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Improve default GaussianRandomWalk and AR init distributions #5744

@ricardoV94

Description

@ricardoV94

When refactoring the GaussianRandomWalk to V4, we set the init to default to Normal(mu, sigma), which does not make much sense. mu is the drift parameter, and says nothing about the expected starting location of the series. sigma probably also makes little sense, as it assumes the uncertainty about the initial location has anything to do with the innovations noise.

Possible alternatives:

  • init = Normal.dist(0, 1)
  • init = Flat.dist(), which was the default in V3, but it means that prior and posterior predictive will fail by default.

We should also rename init to init_dist to emphasize this parameter must de a distribution.

init = Normal.dist(mu, sigma)

A similar question arises in the AR, where we again reuse the innovation noise sigma for the uncertainty about the initial location of the series.

init_dist = Normal.dist(sigma=at.shape_padright(sigma), size=(*sigma.shape, ar_order))

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