title: Population size estimation using individual level mixture models.
abstract: We revisit the heterogeneous closed population multiple recapture problem, modeling individual-level heterogeneity using the Grade of Membership model (Woodbury et al., 1978). This strategy allows us to postulate the existence of homogeneous latent "ideal" or "pure" classes within the population, and construct a soft clustering of the individuals, where each one is allowed partial or mixed membership in all of these classes. We propose a full hierarchical Bayes specification and a MCMC algorithm to obtain samples from the posterior distribution. We apply the method to simulated data and to three real life examples.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. dmanriqu@stat.cmu.edu
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Manrique-Vallier
authors.forename: Stephen E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Fienberg
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D002648:Child; D003198:Computer Simulation; D000013:Congenital Abnormalities / Q000453:epidemiology; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000453:epidemiology; D006708:Homicide; D006801:Humans; D008390:Markov Chains; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D011156:Population Density