wbic: Widely applicable Bayesian information criterion (WBIC)

In tulpa: Templated Unified Library for Posterior Approximation in Bayesian Hierarchical Models

Widely applicable Bayesian information criterion (WBIC)

Description

Watanabe's (2013) WBIC: the expected negative log-likelihood under the posterior tempered at inverse temperature beta = 1 / log(n),

\mathrm{WBIC} = -E_\beta\left[\sum_{i=1}^n \log p(y_i \mid \theta)\right], \qquad p_\beta(\theta) \propto p(\theta) \prod_{i=1}^n p(y_i \mid \theta)^\beta.

It estimates the Bayes free energy ⁠-log p(y)⁠, the negative log evidence, and shares its asymptotic expansion up to O_p(1) terms in singular models as well as regular ones – mixtures, reduced-rank and latent-factor structure, a variance component at zero – where BIC's ⁠(d / 2) log n⁠ penalty does not describe the evidence. Lower is better.

Usage

wbic(object, ...)

## Default S3 method:
wbic(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'tulpa_fit'
wbic(object, ...)

## S3 method for class 'tulpa_wbic'
print(x, digits = 2, ...)

Arguments

object	A tulpa_fit fitted with mode = "smc" and control = list(wbic = TRUE), or an ⁠[n_draws x n_obs]⁠ pointwise log-likelihood matrix (or tulpa_loglik()) at draws from the posterior tempered at 1 / log(n_obs).
...	Unused.
x	A tulpa_wbic result.
digits	Decimal places printed.

Details

No draw from the posterior itself can supply the expectation: it is taken under a different distribution, and importance-reweighting posterior draws down to beta degenerates as n grows. A tulpa_fit therefore carries the tempered draws only when its sampler visited that distribution, which the SMC path does when asked: fit with mode = "smc" and control = list(wbic = TRUE). The population is then carried from the reference through ⁠p(theta) L(theta)^beta⁠, recorded there, and tempered on to the posterior, so the fit's own ⁠$draws⁠ are posterior draws as usual. A fit without the tempered draws is refused.

The log-likelihood is the normalized pointwise density pointwise_loglik() returns, the input of loo::waic() and loo::loo() too, so WBIC is on the scale of ⁠-log p(y)⁠ and comparable across fits of the same response. The parameter vector tempered is the one the sampler samples – fixed effects, latent effects and hyperparameters – with the likelihood conditional on it, so the free energy estimated is that of the marginal likelihood integrating all of them.

The default method takes an ⁠[n_draws x n_obs]⁠ pointwise log-likelihood whose rows are draws from the posterior tempered at 1 / log(n_obs). A model package with its own likelihood draws them through the tulpa_smc_fit C entry with bridge_end = 1 / log(n) and evaluates its density there.

Value

A tulpa_wbic object: a list with wbic, the inverse temperature beta, n_obs and n_draws.

References

Watanabe, S. (2013). A widely applicable Bayesian information criterion. Journal of Machine Learning Research 14:867-897.

See Also

loo::waic(), dic() and compare_models() for the other criteria; tulpa_criteria().

Examples

set.seed(1)
d <- data.frame(x = rnorm(80))
d$y <- rpois(80, exp(0.3 + 0.5 * d$x))
fit <- tulpa(y ~ x, data = d, family = "poisson", mode = "smc",
             control = list(wbic = TRUE, n_particles = 500L, seed = 1L))
wbic(fit)

tulpa documentation built on Oct. 19, 2026, 5:09 p.m.