Skip to main content

probability or statistics - Calculating the Mean of a Truncated Multinormal Distribution


First, I'm a little disappointed that Mathematica balks at:


Mean[TruncatedDistribution[{{0, Infinity}},MultinormalDistribution[{0}, {{1}}]]]

Second, is the numerical computation of means from truncated multinormal distributions so hard? Is anyone aware of a package that implements the algorithm of Leppard and Tallis (1989) (see here for FORTRAN code) or anything like it?


Edit: rm asked for an example that fails to compute:


Mean[TruncatedDistribution[{{0, Infinity}, {0, Infinity}},
MultinormalDistribution[{0.5, 1.5}, {{1., 0.3}, {0.3, 1.}}]]]


Answer



If you want to do serious statistical work, I would suggest to not use Mean and instead use specialized functions that work on distributions, such as Expectation and NExpectation. Although the documentation says that Mean[dist] gives the mean of the symbolic distribution, I suspect they meant it for basic distributions such as NormalDistribution, BinomialDistribution, etc., which were all there when Mean was written. Mean was last modified in version 6 and most probably is not aware of newer functions such as TruncatedDistribution, MultinormalDistribution, etc., which were all introduced in version 8.


So the equivalent code for your example is:


NExpectation[{x, y}, {x, y} \[Distributed] 
TruncatedDistribution[
{{0, Infinity}, {0, Infinity}},
MultinormalDistribution[{0.5, 1.5}, {{1., 0.3}, {0.3, 1.}}]
]
]
(* {1.02198, 1.74957} *)


Using Expectation offers more flexibility than Mean, because you can now calculate the expectations of arbitrary quantities:


NExpectation[{Sin[x], y^3}, {x, y} \[Distributed] 
TruncatedDistribution[
{{0, Infinity}, {0, Infinity}},
MultinormalDistribution[{0.5, 1.5}, {{1., 0.3}, {0.3, 1.}}]
]
]
(* {0.650673, 9.70065} *)


NExpectation still does not work with MultinormalDistribution with a single dimension... I don't know why exactly, but personally I would never use a Multi-something function to mean just 1 (which is the opposite of multi). I would suggest using a Switch and use NormalDistribution when you have a MultinormalDistribution of dimension 1.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

front end - keyboard shortcut to invoke Insert new matrix

I frequently need to type in some matrices, and the menu command Insert > Table/Matrix > New... allows matrices with lines drawn between columns and rows, which is very helpful. I would like to make a keyboard shortcut for it, but cannot find the relevant frontend token command (4209405) for it. Since the FullForm[] and InputForm[] of matrices with lines drawn between rows and columns is the same as those without lines, it's hard to do this via 3rd party system-wide text expanders (e.g. autohotkey or atext on mac). How does one assign a keyboard shortcut for the menu item Insert > Table/Matrix > New... , preferably using only mathematica? Thanks! Answer In the MenuSetup.tr (for linux located in the $InstallationDirectory/SystemFiles/FrontEnd/TextResources/X/ directory), I changed the line MenuItem["&New...", "CreateGridBoxDialog"] to read MenuItem["&New...", "CreateGridBoxDialog", MenuKey["m", Modifiers-...

How to thread a list

I have data in format data = {{a1, a2}, {b1, b2}, {c1, c2}, {d1, d2}} Tableform: I want to thread it to : tdata = {{{a1, b1}, {a2, b2}}, {{a1, c1}, {a2, c2}}, {{a1, d1}, {a2, d2}}} Tableform: And I would like to do better then pseudofunction[n_] := Transpose[{data2[[1]], data2[[n]]}]; SetAttributes[pseudofunction, Listable]; Range[2, 4] // pseudofunction Here is my benchmark data, where data3 is normal sample of real data. data3 = Drop[ExcelWorkBook[[Column1 ;; Column4]], None, 1]; data2 = {a #, b #, c #, d #} & /@ Range[1, 10^5]; data = RandomReal[{0, 1}, {10^6, 4}]; Here is my benchmark code kptnw[list_] := Transpose[{Table[First@#, {Length@# - 1}], Rest@#}, {3, 1, 2}] &@list kptnw2[list_] := Transpose[{ConstantArray[First@#, Length@# - 1], Rest@#}, {3, 1, 2}] &@list OleksandrR[list_] := Flatten[Outer[List, List@First[list], Rest[list], 1], {{2}, {1, 4}}] paradox2[list_] := Partition[Riffle[list[[1]], #], 2] & /@ Drop[list, 1] RM[list_] := FoldList[Transpose[{First@li...

dynamic - How can I make a clickable ArrayPlot that returns input?

I would like to create a dynamic ArrayPlot so that the rectangles, when clicked, provide the input. Can I use ArrayPlot for this? Or is there something else I should have to use? Answer ArrayPlot is much more than just a simple array like Grid : it represents a ranged 2D dataset, and its visualization can be finetuned by options like DataReversed and DataRange . These features make it quite complicated to reproduce the same layout and order with Grid . Here I offer AnnotatedArrayPlot which comes in handy when your dataset is more than just a flat 2D array. The dynamic interface allows highlighting individual cells and possibly interacting with them. AnnotatedArrayPlot works the same way as ArrayPlot and accepts the same options plus Enabled , HighlightCoordinates , HighlightStyle and HighlightElementFunction . data = {{Missing["HasSomeMoreData"], GrayLevel[ 1], {RGBColor[0, 1, 1], RGBColor[0, 0, 1], GrayLevel[1]}, RGBColor[0, 1, 0]}, {GrayLevel[0], GrayLevel...