Kent distribution

Abstract: Summary. Compositional data can be transformed to directional data by the square-root transformation and then modelled by using distributions defined on the hypersphere. One advantage of this approach is that zero components are catered for naturally in the models. The Kent distribution for directional data is a good candidate model because it has a sufficiently general covariance structure. We propose a new regression model which models the mean direction of the Kent distribution as a function of a vector of covariates. Our estimators can be regarded as asymptotic maximum likelihood estimators. We show that these estimators perform well and are suitable for typical compositional data sets, including those with some zero components.

Abstract: In an earlier paper Kume & Wood (2005) showed how the normalizing constant of the Fisher– Bingham distribution on a sphere can be approximated with high accuracy using a univariate saddlepoint density approximation. In this sequel, we extend the approach to a more general setting and derive saddlepoint approximations for the normalizing constants of multicomponent Fisher– Bingham distributions on Cartesian products of spheres, and Fisher–Bingham distributions on Stiefel manifolds. In each case, the approximation for the normalizing constant is essentially a multivariate saddlepoint density approximation for the joint distribution of a set of quadratic forms in normal variables. Both first-order and second-order saddlepoint approximations are considered. Computational algorithms, numerical results and theoretical properties of the approximations are presented. In the challenging high-dimensional settings considered in this paper the saddlepoint approximations perform very well in all examples considered. Some key words: Directional data; Fisher matrix distribution; Kent distribution; Orientation statistics.

Abstract: We define a distribution on the unit sphere $$\mathbb {S}^{d-1}$$ called the elliptically symmetric angular Gaussian distribution. This distribution, which to our knowledge has not been studied before, is a subfamily of the angular Gaussian distribution closely analogous to the Kent subfamily of the general Fisher–Bingham distribution. Like the Kent distribution, it has ellipse-like contours, enabling modelling of rotational asymmetry about the mean direction, but it has the additional advantages of being simple and fast to simulate from, and having a density and hence likelihood that is easy and very quick to compute exactly. These advantages are especially beneficial for computationally intensive statistical methods, one example of which is a parametric bootstrap procedure for inference for the directional mean that we describe.

Abstract: Mocapy++ is a toolkit for parameter learning and inference in dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs). It supports a wide range of DBN architectures and probability distributions, including distributions from directional statistics (the statistics of angles, directions and orientations). The program package is freely available under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) from SourceForge http://sourceforge.net/projects/mocapy . The package contains the source for building the Mocapy++ library, several usage examples and the user manual. Mocapy++ is especially suitable for constructing probabilistic models of biomolecular structure, due to its support for directional statistics. In particular, it supports the Kent distribution on the sphere and the bivariate von Mises distribution on the torus. These distributions have proven useful to formulate probabilistic models of protein and RNA structure in atomic detail.