Posterior predictive checks
One of the nice elements of the Bayesian toolkit is that once we have a posterior, it is possible to use the posterior to generate future data y, that is, predictions. Posterior predictive checks consist of comparing the observed data and the predicted data to spot differences between these two sets. The main goal is to check for auto-consistency. The generated data and the observed data should look more or less similar, otherwise there was some problem during the modeling or some problem feeding the data to the model. But even if we did not make any mistake, differences could arise. Trying to understand the mismatch could lead us to improve models or at least to understand their limitations. Knowing which part of our ...
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