Modeling overdispersion with the normalized tempered stable distribution M. Kolossiatisa, J.E. Griffinb, M. F. J. Steel∗,c aDepartment of Hotel and Tourism Management, Cyprus University of Technology, P.O. Box 50329, 3603 Limassol, Cyprus. bInstitute of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NF, U.K. cDepartment of Statistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, U.K. Abstract A multivariate distribution which generalizes the Dirichlet distribution is intro- duced and its use for modeling overdispersion in count data is discussed. The distribution is constructed by normalizing a vector of independent tempered sta- ble random variables. General formulae for all moments and cross-moments of the distribution are derived and they are found to have similar forms to those for the Dirichlet distribution. The univariate version of the distribution can be used as a mixing distribution for the success probability of a binomial distribution to define an alternative to the well-studied beta-binomial distribution. Examples of fitting this model to simulated and real data are presented. Keywords: Distribution on the unit simplex; Mice fetal mortality; Mixed bino- mial; Normalized random measure; Overdispersion 1. Introduction In many experiments we observe data as the number of observations in a sam- ple with some property. The binomial distribution is a natural model for this type of data. However, the data are often found to be overdispersed relative to that ∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-2476-523369; fax: +44-2476-524532 Email addresses:
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