Fig. 2.

Assessing model adequacy in analyses of an example dataset. PrioriTree allows users to assess the absolute fit of alternative prior models to the data using posterior-predictive simulation. Each boxplot depicts the posterior-predictive distribution of the summary statistic computed from datasets simulated under the CTMC-rate reference prior on μ (left panel) or an alternative (hierarchical exponential) prior (right panel). Posterior-predictive distributions under the hierarchical exponential prior overlap with the observed data (dashed horizontal line), indicating that this prior model provides an adequate description of the process that gave rise to the example dataset, whereas the CTMC-rate reference prior is inadequate. Each pair of boxplots represents posterior-predictive summaries for replicate MCMC simulations