rnegbin                 package:MASS                 R Documentation

Simulate Negative Binomial Variates

Description:

     Function to generate random outcomes from a Negative Binomial
     distribution, with mean 'mu' and variance 'mu + mu^2/theta'.

Usage:

     rnegbin(n, mu = n, theta = stop("'theta' must be specified"))

Arguments:

       n: If a scalar, the number of sample values required.  If a
          vector, 'length(n)' is the number required and 'n' is used as
          the mean vector if 'mu' is not specified. 

      mu: The vector of means.  Short vectors are recycled. 

   theta: Vector of values of the 'theta' parameter.  Short vectors are
          recycled. 

Details:

     The function uses the representation of the Negative Binomial
     distribution as a continuous mixture of Poisson distributions with
     Gamma distributed means. Unlike 'rnbinom' the index can be
     arbitrary.

Value:

     Vector of random Negative Binomial variate values.

Side Effects:

     Changes '.Random.seed' in the usual way.

Examples:

     # Negative Binomials with means fitted(fm) and theta = 4.5
     fm <- glm.nb(Days ~ ., data = quine)
     dummy <- rnegbin(fitted(fm), theta = 4.5)

