The deviate,
, associated with the lower tail probability,
, of the gamma distribution with shape parameter
and scale parameter
, is defined as the solution to
The method used is described by
Best and Roberts (1975) making use of the relationship between the gamma distribution and the
-distribution.
Let
. The required
is found from the Taylor series expansion
where
is a starting approximation
- ,
- ,
- ,
- ,
- .
For most values of
and
the starting value
is used, where
is the deviate associated with a lower tail probability of
for the standard Normal distribution.
For large
values, when
,
is found to be a better starting value than
.
Seven terms of the Taylor series are used to refine the starting approximation, repeating the process if necessary until the required accuracy is obtained.
The input arrays to this function are designed to allow maximum flexibility in the supply of vector arguments by re-using elements of any arrays that are shorter than the total number of evaluations required. See
Section 2.6 in the
G01 Chapter Introduction for further information.
Best D J and Roberts D E (1975) Algorithm AS 91. The percentage points of the distribution Appl. Statist. 24 385–388
-
1:
– Integer
Input
-
On entry: the length of the array
tail.
Constraint:
.
-
2:
– const Nag_TailProbability
Input
-
On entry: indicates which tail the supplied probabilities represent. For
, for
:
- The lower tail probability, i.e., .
- The upper tail probability, i.e., .
Constraint:
or , for .
-
3:
– Integer
Input
-
On entry: the length of the array
p.
Constraint:
.
-
4:
– const double
Input
-
On entry:
, the probability of the required gamma distribution as defined by
tail with
,
.
Constraints:
- if , ;
- otherwise .
Where and .
-
5:
– Integer
Input
-
On entry: the length of the array
a.
Constraint:
.
-
6:
– const double
Input
-
On entry: , the first parameter of the required gamma distribution with , .
Constraint:
, for .
-
7:
– Integer
Input
-
On entry: the length of the array
b.
Constraint:
.
-
8:
– const double
Input
-
On entry: , the second parameter of the required gamma distribution with , .
Constraint:
, for .
-
9:
– double
Input
-
On entry: the relative accuracy required by you in the results. If
g01tfc is entered with
tol greater than or equal to
or less than
(see
X02AJC), the value of
is used instead.
-
10:
– double
Output
-
Note: the dimension,
dim, of the array
g
must be at least
.
On exit: , the deviates for the gamma distribution.
-
11:
– Integer
Output
-
Note: the dimension,
dim, of the array
ivalid
must be at least
.
On exit:
indicates any errors with the input arguments, with
- No error.
- On entry, invalid value supplied in tail when calculating .
- On entry, invalid value for .
- On entry, , or, , or, .
- is too close to or to enable the result to be calculated.
- The solution has failed to converge. The result may be a reasonable approximation.
-
12:
– NagError *
Input/Output
-
The NAG error argument (see
Section 7 in the Introduction to the NAG Library CL Interface).
In most cases the relative accuracy of the results should be as specified by
tol. However, for very small values of
or very small values of
there may be some loss of accuracy.
None.
This example reads lower tail probabilities for several gamma distributions, and calculates and prints the corresponding deviates until the end of data is reached.