Mixture Density Function

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A Mixture Density Function is a mixture function that is based on the addition of two or more density functions.



References

2013

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixture_density
    • … In cases where each of the underlying random variables is continuous, the outcome variable will also be continuous and its probability density function is sometimes referred to as a mixture density. The cumulative distribution function (and the probability density function if it exists) can be expressed as a convex combination (i.e. a weighted sum, with non-negative weights that sum to 1) of other distribution functions and density functions. The individual distributions that are combined to form the mixture distribution are called the mixture components, and the probabilities (or weights) associated with each component are called the mixture weights. The number of components in mixture distribution is often restricted to being finite, although in some cases the components may be countable. More general cases (i.e. an uncountable set of component distributions), as well as the countable case, are treated under the title of compound distributions.

      A distinction needs to be made between a random variable whose distribution function or density is the sum of a set of components (i.e. a mixture distribution) and a random variable whose value is the sum of the values of two or more underlying random variables, in which case the distribution is given by the convolution operator. As an example, the sum of two normally-distributed random variables, each with different means, will still be a normal distribution. On the other hand, a mixture density created as a mixture of two normal distributions with different means will have two peaks provided that the two means are far enough apart, showing that this distribution is radically different from a normal distribution.