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Location and scale behaviour of the quantiles of a natural exponential family

Abstract

Let P0P_0 be a probability on the real line generating a natural exponential family (Pt)tR(P_t)_{t\in \mathbb {R}}. Fix α\alpha in $ (0,1).$ We show that the property that Pt((,t))αPt((,t])P_t((-\infty,t)) \leq \alpha \leq P_t((-\infty,t]) for all tt implies that there exists a number μα\mu_\alpha such that P0P_0 is the Gaussian distribution N(μα,1).N(\mu_{\alpha},1). In other terms, if for all tt, tt is a quantile of PtP_t associated to some threshold α(0,1)\alpha\in (0,1), then the exponential family must be Gaussian. The case α=1/2\alpha=1/2, \textit{i.e.} tt is always a median of Pt,P_t, has been considered in Letac \textit{et al.} (2018). Analogously let QQ be a measure on [0,)[0,\infty) generating a natural exponential family (Qt)t>0(Q_{-t})_{t>0}. We show that Qt([0,t1))αQt([0,t1])Q_{-t}([0,t^{-1}))\leq \alpha \leq Q_{-t}([0,t^{-1}]) for all t>0t>0 implies that there exists a number p=pα>0p=p_{\alpha}>0 such that Q(dx)xp1dx,Q(dx)\propto x^{p-1}dx, and thus QtQ_{-t} has to be a gamma distribution with parameters pp and t.t.

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