scipy rv_continuous very slow

Question

I am using a custom function f(x) to define a custom distribution using copy's rv_continuous class. My code is

class my_pdf_gen(rv_continuous):
    def _pdf(self, x, integral):
        return f(x)/integral

where integral ensure the normalisation. I am able to create an instance of it with

my_pdf = my_pdf_gen(my_int,a = a, b = b, name = 'my pdf')

with a,b the upper and lower limit of the value's range, and my_int= scipy.integrate.quad(f, a, b)[0]. I am also able to create a random sample of data using my_pdf.rvs(my_int, size = 5), but this is very slow. (Up to 6 seconds when size=9).

I read that one should also overwrite some other methods in the class (like _ppf), but from the examples I found it isn't clear to me how to achieve it in my case.

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

I solved the problem by changing approach and using Monte Carlo's rejection sampler method

def rejection_sampler(p,xbounds,pmax):
    while True:
        x = np.random.rand(1)*(xbounds[1]-xbounds[0])+xbounds[0]
        y = np.random.rand(1)*pmax
        if y<=p(x):
            return x

where p is the probability density function, xbounds is a tuple containing the upper and lower limits of of the pdf and pmax is the maximum value of the pdf on the domain.

Monte Carlo's rejection sampler was suggested here: python: random sampling from self-defined probability function