# Integration and sampling: from the Gaussian integral to Walker's method

In this lecture, we relate the concepts of sampling and of integration. The connection between the two was not clearly brought out before. We then treat general methods for directly sampling non-uniform distributions. A number of very detailed texts have been written on the subject, see for example[1] .

## Sample transformation: The example of Gaussian random numbers

### Going up and down in the Gaussian integral

As an illustration of how sampling relates to integration, we consider the Gaussian integral:
$\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{dx}{\sqrt{2 \pi}} \exp(-x^2/2) = 1 .$

As we learned many years ago, we square this integral, write it down once in x and once in y:

\begin{align} \left[\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{dx}{\sqrt{2 \pi}} \exp(-x^2/2) \right]^2 & = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{dx}{\sqrt{2 \pi}} \exp(-x^2/2) \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{dy}{\sqrt{2 \pi}} \exp(-y^2/2)\\ \ldots & = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \frac{dx dy}{2 \pi} \exp[-(x^2+y^2)/2], \end{align} .
and then switch to polar coordinates
$dx dy = r dr d\phi ,$
to reach the following expression for the integral
\begin{align} \ldots & = \int_{0}^{2 \pi} \frac{d\phi}{2 \pi} \int_{0}^{\infty} r dr \exp(-r^2/2), \end{align} .
We may then perform the substitutions
$r^2/2=\Upsilon (r dr = d\Upsilon)\quad \text{and}\quad \exp(-\Upsilon) = \Psi ,$
to reach
\begin{align} \ldots & = \int_{0}^{2 \pi} \frac{d\phi}{2 \pi}\ \int_{0}^{\infty} d\Upsilon \exp(-\Upsilon)\\ \ldots & = \int_{0}^{2 \pi} \frac{d\phi}{2 \pi}\ \int_{0}^{1} d\Psi = 1. \end{align} .

In this last equation, we can compute the integrals (thus giving the value of the Gaussian integral), but we may in particular sample them: $\phi$ is a uniform random variable between 0 and 2 \pi and \Psi is a uniform random variable between 0 and 1. In the below program, we actually sample the random variables \phi and \Psi , and transform these samples in several steps back to x and y. This procedure carries the name of "sample transformation".

### Python program for the Gaussian sample transformation

Note that the substitutions are applied to the samples phi and Psi. This is also known as the Box-Muller transform.
from random import uniform
import math
import pylab

def gauss(sigma):
phi = uniform(0.0, 2.0 * math.pi)
Psi = uniform(0.0, 1.0)
Upsilon = - math.log(Psi)
r = sigma * math.sqrt(2.0 * Upsilon)
x = r * math.cos(phi)
y = r * math.sin(phi)
return x, y

listx = []; listy = []
for k in range(10000):
x, y = gauss(1.0)
listx.append(x)
listy.append(y)
list = listx + listy
pylab.figure(1)
pylab.hist(list, bins=25, normed=True)
pylab.title('Histogram Gaussian')
pylab.savefig('gaussians_histogram.png')
pylab.figure(2)
pylab.title('Correlation x,y')
pylab.axis('equal')
pylab.plot(listx,listy,'ro')
pylab.savefig('gaussians_correlations.png')
pylab.show()

 Output of the above Python program

 Here, we check that the correlations between x and y vanish.

## Other one-dimensional integrals

We now consider two other examples for the one-dimensional sample transformation. In the first example, we produce samples x with 0<x<1, distributed according to
$\pi(x)= x^\sigma$
We write the integrals as
\begin{align} \int_0^1 d\Upsilon &= \text{const} \int_0^1 dx x^\sigma \\ d\Upsilon &= \text{const} dx x^\sigma \\ \Upsilon &= \frac{\text{const}}{\sigma+1} x^{\sigma+1} \\ \Upsilon &= \frac{\text{const}}{\sigma+1} x^{\sigma+1} \\ - \log \exp(-x) & = x \\ \text{ran(0,1)}^{1/(\sigma+1)} &= x \end{align}
It follows that
$x= [ \text{ran}[0,1] ]^{1/(\sigma+1)}$
is distributed as
math
\pi(x)= x^\sigma
math.

Second example: Exponential random numbers (example already contained in the Gaussian case). \pi(x)= \exp(-x) for 0<x<\infty< math="">.

## Multi-dimensional Gaussians and the Maxwell distribution (theoretical treatment)

cc
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import pylab, random, math

ax = pylab.gca(projection='3d')
ax.set_aspect('equal')
x, y, z = [], [], []
for i in range(2000):
a, b, c = random.gauss(0.0, 1.0), random.gauss(0.0, 1.0), random.gauss(0.0, 1.0)
length = math.sqrt(a ** 2 + b ** 2 + c ** 2)
x.append(a / length)
y.append(b / length)
z.append(c / length)
pylab.plot(x, y, z, '.')
pylab.savefig('surface_sphere.png')
pylab.show()

cc
 Output of the above Python program. Three rescaled Gaussians yield an isotropic distribution in space. Download the program to generate a figure that you can look at from different angles, using your computer mouse.

# Discrete distributions

### Tower sampling (Python program and output)

import random
import pylab, bisect

def cumulative(l):
acc,  L = 0, [0]
for x in l:
acc += x
L.append(acc)
return L

class rand_tower:
L = []
def __init__(self,l):
self.L = cumulative(l)
def call(self):
u = random.uniform(0.0, self.L[-1])
return bisect.bisect_right(self.L, u) - 1

def test(n, r):
l = [ 1.0/float(i + 1.)**2 for i in range(n)]
g = rand_tower(l)
samples = [g.call() for i in range(r)]
pylab.hist(samples, bins=n, range=(-0.5,n - 0.5), normed=True)
y_vec = [l[k]/sum(l)  for k in range(n)]
pylab.plot(range(n),y_vec,'ro')
pylab.title('Tower sampling')
pylab.savefig('Tower_sampling.png')
pylab.show()

test(10, 1000000)

here is output for the above Python program..
 Comparison of Tower sampling (blue) with the theoretical result (red dots) for a discrete distribution with ten values..

## Walker's method of alias

Walker's method [2] is an ingenious algorithm for sampling an arbitrary discrete distribution of N elements in constant time per sample (after an initialization of complexity O(N) ).

### Walker's method (Naive Python code)

from random import uniform, seed,randint
import pylab

N = 5
x = [[1.0 / (k + 1), k] for k in range(N)]
x_mean = sum(y[0] for y in x) / N
for k in range(N): x[k][0] /= x_mean
for k in range(N):
print k, x[k][0]  /N
x_plus = []
x_minus = []
for z in x:
if z[0]> 1.0: x_plus.append(z)
else: x_minus.append(z)
table = []
for k in range(N - 1):
e_plus = x_plus.pop()
e_minus= x_minus.pop()
table.append((e_minus[0], e_minus[1], e_plus[1]))
e_plus[0] = e_plus[0] - (1.0 - e_minus[0])
if e_plus[0] < 1.0: x_minus.append(e_plus)
else: x_plus.append(e_plus)
if len(x_plus) > 0 : table.append((x_plus[0][0], x_plus[0][1], x_plus[0][1]))
if len(x_minus) > 0: table.append((x_minus[0][0], x_minus[0][1], x_minus[0][1]))
print table

samples = []
for k in range(1000000):
x = uniform(0.0, 1.0)
i = randint(0, N-1)
if x < table[i][0]: samples.append(table[i][1])
else: samples.append(table[i][2])
pylab.figure()
pylab.hist(samples, bins=N, range=(-0.5, N-0.5), normed=True)
pylab.title("Walker's method N= "+str(N))
pylab.show()

# References

1. ^ L. Devroye, Non-Uniform Random Variate Generation Springer 1986, p. 107 ff.cf http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/rnbookindex.html for the pdf of the entire book
2. ^ A.J. Walker, New fast method for generatlng discrete random numbers with arbitrary frequency distributions, Electronics Letters, vol. 10, pp. 127-128, 1974,
A.J. Walker, “An efflclent method for generatlng dlscrete random varlables wlth general dlstrlbutlons,” ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, vol. 3, pp. 253-256, 1977.