English

Simulating from a gamma distribution with small shape parameter

Computation 2015-04-08 v3 Statistics Theory Statistics Theory

Abstract

Simulating from a gamma distribution with small shape parameter is a challenging problem. Towards an efficient method, we obtain a limiting distribution for a suitably normalized gamma distribution when the shape parameter tends to zero. Then this limiting distribution provides insight to the construction of a new, simple, and highly efficient acceptance--rejection algorithm. Comparisons based on acceptance rates show that the proposed procedure is more efficient than existing acceptance--rejection methods.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1302.1884,
  title  = {Simulating from a gamma distribution with small shape parameter},
  author = {Chuanhai Liu and Ryan Martin and Nick Syring},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.1884},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:22:52.463Z