Extension Of Dale's Moment Conditions With Application To The Wright–fisher Model

Abstract

Dale's necessary and sufficient conditions for an array to contain the joint moments for some probability distribution on the unit simplex in R² are extended to the unit simplex in R ^d . These conditions are then used in a computational method, based on linear programming, to evaluate the stationary distribution for the diffusion approximation of the Wright–Fisher model in population genetics. The computational method uses a characterization of the diffusion through an adjoint relation between the diffusion operator and its stationary distribution. Application of this adjoint relation to a set of functions in the domain of the generator leads to one set of constraints for the linear program involving the moments of the stationary distribution. The extension of Dale's conditions on the moments add another set of linear conditions and the linear program is solved to obtain bounds on numerical quantities of interest. Numerical illustrations are given to illustrate the accuracy of the method.

^#This research is partially supported by NSF under grant DMS 9803490.

Keywords:

• Dale moment conditions
• Wright–Fisher model
• Stationary distribution
• Linear programming
• Moments
• Computational probability

Acknowledgments

Notes

^#This research is partially supported by NSF under grant DMS 9803490.