# Recently in Probability Category

## Archimedean Crew

We have recently seen how we can define dependencies between random variables with Archimedean copulas which calculate the probability that they each fall below given values by applying a generator function φ to the results of their cumulative distribution functions, or CDFs, for those values, and applying its inverse to their sum.
Like all copulas they are effectively the CDFs of vector valued random variables whose elements are uniformly distributed when considered independently. Whilst those Archimedean CDFs were relatively trivial to implement, we found that their probability density functions, or PDFs, were somewhat more difficult and that the random variables themselves required some not at all obvious mathematical manipulation to get right.
Having done all the hard work implementing the ak.archimedeanCopula, ak.archimedeanCopulaDensity and ak.archimedeanCopulaRnd functions we shall now use them to implement some specific families of Archimedean copulas.

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## Archimedean Review

In the last couple of posts we've been taking a look at Archimedean copulas which define the dependency between the elements of vector values of a multivariate random variable by applying a generator function φ to the values of the cumulative distribution functions, or CDFs, of their distributions when considered independently, known as their marginal distributions, and applying the inverse of the generator to the sum of the results to yield the value of the multivariate CDF.
We have seen that the densities of Archimedean copulas are rather trickier to calculate and that making random observations of them is trickier still. Last time we found an algorithm for the latter, albeit with an implementation that had troubling performance and numerical stability issues, and in this post we shall add an improved version to the ak library that addresses those issues.

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## Archimedean View

Last time we took a look at how we could define copulas to represent the dependency between random variables by summing the results of a generator function φ applied to the results of their cumulative distribution functions, or CDFs, and then applying the inverse of that function φ-1 to that sum.
These are known as Archimedean copulas and are valid whenever φ is strictly decreasing over the interval [0,1], equal to zero when its argument equals one and have nth derivatives that are non-negative over that interval when n is even and non-positive when it is odd, for n up to the number of random variables.
Whilst such copulas are relatively easy to implement we saw that their densities are a rather trickier job, in contrast to Gaussian copulas where the reverse is true. In this post we shall see how to draw random vectors from Archimedean copulas which is also much more difficult than doing so from Gaussian copulas.

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## Archimedean Skew

About a year and a half ago we saw how we could use Gaussian copulas to define dependencies between the elements of a vector valued multivariate random variable whose elements, when considered in isolation, were governed by arbitrary cumulative distribution functions, known as marginals. Whilst Gaussian copulas are quite flexible, they can't represent every possible dependency between those elements and in this post we shall take a look at some others defined by the Archimedean family of copulas.

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## Copulating Normally

Last year we took a look at multivariate uniformly distributed random variables, which generalise uniform random variables to multiple dimensions with random vectors whose elements are independently uniformly distributed. We have now seen how we can similarly generalise normally distributed random variables with the added property that the normally distributed elements of their vectors may be dependent upon each other; specifically that they may be correlated.
As it turns out, we can generalise this dependence to arbitrary sets of random variables with a fairly simple observation.

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## The Cumulative Distribution Unction

We have previously seen how we can generalise normally distributed random variables to multiple dimensions by defining vectors with elements that are linear functions of independent standard normally distributed random variables, having means of zero and standard deviations of one, with

Z' = L × Z + μ

where L is a constant matrix, Z is a vector whose elements are the independent standard normally distributed random variables and μ is a constant vector.
So far we have derived and implemented the probability density function and the characteristic function of the multivariate normal distribution that governs such random vectors but have yet to do the same for its cumulative distribution function since it's a rather more difficult task and thus requires a dedicated treatment, which we shall have in this post.

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## Multiple Multiply Normal Functions

Last time we took a look at how we could define multivariate normally distributed random variables with linear functions of multiple independent standard univariate normal random variables.
Specifically, given a Z whose elements are independent standard univariate normal random variables, a constant vector μ and a constant matrix L

Z' = L × Z + μ

has linearly dependent normally distributed elements, a mean vector of μ and a covariance matrix of

Σ' = L × LT

where LT is the transpose of L in which the rows and columns are switched.
We got as far as deducing the characteristic function and the probability density function of the multivariate normal distribution, leaving its cumulative distribution function and its complement aside until we'd implemented both them and the random variable itself, which we shall do in this post.

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## Every Which Way Is Normal

A few months ago we saw how we could generalise the concept of a random variable to multiple dimensions by generating random vectors rather than numbers. Specifically we took a look at the multivariate uniform distribution which governs random vectors whose elements are independently uniformly distributed.
Whilst it demonstrated that we can find multivariate versions of distribution functions such as the probability density function, the cumulative distribution function and the characteristic function, the uniform distribution is fairly trivial and so, for a more interesting example, this time we shall look at generalising the normal distribution to multiple dimensions.

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## Into The Nth Dimension

A few years ago we took a look at some of the properties of uniformly distributed random variables, whose values have equal probabilities of falling within intervals of equal width within their ranges. A simple generalisation of this are multivariate uniform distributions which govern random vectors that fall within equal volumes with equal probability.

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## A Costly Proposition

Now that we know the statistical properties of memoryless processes, being those in which the waiting time for the occurence of an event is independent of how long we have already been waiting for it, I think it would make for an interesting postscript to briefly cover how we might use them to model real world problems.

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### Gallimaufry

 AKCalc ECMA Endarkenment Turning Sixteen

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