dist.Wishart: Wishart Distribution

In LaplacesDemon: Complete Environment for Bayesian Inference

Description

These functions provide the density and random number generation for the Wishart distribution.

Usage

   dwishart(Omega, nu, S, log=FALSE)
   rwishart(nu, S)

Arguments

Omega	This is the symmetric, positive-definite k x k matrix Omega.
nu	This is the scalar degrees of freedom nu.
S	This is the symmetric, positive-semidefinite, k x k scale matrix S.
log	Logical. If log=TRUE, then the logarithm of the density is returned.

Details

• Application: Continuous Multivariate

• Density: p(theta) = (2^(nu*k/2) * pi^(k(k-1)/4) * [Gamma((nu+1-i)/2) * ... * Gamma((nu+1-k)/2)])^(-1) * |S|^(-nu/2) * |Omega|^((nu-k-1)/2) * exp(-(1/2) * tr(S^(-1) Omega))

• Inventor: John Wishart (1928)

• Notation 1: Omega ~ W[nu](S)

• Notation 2: p(Omega) = W[nu](Omega | S)

• Parameter 1: degrees of freedom nu >= k

• Parameter 2: symmetric, positive-semidefinite k x k scale matrix S

• Mean: E(Omega) = nuS

• Variance: var(Omega) = nu(S[i,j]^2 + S[i,i]S[j,j])

• Mode: mode(Omega) = (nu-k-1)S, for nu >= k + 1

The Wishart distribution is a generalization to multiple dimensions of the chi-square distribution, or, in the case of non-integer degrees of freedom, of the gamma distribution. However, the Wishart distribution is not called the multivariate chi-squared distribution because the marginal distribution of the off-diagonal elements is not chi-squared.

The Wishart is the conjugate prior distribution for the precision matrix Omega, the inverse of which (covariance matrix Sigma) is used in a multivariate normal distribution.

The integral is finite when nu >= k, where nu is the scalar degrees of freedom parameter, and k is the dimension of scale matrix S. The density is finite when nu >= k + 1, which is recommended.

The degrees of freedom, nu, is equivalent to specifying a prior sample size, indicating the confidence in S, where S is a prior guess at the order of covariance matrix Sigma. A flat prior distribution is obtained as nu -> 0.

When applicable, the alternative Cholesky parameterization should be preferred. For more information, see dwishartc.

The Wishart prior lacks flexibility, having only one parameter, nu, to control the variability for all k(k + 1)/2 elements. Popular choices for the scale matrix S include an identity matrix or sample covariance matrix. When the model sample size is small, the specification of the scale matrix can be influential.

Although the related inverse Wishart distribution has a dependency between variance and correlation, the Wishart distribution does not have this dependency.

The matrix gamma (dmatrixgamma) distribution is a more general version of the Wishart distribution, and the Yang-Berger (dyangberger) distribution is an alterative that is a least informative prior (LIP).

Value

dwishart gives the density and rwishart generates random deviates.

References

Wishart, J. (1928). "The Generalised Product Moment Distribution in Samples from a Normal Multivariate Population". Biometrika, 20A(1-2), p. 32–52.

See Also

dchisq, dgamma, dinvwishart, dmatrixgamma, dmvnp, dwishartc, Prec2Cov, and dyangberger.

Examples

library(LaplacesDemon)
x <- dwishart(matrix(c(2,-.3,-.3,4),2,2), 3, matrix(c(1,.1,.1,1),2,2))
x <- rwishart(3, matrix(c(1,.1,.1,1),2,2))

LaplacesDemon documentation built on July 9, 2021, 5:07 p.m.