Package {svmf}


Type: Package
Title: The Scaled von Mises-Fisher Distribution
Version: 1.0
Date: 2026-06-11
Author: Michail Tsagris [aut, cre]
Maintainer: Michail Tsagris <mtsagris@uoc.gr>
Depends: R (≥ 4.0)
Imports: Rfast, stats
Description: Functions to perform maximum likelihood estimation of and random value simulation from the scaled von Mises-Fisher distribution. The distribution is elliptical symmetric and can be applied to spherical and hyper-spherical data. The reference paper is Scealy J.L. and Wood A.T.A. (2019), <doi:10.1080/01621459.2019.1585249>.
License: GPL-2 | GPL-3 [expanded from: GPL (≥ 2)]
NeedsCompilation: no
Packaged: 2026-06-11 13:06:51 UTC; mtsag
Repository: CRAN
Date/Publication: 2026-06-18 14:20:02 UTC

The Scaled von Mises–Fisher Distribution

Description

Functions to perform maximum likelihood estimation of and random value simulation from the scaled von Mises–Fisher distribution. For more information see Scealy and Wood (2019).

Details

Package: svmf
Type: Package
Version: 1.0
Date: 2026-06-11

Maintainers

Michail Tsagris <mtsagris@uoc.gr>.

Author(s)

Michail Tsagris mtsagris@uoc.gr

References

Scealy J.L. and Wood A.T.A. (2019). Scaled von Mises-Fisher distributions and regression models for paleomagnetic directional data. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 114(528): 1547–1560.


Random value simulation from the scaled von Mises–Fisher distribution

Description

Random value simulation from the scaled von Mises–Fisher distribution.

Usage

rsvmf(n, mu, a, kappa, Gamma = NULL)

Arguments

n

The sample size.

mu

The mean direction.

a

The vector of alphas.

kappa

The concentration parameter.

Gamma

The matrix with the \gamma vectors.

Value

A matrix with the simulated data.

Author(s)

Michail Tsagris.

R implementation and documentation: Michail Tsagris mtsagris@uoc.gr.

References

Scealy J.L. and Wood A.T.A. (2019). Scaled von Mises-Fisher distributions and regression models for paleomagnetic directional data. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 114(528): 1547–1560.

See Also

svmf.mle

Examples

mu <- rnorm(3)
mu <- mu / sqrt( sum(mu^2) )
a <- c(1, 3, 1/3)
y <- rsvmf(1000, mu, a, 20)
svmf.mle(y)

Maximum likelihood estimation of the scaled von Mises–Fisher distribution

Description

Maximum likelihood estimation of the scaled von Mises–Fisher distribution.

Usage

svmf.mle(y, a1 = 1, maxit_outer = 100, maxit_V = 500, tol = 1e-6)

Arguments

y

A numerical matrix with the (hyper-)spherical observations.

a1

The value of the \alpha_1 parameter is set to 1 , as suggested by Scealy and Wood (2019).

maxit_outer

The maximum number of iterations to perform.

maxit_V

The maximum number of iterations to perform to estimate the V matrix.

tol

The tolerance value until convergence of the log-likelihood.

Value

A list including:

mu

The estimated mean direction.

kappa

The estimated concentration parameter.

a

The estimated vector of alphas, the first value is 1, by default.

loglik

the log-likelihood value.

Gamma

The estimated matrix with the \gamma vectors. The first column of this matrix is the mean direction.

Author(s)

Michail Tsagris.

R implementation and documentation: Michail Tsagris mtsagris@uoc.gr.

References

Scealy J.L. and Wood A.T.A. (2019). Scaled von Mises-Fisher distributions and regression models for paleomagnetic directional data. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 114(528): 1547–1560.

See Also

rsvmf

Examples

mu <- rnorm(3)
mu <- mu / sqrt( sum(mu^2) )
a <- c(1, 3, 1/3)
y <- rsvmf(1000, mu, a, 20)
svmf.mle(y)