Multivariate normal density in Python?

Question

Is there any python package that allows the efficient computation of the PDF (probability density function) of a multivariate normal distribution?

It doesn\'t seem to be

Answer 1

I just made one for my purposes so I though I'd share. It's built using "the powers" of numpy, on the formula of the non degenerate case from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_normal_distribution and it aso validates the input.

Here is the code along with a sample run

from numpy import *
import math
# covariance matrix
sigma = matrix([[2.3, 0, 0, 0],
           [0, 1.5, 0, 0],
           [0, 0, 1.7, 0],
           [0, 0,   0, 2]
          ])
# mean vector
mu = array([2,3,8,10])

# input
x = array([2.1,3.5,8, 9.5])

def norm_pdf_multivariate(x, mu, sigma):
    size = len(x)
    if size == len(mu) and (size, size) == sigma.shape:
        det = linalg.det(sigma)
        if det == 0:
            raise NameError("The covariance matrix can't be singular")

        norm_const = 1.0/ ( math.pow((2*pi),float(size)/2) * math.pow(det,1.0/2) )
        x_mu = matrix(x - mu)
        inv = sigma.I        
        result = math.pow(math.e, -0.5 * (x_mu * inv * x_mu.T))
        return norm_const * result
    else:
        raise NameError("The dimensions of the input don't match")

print norm_pdf_multivariate(x, mu, sigma)