A Bayesian Analysis of the Spherical Distribution in Presence of Covariates

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a Bayesian analysis of a spherical distribution applied to rock joint orientation data in presence or not of a vector of covariates, where the response variable is given by the angle from the mean and the covariates are the components of the normal upwards vector. Standard simulation MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) methods have been used to obtain the posterior summaries of interest obtained from WinBugs software. Illustration of the proposed methodology are given using a simulated data set and a real rock spherical data set from a hydroelectrical site.