# Gibbs sampler examples in R [closed]

How can I implement Gibbs sampler for the posterior distribution, and estimating the marginal posterior distribution by making histogram?

## closed as off-topic by Xi'an, mdewey, Juho Kokkala, kjetil b halvorsen, Michael ChernickJun 7 '18 at 23:18

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Problem

Suppose $Y \sim \text{N}(\text{mean} = \mu, \text{Var} = \frac{1}{\tau})$.

Based on a sample, obtain the posterior distributions of $\mu$ and $\tau$ using the Gibbs sampler.

Notation

$\mu$ = population mean

$\tau$ = population precision (1 / variance)

$n$ = sample size

$\bar{y}$ = sample mean

$s^2$ = sample variance

Gibbs sampler

[Casella, G. & George, E. I. (1992). Explaining the Gibbs Sampler. The American Statistician, 46, 167–174.]

At iteration $i$ ($i = 1, \dots, N$):

• sample $\mu^{(i)}$ from $f(\mu \,|\, \tau^{(i - 1)}, \text{data})$ (see below)
• sample $\tau^{(i)}$ from $f(\tau \,|\, \mu^{(i)}, \text{data})$ (see below)

The theory ensures that after a sufficiently large number of iterations, $T$, the set $\{(\mu^{(𝑖)}, \tau^{(𝑖)} ) : i = T+1, \dots, 𝑁 \}$ can be seen as a random sample from the joint posterior distribution.

Priors

$f(\mu, \tau) = f(\mu) \times f(\tau)$, with

$f(\mu) \propto 1$

$f(\tau) \propto \tau^{-1}$

Conditional posterior for the mean, given the precision $$(\mu \,|\, \tau, \text{data}) \sim \text{N}\Big(\bar{y}, \frac{1}{n\tau}\Big)$$

Conditional posterior for the precision, given the mean $$(\tau \,|\, \mu, \text{data}) \sim \text{Gam}\Big(\frac{n}{2}, \frac{2}{(n-1)s^2 + n(\mu - \bar{y})^2} \Big)$$

(quick) R implementation

# summary statistics of sample
n    <- 30
ybar <- 15
s2   <- 3

# sample from the joint posterior (mu, tau | data)
mu     <- rep(NA, 11000)
tau    <- rep(NA, 11000)
T      <- 1000    # burnin
tau[1] <- 1  # initialisation
for(i in 2:11000) {
mu[i]  <- rnorm(n = 1, mean = ybar, sd = sqrt(1 / (n * tau[i - 1])))
tau[i] <- rgamma(n = 1, shape = n / 2, scale = 2 / ((n - 1) * s2 + n * (mu[i] - ybar)^2))
}
mu  <- mu[-(1:T)]   # remove burnin
tau <- tau[-(1:T)] # remove burnin




hist(mu)
hist(tau)


• +1 This is the way to answer an apparently code-specific question: provide the theoretical explanation (which makes it on-topic here) and then (to satisfy the OP) give the code as well. Nice to see you back! – whuber Mar 10 '17 at 15:06
• Thanks for the explanation. Is there a way I can learn coding for all statistical algorithm. I am a student and I want to learn some coding for R so that I can solve my problem. – sabuj bhowmick Mar 16 '17 at 10:56