Inverse-Wishart distribution
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In statistics, the inverse Wishart distribution, also called the inverted Wishart distribution, is a probability density function defined on matrices. In Bayesian statistics it is used as the conjugate for the covariance matrix of a multivariate normal distribution.
We say follows an inverse Wishart distribution, denoted as , if its probability density function is written as follows:
where is a matrix. The matrix is assumed to be positive definite.
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[edit] Theorems
[edit] Distribution of the inverse of a Wishart-distributed matrix
If and is p * p, then has an inverse Wishart distribution with probability density function:
- .
where and is the multivariate gamma function.[1]
[edit] Marginal and conditional distributions from an inverse Wishart-distributed matrix
Suppose has an inverse Wishart distribution. Partition the matrices and conformably with each other
where and are matrices, then we have
i) is independent of and , where is the Schur complement of in ;
ii) ;
iii) , where is a matrix normal distribution;
iv)
[edit] Conjugate distribution
Suppose we wish to make inference about a covariance matrix whose prior has a distribution. If the observations are independent p-variate gaussian variables drawn from a distribution, then the conditional distribution has a distribution, where is n times the sample covariance matrix.
Because the prior and posterior distributions are the same family, we say the inverse Wishart distribution is conjugate to the multivariate Gaussian.
[edit] Moments
The following is based on Press, S. J. (1982) "Applied Multivariate Analysis", 2nd ed. (Dover Publications, New York), after reparameterizing the degree of freedom to be consistent with the p.d.f. definition above.
The mean:
The variance of each element of :
The variance of the diagonal uses the same formula as above with i = j, which simplifies to:
[edit] Related distributions
A univariate specialization of the inverse-Wishart distribution is the inverse-gamma distribution. With p = 1 (i.e. univariate) and α = m / 2, and the probability density function of the inverse-Wishart distribution becomes
i.e., the inverse-gamma distribution, where is the ordinary Gamma function.
A generalization is the normal-inverse-Wishart distribution.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Kanti V. Mardia, J. T. Kent and J. M. Bibby (1979). Multivariate Analysis. Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-471250-9.