Constrain order of parameters in R JAGS - r

Question

I am puzzled by a simple question in R JAGS. I have for example, 10 parameters: d[1], d[2], ..., d[10]. It is intuitive from the data that they should be increasing. So I want to put a constraint on them.
Here is what I tried to do but it give error messages saying "Node inconsistent with parents":
model{
...
for (j in 1:10){
d.star[j]~dnorm(0,0.0001)
}
d=sort(d.star)
}
Then I tried this:
d[1]~dnorm(0,0.0001)
for (j in 2:10){
d[j]~dnorm(0,0.0001)I(d[j-1],)
}
This worked, but I don't know if this is the correct way to do it. Could you share your thoughts?
Thanks!

Answer 1

If you are ever uncertain about something like this, it is best to just simulate some data to determine if the model structure you suggest works (spoiler alert: it does).
Here is the model that I used:
cat('model{
d[1] ~ dnorm(0, 0.0001) # intercept
d[2] ~ dnorm(0, 0.0001)
for(j in 3:11){
d[j] ~ dnorm(0, 0.0001) I(d[j-1],)
}
for(i in 1:200){
y[i] ~ dnorm(mu[i], tau)
mu[i] <- inprod(d, x[i,])
}
tau ~ dgamma(0.01,0.01)
}',
file = "model_example.R")```
And here are the data I simulated to use with this model.
library(run.jags)
library(mcmcplots)
# intercept with sorted betas
set.seed(161)
betas <- c(1,sort(runif(10, -5,5)))
# make covariates, 1 for intercept
x <- cbind(1,matrix(rnorm(2000), nrow = 200, ncol = 10))
# deterministic part of model
y_det <- x %*% betas
# add noise
y <- rnorm(length(y_det), y_det, 1)
data_list <- list(y = as.numeric(y), x = x)
# fit the model
mout <- run.jags('model_example.R',monitor = c("d", "tau"), data = data_list)
Following this, we can plot out the estimates and overlay the true parameter values
caterplot(mout, "d", reorder = FALSE)
points(rev(c(1:11)) ~ betas, pch = 18,cex = 0.9)
The black points are the true parameter values, the blue points and lines are the estimates. Looks like this set up does fine so long as there are enough data to estimate all of those parameters.

Answer 2

It looks like there is an syntax error in the first implementation. Just try:
model{
...
for (j in 1:10){
d.star[j]~dnorm(0,0.0001)
}
d[1:10] <- sort(d.star) # notice d is indexed.
}
and compare the results with those of the second implementation. According to the documentation, these are both correct, but it is advised to use the function sort.