Self-consistent confidence sets and tests of composite hypotheses applicable to restricted parameters

Abstract

Frequentist methods, without the coherence guarantees of fully Bayesian methods, are known to yield self-contradictory inferences in certain settings. The framework introduced in this paper provides a simple adjustment to p-values and confidence sets to ensure the mutual consistency of all inferences without sacrificing frequentist validity. Based on a definition of the compatibility of a composite hypothesis with the observed data given any parameter restriction and on the requirement of self-consistency, the adjustment leads to the possibility and necessity measures of possibility theory rather than to the posterior probability distributions of Bayesian and fiducial inference.