Skip to content

Exponential Family of Distributions

This is the closed-form expression for the Sharma-Mittal entropy calculation for exponential families. The Sharma-Mittal entropy is a generalization of the Shannon, Rényi and Tsallis entropy measurements. This estimates Y using the maximum likelihood estimation and then uses the analytical formula for the exponential family.

Source Parameters, \(\theta\)

\[\theta = (\mu, \Sigma)\]

where \(\mu \in \mathbb{R}^{d}\) and \(\Sigma > 0\)

Natural Parameters, \(\eta\)

\[\eta = \left( \theta_2^{-1}\theta_1, \frac{1}{2}\theta_2^{-1} \right)\]

Expectation Parameters

\[m = \nabla F(\eta) = \left( \mu, \; \mu\mu^\top + \Sigma \right)\]

Log Normalizer, \(F(\eta)\)

Also known as the log partition function.

\[F(\eta) = \frac{1}{4} tr( \eta_1^\top \eta_2^{-1} \eta) - \frac{1}{2} \log|\eta_2| + \frac{d}{2}\log \pi\]

Gradient Log Normalizer, \(\nabla F(\eta)\)

\[\nabla F(\eta) = \left( \frac{1}{2} \eta_2^{-1}\eta_1, -\frac{1}{2} \eta_2^{-1}- \frac{1}{4}(\eta_2^{-1}-\eta_1)(\eta_2^{-1}-\eta_1)^\top \right)\]

Log Normalizer, \(F(\theta)\)

Also known as the log partition function.

\[F(\theta) = \frac{1}{2} \theta_1^\top \theta_2^{-1} \theta + \frac{1}{2} \log|\theta_2| \]

Final Entropy Calculation

\[H = F(\eta) - \langle \eta, \nabla F(\eta) \rangle\]

Resources

  • A closed-form expression for the Sharma-Mittal entropy of exponential families - Nielsen & Nock (2012) - Paper
  • Statistical exponential families: A digest with flash cards - Paper
  • The Exponential Family: Getting Weird Expectations! - Blog
  • Deep Exponential Family - Code
  • PyMEF: A Framework for Exponential Families in Python - Code | Paper