Multinomial distribution
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Probability mass function |
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Cumulative distribution function |
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Parameters | n > 0 number of trials (integer) event probabilities (Σpi = 1) |
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Support | |
Probability mass function (pmf) | |
Cumulative distribution function (cdf) | |
Mean | E{Xi} = npi |
Median | |
Mode | |
Variance | Var(Xi) = npi(1 − pi) Cov(Xi,Xj) = − npipj () |
Skewness | |
Excess kurtosis | |
Entropy | |
Moment-generating function (mgf) | |
Characteristic function |
In probability theory, the multinomial distribution is a generalization of the binomial distribution.
The binomial distribution is the probability distribution of the number of "successes" in n independent Bernoulli trials, with the same probability of "success" on each trial. In a multinomial distribution, each trial results in exactly one of some fixed finite number k of possible outcomes, with probabilities p1, ..., pk (so that pi ≥ 0 for i = 1, ..., k and ), and there are n independent trials. Then let the random variables Xi indicate the number of times outcome number i was observed over the n trials. follows a multinomial distribution with parameters n and p, where p = (p1, ..., pk).
Contents |
[edit] Specification
[edit] Probability mass function
The probability mass function of the multinomial distribution is:
for non-negative integers x1, ..., xk.
[edit] Properties
The expected value is
The covariance matrix is as follows. Each diagonal entry is the variance of a binomially distributed random variable, and is therefore
The off-diagonal entries are the covariances:
for i, j distinct.
All covariances are negative because for fixed N, an increase in one component of a multinomial vector requires a decrease in another component.
This is a k × k nonnegative-definite matrix of rank k − 1.
The off-diagonal entries of the corresponding correlation matrix are
Note that the sample size drops out of this expression.
Each of the k components separately has a binomial distribution with parameters n and pi, for the appropriate value of the subscript i.
The support of the multinomial distribution is the set : Its number of elements is
the number of n-combinations of a multiset with k types, or multiset coefficient.
[edit] Related distributions
- When k = 2, the multinomial distribution is the binomial distribution.
- The Dirichlet distribution is the conjugate prior of the multinomial in Bayesian statistics.
- Multivariate Polya distribution
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] References
Evans, Merran; Nicholas Hastings, Brian Peacock (2000). Statistical Distributions. New York: Wiley, 134-136. 3rd ed.. ISBN 0-471-37124-6.