BKP: An R Package for Beta Kernel Process Modeling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhao, Jiangyan, Qing, Kunhai, Xu, Jin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhao, Jiangyan
Qing, Kunhai
Xu, Jin
author_facet Zhao, Jiangyan
Qing, Kunhai
Xu, Jin
contents We present BKP, a user-friendly and extensible R package that implements the Beta Kernel Process (BKP) -- a fully nonparametric and computationally efficient framework for modeling spatially varying binomial probabilities. The BKP model combines localized kernel-weighted likelihoods with conjugate beta priors, resulting in closed-form posterior inference without requiring latent variable augmentation or intensive MCMC sampling. The package supports binary and aggregated binomial responses, allows flexible choices of kernel functions and prior specification, and provides loss-based kernel hyperparameter tuning procedures. In addition, BKP extends naturally to the Dirichlet Kernel Process (DKP) for modeling spatially varying multinomial or compositional data. To our knowledge, this is the first publicly available R package for implementing BKP-based methods. We illustrate the use of BKP through several synthetic and real-world datasets, highlighting its interpretability, accuracy, and scalability. The package aims to facilitate practical application and future methodological development of kernel-based beta modeling in statistics and machine learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_10447
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BKP: An R Package for Beta Kernel Process Modeling
Zhao, Jiangyan
Qing, Kunhai
Xu, Jin
Computation
Machine Learning
We present BKP, a user-friendly and extensible R package that implements the Beta Kernel Process (BKP) -- a fully nonparametric and computationally efficient framework for modeling spatially varying binomial probabilities. The BKP model combines localized kernel-weighted likelihoods with conjugate beta priors, resulting in closed-form posterior inference without requiring latent variable augmentation or intensive MCMC sampling. The package supports binary and aggregated binomial responses, allows flexible choices of kernel functions and prior specification, and provides loss-based kernel hyperparameter tuning procedures. In addition, BKP extends naturally to the Dirichlet Kernel Process (DKP) for modeling spatially varying multinomial or compositional data. To our knowledge, this is the first publicly available R package for implementing BKP-based methods. We illustrate the use of BKP through several synthetic and real-world datasets, highlighting its interpretability, accuracy, and scalability. The package aims to facilitate practical application and future methodological development of kernel-based beta modeling in statistics and machine learning.
title BKP: An R Package for Beta Kernel Process Modeling
topic Computation
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10447