Random variate generation for multivariate unimodal densities
ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS)
Bayesian finite mixtures with an unknown number of components: The allocation sampler
Statistics and Computing
GNU Scientific Library Reference Manual - Third Edition
GNU Scientific Library Reference Manual - Third Edition
Computational Statistics & Data Analysis
Statistics and Computing
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Within the context of mixture modeling, the normal distribution is typically used as the components distribution. However, if a cluster is skewed or heavy tailed, then the normal distribution will be inefficient and many may be needed to model a single cluster. In this paper, we present an attempt to solve this problem. We define a cluster, in the absence of further information, to be a group of data which can be modeled by a unimodal density function.Hence, our intention is to use a family of univariate distribution functions, to replace the normal, for which the only constraint is unimodality. With this aim, we devise a new family of nonparametric unimodal distributions, which has large support over the space of univariate unimodal distributions.The difficult aspect of the Bayesian model is to construct a suitable MCMC algorithm to sample from the correct posterior distribution. The key will be the introduction of strategic latent variables and the use of the Product Space view of Reversible Jump methodology.