (BYM2). Default:
prior_beta(1, 1)(uniform).
Details
PC priors (Simpson et al., 2017) provide principled regularization that:
Favors simpler models (smaller variance components)
Has interpretable parameters (tail probabilities)
Prevents overfitting with sparse data
For other parameters, standard distributions are available via helper
functions: prior_normal(), prior_half_normal(), prior_half_cauchy(),
prior_gamma(), prior_beta(), prior_exponential().
References
Simpson, D., Rue, H., Riebler, A., Martins, T. G., & Sorbye, S. H. (2017). Penalising model component complexity: A principled, practical approach to constructing priors. Statistical Science, 32(1), 1-28.
Examples
# Default priors
tulpa_priors()
# Custom fixed effect prior
tulpa_priors(beta = prior_normal(0, 1))
# Tighter random effect prior
tulpa_priors(sigma = prior_pc(U = 0.5, alpha = 0.01))
# Half-Cauchy for random effect SD
tulpa_priors(sigma = prior_half_cauchy(2.5))
# Informative prior for temporal correlation
tulpa_priors(rho_temporal = prior_beta(5, 2)) # Prior mode at ~0.8