Conjugate Prior - Pseudo-observations

It is often useful to think of the hyperparameters of a conjugate prior distribution as corresponding to having observed a certain number of pseudo-observations with properties specified by the parameters. For example, the values and of a beta distribution can be thought of as corresponding to successes and failures if the posterior mode is used to choose an optimal parameter setting, or successes and failures if the posterior mean is used to choose an optimal parameter setting. In general, for nearly all conjugate prior distributions, the hyperparameters can be interpreted in terms of pseudo-observations. This can help both in providing an intuition behind the often messy update equations, as well as to help choose reasonable hyperparameters for a prior.