Let have the positive-integer geometric distribution with success parameter , and conditionally toss independent coins with head probability . Exactly one head has conditional probability . Combining this with the prior by Bayes theorem gives the displayed posterior with ; its normalization uses . For , the posterior is . It is also a shifted negative binomial distribution, with equal in law to the number of failures before two successes of probability .
Posterior coin selection from repeated tosses Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
If a hidden coin is selected once with prior probability of coin , repeated tosses are independent conditional on that coin. Bayes theorem weights the prior by each all-heads likelihood. They need not be independent without conditioning on the chosen coin.
If every model's likelihood is multiplied by the same positive factor independent of its parameter or model index, Bayes theorem cancels that factor from the normalized posterior. Fixed-count Bernoulli sampling and sampling stopped at a specified positive head count give such proportional likelihoods for the same total heads and tails. This conclusion uses their actual sampling likelihoods; it is not a claim that every selection or stopping rule can be ignored.
In a zero-inflated Poisson regression, Bayes theorem separates structural zeros from susceptible zero counts. A positive count rules out the structural-zero class; a zero raises its posterior probability according to the displayed formula, but usually does not determine class membership with certainty. This same probability supplies the E-step of the EM algorithm for zero-inflated Poisson regression.
In a population mixture with initial component probabilities , conditioning on survival to time changes them to the displayed probabilities by Bayes theorem. Components with larger survivor functions receive greater relative weight among survivors. The population hazard function is the weighted mean of the component hazards with these time-dependent weights. This selection can change the population hazard even when all component hazards are constant, as shown by the hazard derivative for a mixture of exponential distributions.