dist_inflated: Inflate a value of a probability distribution

In distributional: Vectorised Probability Distributions

Inflate a value of a probability distribution

Description

Inflated distributions add extra probability mass at a specific value, most commonly zero (zero-inflation). These distributions are useful for modeling data with excess observations at a particular value compared to what the base distribution would predict. Common applications include zero-inflated Poisson or negative binomial models for count data with many zeros.

Usage

dist_inflated(dist, prob, x = 0)

Arguments

dist	The distribution(s) to inflate.
prob	The added probability of observing x.
x	The value to inflate. The default of x = 0 is for zero-inflation.

Details

We recommend reading this documentation on pkgdown which renders math nicely. https://pkg.mitchelloharawild.com/distributional/reference/dist_inflated.html

In the following, let Y be an inflated random variable based on a base distribution X, with inflation value x = c and inflation probability prob = p.

Support: Same as the base distribution, but with additional probability mass at c

Mean: (when x is numeric)

E(Y) = p \cdot c + (1-p) \cdot E(X)

Variance: (when x = 0)

\text{Var}(Y) = (1-p) \cdot \text{Var}(X) + p(1-p) \cdot [E(X)]^2

For non-zero inflation values, the variance is not computed in closed form.

Probability mass/density function (p.m.f/p.d.f):

For discrete distributions:

f_Y(y) = \begin{cases} p + (1-p) \cdot f_X(c) & \text{if } y = c \\ (1-p) \cdot f_X(y) & \text{if } y \neq c \end{cases}

For continuous distributions:

f_Y(y) = \begin{cases} p & \text{if } y = c \\ (1-p) \cdot f_X(y) & \text{if } y \neq c \end{cases}

Cumulative distribution function (c.d.f):

F_Y(q) = \begin{cases} (1-p) \cdot F_X(q) & \text{if } q < c \\ p + (1-p) \cdot F_X(q) & \text{if } q \geq c \end{cases}

Quantile function:

The quantile function is computed numerically by inverting the inflated CDF, accounting for the jump in probability at the inflation point.

Examples

# Zero-inflated Poisson
dist <- dist_inflated(dist_poisson(lambda = 2), prob = 0.3, x = 0)

dist
mean(dist)
variance(dist)

generate(dist, 10)

density(dist, 0)
density(dist, 1)

cdf(dist, 2)

quantile(dist, 0.5)

distributional documentation built on June 11, 2026, 9:07 a.m.