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Gaussian total variation

Source: R/gaussian_tv.R
gaussian_tv.Rd

Computes the total variation (TV) between two multivariate Gaussian distributions \(f_1,f_2\): $$\mathrm{TV}(f_1, f_2) = \tfrac{1}{2} \int_{\mathbb{R}^p} \lvert f_1(x) - f_2(x) \rvert \, dx.$$ The value ranges from 0 (identical distributions) to 1 (no overlap).

Usage

gaussian_tv(
  mean1,
  mean2,
  Sigma1,
  Sigma2,
  method = c("auto", "mc", "cubature"),
  n = 10000,
  tol_equal = 1e-06,
  eps = 1e-06
)

Arguments

mean1, mean2

[numeric(p)]
The mean vectors.

Sigma1, Sigma2

[matrix(nrow = p, ncol = p)]
The covariance matrices.

method

[character(1)]
Computation method. One of:

  • "auto": use closed-form formula when covariances are equal, otherwise use "cubature" for \(p \le 2\) and "mc" for higher dimensions.

  • "mc": estimate via Monte Carlo importance sampling from the mixture \(0.5 (f_1 + f_2)\).

  • "cubature": compute overlap via adaptive cubature integration over a bounding box, then convert to TV. Exact but slow for \(p \ge 2\).

n

[integer(1)]
Number of Monte Carlo samples to draw.

tol_equal

[numeric(1)]
Numerical tolerance used to decide whether Sigma1 and Sigma2 are considered equal (enabling the closed-form formula in "auto" mode).

eps

[numeric(1)]
Only used when method = "cubature". Specifies the total probability mass allowed to lie outside the integration hyper-rectangle across all dimensions. This determines the numerical integration bounds: the function chooses limits so that the probability of a point from either Gaussian falling outside the box is at most eps. The bound is split evenly across dimensions via a union bound, so the per-dimension tail probability is approximately eps / p. Smaller values produce wider bounds (slower but more accurate integration), while larger values yield narrower bounds (faster but potentially less accurate).

Value

The total variation in [0, 1].

See also

Other simulation helpers: Simulator, correlated_regressors(), ddirichlet_cpp(), dmixnorm_cpp(), dmvnorm_cpp(), dtnorm_cpp(), dwishart_cpp(), simulate_markov_chain()

Examples

### univariate case
mean1 <- 0
mean2 <- 1
Sigma1 <- Sigma2 <- matrix(1)
gaussian_tv(mean1, mean2, Sigma1, Sigma2)
#> [1] 0.3829249

### bivariate case
mean1 <- c(0, 0)
mean2 <- c(1, 1)
Sigma1 <- matrix(c(1, 0.2, 0.2, 1), ncol = 2)
Sigma2 <- matrix(c(1.5, -0.3, -0.3, 1), ncol = 2)
gaussian_tv(mean1, mean2, Sigma1, Sigma2, method = "mc", n = 1e3)
#> [1] 0.5352511
#> attr(,"se")
#> [1] 0.008996084