r_mvdist: Generate data from a copula with arbitrary marginal...

In SynthesizerPlus: Synthetic Data Generation with Copulas, Evaluation and Multi-Format I/O

Generate data from a copula with arbitrary marginal distributions

Description

r_mvdist() combines a copula (see r_copula()) with user-specified marginal distributions, returning a data frame. This is a flexible way to simulate mixed-type data sets with known dependence, e.g. for simulation studies or to benchmark synthesizers.

Each element of margins is either

• a quantile function ⁠function(p)⁠ (e.g. from margin_categorical() or margin_empirical()),

• a character string naming a distribution with a ⁠q*⁠ function, e.g. "norm", "gamma", "pois", or

• a list with element dist and further parameters, e.g. list(dist = "gamma", shape = 2, rate = 1).

Usage

r_mvdist(n, margins, copula = "gaussian", ..., seed = NULL)

Arguments

n	Number of rows.
margins	A (named) list of marginal specifications.
copula	Copula family, see r_copula().
...	Further arguments passed to r_copula() (corr, df, theta).
seed	Optional random seed.

Value

A data frame with one column per margin.

Examples

df <- r_mvdist(
  500,
  margins = list(
    income = list(dist = "lnorm", meanlog = 10, sdlog = 0.5),
    age = list(dist = "unif", min = 18, max = 80),
    sector = margin_categorical(c("agri", "industry", "services"),
                                c(0.1, 0.3, 0.6))
  ),
  copula = "gaussian", corr = make_corr(3, "exchangeable", 0.4), seed = 1
)
str(df)

SynthesizerPlus documentation built on Oct. 16, 2026, 5:10 p.m.