Title
Multivariate Mixtures of Normal Distributions: Properties, Random Vector Generation, Fitting, and as Models of Market Daily Changes.
Abstract
<P>Mixtures of normal distributions provide a useful modeling extension of the normal distribution-both univariate and multivariate. Unlike the normal distribution, mixtures of normals can capture the kurtosis fat tails and nonzero skewness often necessary for accurately modeling a variety of real-world variables. An efficient analytical Monte Carlo method is proposed for considering multivariate mixtures of normal distributions having arbitrary covariance matrices. The method consists of a linear transformation of a multivariate normal having a computed covariance matrix into the desired multivariate mixture of normal distributions. The computed covariance matrix is derived analytically. Among the properties of the multivariate mixture of normals that we demonstrate is that any linear combination of mixtures of normal distributions is also a mixture of normal distributions. Methods of fitting mixtures of normal distributions are briefly discussed. A motivating example carried throughout this paper is the use of multivariate mixtures of normals for modeling daily changes in market variables.</P>
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1287/ijoc.2014.0616
INFORMS Journal on Computing
Keywords
Field
DocType
em algorithm,monte carlo simulation
Elliptical distribution,Matrix normal distribution,Mathematical optimization,Multivariate stable distribution,Multivariate statistics,Multivariate normal distribution,Normal-Wishart distribution,Scatter matrix,Mathematics,Matrix t-distribution
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
27
2
1091-9856
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.39
7
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jin Wang183.50
Michael R. Taaffe26417.75