Solved – How reparameterize Beta distribution

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Consider $X \sim N(\mu,\sigma)$; I can reparameterize it by $X = \epsilon\mu + \sigma; \epsilon \sim N(0,I) $

But given Beta distribution $X \sim Beta(\alpha,\beta)$; is there easy way (closed form transformation) to reparameterize $X$ with some very simple random variable (Normal, uniform )

My major goal is to do VAE such that my prior is Beta and my posterior is also Beta; so I'm thinking how to reparameterization trick for Beta. What I want to do, is instead of directly sampling from $Beta(\alpha,\beta)$ (because couldn't do backpropagation), I want first generate $\epsilon \sim \mathcal{Q}$ some easily sampled distribution, then apply some deterministic function that involves $\alpha, \beta$, such that after the transformation it follows $Beta(\alpha,\beta)$.

Best Answer

There is always the obvious inverse cdf representation: $$X=F_{\alpha,\beta}^{-1}(U)$$ where $F_{\alpha,\beta}^{-1}(\cdot)$ is the inverse cdf (quantile function) of the Beta $\mathcal Be(\alpha,\beta)$ distribution.

Otherwise, the Wikipedia page lists a large collection of connections with other standard distributions, like the Gamma and the F distributions. For integer valued $\alpha$ and $\beta$, the Beta $\mathcal Be(\alpha,\beta)$ distribution is the distribution of an order statistic of a Uniform sample.

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