BKP: An R Package for Beta Kernel Process Modeling

TL;DR

BKP is an R package that offers a nonparametric, efficient framework for modeling spatially varying binomial probabilities using beta kernel processes, with extensions to multinomial data.

Contribution

This is the first publicly available R package implementing Beta Kernel Process methods for spatially varying binomial and multinomial data.

Findings

Demonstrates high accuracy and interpretability on synthetic and real datasets

Supports flexible kernel and prior choices for tailored modeling

Provides scalable and user-friendly tools for spatial probability modeling

Abstract

We present BKP, a user-friendly and extensible R package that implements the Beta Kernel Process (BKP) -- a fully nonparametric and computationally efficient framework for modeling spatially varying binomial probabilities. The BKP model combines localized kernel-weighted likelihoods with conjugate beta priors, resulting in closed-form posterior inference without requiring latent variable augmentation or intensive MCMC sampling. The package supports binary and aggregated binomial responses, allows flexible choices of kernel functions and prior specification, and provides loss-based kernel hyperparameter tuning procedures. In addition, BKP extends naturally to the Dirichlet Kernel Process (DKP) for modeling spatially varying multinomial or compositional data. To our knowledge, this is the first publicly available R package for implementing BKP-based methods. We illustrate the use of BKP through several synthetic and real-world datasets, highlighting its interpretability, accuracy, and scalability. The package aims to facilitate practical application and future methodological development of kernel-based beta modeling in statistics and machine learning.