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Added more questions for FAQ.
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speco29 committed Jan 26, 2025
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Expand Up @@ -14,7 +14,17 @@ inference.
* PyMC is a library for Bayesian modelling, and is the backend used by Bambi.
It is a very powerful library, but can be challenging to use for beginners.
Bambi provides a simple interface for specifying models, and allows for easy inference via
MCMC or variational inference using PyMC.

### Why have a Bayesian regression library?

Bayesian modelling allows flexible (read 'bespoke') model specification and also provides an
estimation of uncertainty in the model parameters. Both of these are wildly useful in
practice, in particular in a business context where the model is used to make decisions,
and where a complex model may be needed to capture the underlying relationships. Further,
Bayesian modelling allows graceful handling of small sample sizes by judicious use of
prior distributions.

###

## Inference Questions

Expand All @@ -33,6 +43,18 @@ Yes, Bambi supports inference on GPUs and TPUs using the numpyro and blackjax ba
See the API for "fit" method for more details
[here](https://bambinos.github.io/bambi/api/Model.html#bambi.Model.fit).

### My sampler through errors/indicating divergences, what should I do?

* Divergences are a common issue in Bayesian modelling, and are usually not a problem as long as
they are not prevalent. However, if you are seeing a lot of divergences, you may want
to try 1) respecifying your model, 2) a different sampler.
* If the sampler fails, this is likely an issue with model specification. Make sure you are using
the correct priors for your model, and that you are not specifying a prior that is too
strong (e.g. a prior that is too narrow), or one that does not match the data (e.g. a
prior that doesn't cover the domain of the data such as using a HalfNormal prior for a
parameter that can be negative).


## Model Specification Questions

### My data has a non-normal distributions, can I still use Bambi?
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