Inverse-chi-squared Distribution - Definition

Definition

The inverse-chi-squared distribution (or inverted-chi-square distribution ) is the probability distribution of a random variable whose multiplicative inverse (reciprocal) has a chi-squared distribution. It is also often defined as the distribution of a random variable whose reciprocal divided by its degrees of freedom is a chi-squared distribution. That is, if has the chi-squared distribution with degrees of freedom, then according to the first definition, has the inverse-chi-squared distribution with degrees of freedom; while according to the second definition, has the inverse-chi-squared distribution with degrees of freedom. Only the first definition will usually be covered in this article.

The first definition yields a probability density function given by

f_1(x; \nu) = \frac{2^{-\nu/2}}{\Gamma(\nu/2)}\,x^{-\nu/2-1} e^{-1/(2 x)},

while the second definition yields the density function

f_2(x; \nu) = \frac{(\nu/2)^{\nu/2}}{\Gamma(\nu/2)} x^{-\nu/2-1} e^{-\nu/(2 x)} .

In both cases, and is the degrees of freedom parameter. Further, is the gamma function. Both definitions are special cases of the scaled-inverse-chi-squared distribution. For the first definition the variance of the distribution is while for the second definition .

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