Posterior Invariance of Multiplicative Contrasts under Margin Constraints in Contingency Tables

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Stern, Rafael Bassi, Gong, Ruobin, Kadane, Joseph B., Schervish, Mark J., Seidenfeld, Teddy
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Stern, Rafael Bassi
Gong, Ruobin
Kadane, Joseph B.
Schervish, Mark J.
Seidenfeld, Teddy
author_facet Stern, Rafael Bassi
Gong, Ruobin
Kadane, Joseph B.
Schervish, Mark J.
Seidenfeld, Teddy
contents Measures of association in contingency tables, such as odds ratios and their generalizations, are often studied under different sampling schemes that either fix or leave random the margins of the table. While classical results show that certain odds ratios are unaffected by constraining the margins, it is less clear when this invariance holds more generally. This paper studies posterior inference for a broad class of multiplicative contrasts of multinomial cell probabilities, which we refer to as generalized odds ratios, and addresses exactly when fixing a margin alters inference about them. We consider Bayesian inference under multinomial sampling and under models in which partition sums of the table are fixed in advance, and assume that the marginal and conditional parameters are independent a priori. Under additional mild assumptions, we show that the posterior distribution of a generalized odds ratio is invariant to fixing a margin if and only if the coefficients defining the contrast sum to zero within the margin.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24490
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Posterior Invariance of Multiplicative Contrasts under Margin Constraints in Contingency Tables
Stern, Rafael Bassi
Gong, Ruobin
Kadane, Joseph B.
Schervish, Mark J.
Seidenfeld, Teddy
Statistics Theory
62A01, 62F15
Measures of association in contingency tables, such as odds ratios and their generalizations, are often studied under different sampling schemes that either fix or leave random the margins of the table. While classical results show that certain odds ratios are unaffected by constraining the margins, it is less clear when this invariance holds more generally. This paper studies posterior inference for a broad class of multiplicative contrasts of multinomial cell probabilities, which we refer to as generalized odds ratios, and addresses exactly when fixing a margin alters inference about them. We consider Bayesian inference under multinomial sampling and under models in which partition sums of the table are fixed in advance, and assume that the marginal and conditional parameters are independent a priori. Under additional mild assumptions, we show that the posterior distribution of a generalized odds ratio is invariant to fixing a margin if and only if the coefficients defining the contrast sum to zero within the margin.
title Posterior Invariance of Multiplicative Contrasts under Margin Constraints in Contingency Tables
topic Statistics Theory
62A01, 62F15
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24490