Multiplying two matrices of probabilities with different sizes.

Hi guys,

I have two matrices, with different sizes,that represents the probabilities of occurrence for two independent events. I want to create a new matrix that represent the probability of occurrence for these two events together. I tried multiplying the matrices,but the sum of the probabilities did not produce 1.

any Ideas? this is the code :

 attributesize=4;
FileNumber=10;
BSTotal=7;
Files=exprnd(1,attributesize,FileNumber); 
Files=Files./repmat(sum(Files,1),attributesize,1);
BS=exprnd(1,BSTotal,attributesize);
BS=BS./repmat(sum(BS,2),1,attributesize);
R= BS*Files;

[madhan ravi]

Could you upload your code?

[Walter Roberson]

Are they 2D matrices, or are they vectors?

[Haya A]

there are 2D matrices.

[Torsten]

Your matrices contain random numbers from an exponential distribution. What makes you think they contain probabilities of occurence of a certain event ?

And why probabilitie s ? The occurence of an event has one unique probability.

[Haya A]

I'm generating random probabilities of occurrence for each attributes, or feature, and the sum of all probabilities are 1. I want to calculate the probability that certain file x with the probability , for example 0.23, for feature m, will be requested by user y with certain probability to the same feature. I want to do it for all.

Answer 1

[Kaushik Lakshminarasimhan]

I don't think there is anything wrong with your code. What is wrong is your interpretation of the outcome of multiplying your matrices.

Each entry of R denotes the probability that the file actually contains the attribute that the user requests. Specifically, R(i,j) denotes the probability that file number j contains the attribute that user number i requested. This number need not be 1. Also, the sum of columns or sum of rows of R need not be 1 --- the sums are not even probability values because they represent a sum of probabilities of events that are not mutually exclusive.

[Haya A]

Yes, I understand that. But I am trying to generate random requests for these files with R probabilities using randsrc function, and I can't do that if the sum of columns or rows is not 1. do you have suggestion?