The space of convex combinations of things. Hacks for it.
Simulating uniformly from the simplex
This one is apparently “folk wisdom”.
But say I wish to simulate a vector drawn uniformly from the \(n\)-simplex.
- simulate \(n\) random uniform variables on the unit interval, \((u_1,_u_2,\dots,u_n)\)
- Sort them in decreasing order, \((u'_1,_u'_2,\dots,u'_n)\)
- The random vector is \((u'_1-0, u'_2-u'_1, u'_3-u'_2,\dots,u'_n-u'_{n-1})\)
Simulating Dirichlet distributions
See Dirichlet variables, which are distributions over the simplex. C&C gumbel max tricks.
References
Friedman, Greg. 2008. “An Elementary Illustrated Introduction to Simplicial Sets.” arXiv:0809.4221 [Math], September.
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