# Pymc3 - Sampling from a categorical distribution

I've been experimenting with PyMC3 - I've used it for building regression models before, but I want to better understand how to deal with categorical data.

However, I think I'm misunderstanding how the Categorical distribution is meant to be used in PyMC. In order to test out using the distribution, I'm using the Categorical distribution to simulate a biased coin. When I run the following code:



import pymc3

with pymc3.Model() as model:
category = pymc3.Categorical(name='category',
p=np.array([0.25]))
trace = pymc3.sample(20, step=pymc3.Metropolis())
print(trace['category'])



I expect the trace to consist of numbers from the set {0, 1}, where the values are sampled from a Bernoulli distribution with p = 0.25.

However, the code above prints the following: [ 0 -1 -2 -2 -2 -3 -4 -4 -4 -5 -5 -6 -7 -7 -6 -8 -8 -7 -6 -6]

It seems like I am misunderstanding something, as these numbers are not even in the support of the distribution that I am attempting to simulate.

Am I mistaken about the format that p takes? Am I accessing the results incorrectly? Help me understand what's going on here. Thanks in advance for the help!

• Reading the code for Categorical, it states: $p > 0, \sum p = 1$. When I make p=np.array([0.75, 0.25]) sometimes it works, (e.g., [1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0) and sometimes I get a theano error: IndexError: index out of bounds Apply node that caused the error: Subtensor{int64}(TensorConstant{[ 0.75 0.25]}, ScalarFromTensor.0) – inversion Sep 7 '15 at 14:52
• Right, I've seen that error behavior too - that, combined with another SE answer I saw, is the reason I was trying out setting p = [0.25] instead of p = [0.25, 0.75]. However, for me I seem to get that error any time $\sum p = 1$, I've yet to get it to produce the results you're describing. – Louis Cialdella Sep 7 '15 at 15:12
• If I start a fresh kernel, it works. If I try to run again, I get the error. From what I can tell from the Categorical code, it will always return 0 if p doesn't sum to 1. – inversion Sep 7 '15 at 15:23