Confidence intervals for the coefficient of variation and the difference between coefficients of variation of inverse-gamma distributions

Abstract

The aim of this study is to establish new confidence intervals for the single coefficient of variation of an inversegamma distribution using Bayesian methods based on the Jeffreys, reference, and uniform priors and compare them with the Wald method. The Bayesian methods are constructed with either the credible confidence interval or the highest posterior density (HPD) interval. These concepts were extended to find the difference between the coefficients of variation for two independent inverse-gamma populations. The performances of the proposed confidence intervals were evaluated using coverage probabilities and expected lengths via Monte Carlo simulations. The results indicate that the Bayesian HPD interval based on the reference prior can be recommended for constructing confidence intervals for the coefficient of variation of a single inverse-gamma distribution and the Bayesian HPD interval based on the Jeffreys prior can be recommended for constructing confidence intervals for the difference between the coefficients of variation of two inverse-gamma distributions. Rainfall data from northern Thailand were used to illustrate the efficacies of the proposed methods.

Keywords

• inverse gamma distribution
• coefficient of variation
• bayesian method
• the highest posterior density
• coverage probability