My Math Forum Maximal entropy distribution

 January 11th, 2017, 08:52 AM #1 Newbie   Joined: Dec 2016 From: US Posts: 6 Thanks: 0 Maximal entropy distribution What is the maximal entropy distribution for a positive random variable for which we know the first and second moment? $\displaystyle X>0$ $\displaystyle E[X]=a$ $\displaystyle E[X^2]=4a^2$
 January 11th, 2017, 10:15 AM #2 Senior Member   Joined: Apr 2014 From: Glasgow Posts: 1,988 Thanks: 646 Math Focus: Physics, mathematical modelling, numerical and computational solutions I have no idea, but this site might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximu...y_distribution Discrete version Suppose $\displaystyle S = \{x_1,x_2,...\}$ is a (finite or infinite) discrete subset of the reals and we choose to specify n functions $\displaystyle f_1,...,f_n$ and n numbers $\displaystyle a_1,...,a_n$. We consider the class C of all discrete random variables X which are supported on S and which satisfy the n conditions $\displaystyle {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} (f_{j}(X))=a_{j}\quad {\mbox{ for }}j=1,\ldots ,n}$ If there exists a member of C which assigns positive probability to all members of S and if there exists a maximum entropy distribution for C, then this distribution has the following shape: $\displaystyle {\displaystyle \operatorname {Pr} (X=x_{k})=c\exp \left(\sum _{j=1}^{n}\lambda _{j}f_{j}(x_{k})\right)\quad {\mbox{ for }}k=1,2,\ldots }$ where the constants c and λj have to be determined so that the sum of the probabilities is 1 and the above conditions for the expected values are satisfied. Conversely, if constants c and λj like this can be found, then the above distribution is indeed the maximum entropy distribution for our class C.

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