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On the reals $\mathbb{R}$, the maximum entropy distribution with a given mean and variance is the Gaussian distribution.

Let $\mu, \sigma > 0$. What is the maximum entropy distribution on the natural numbers $\mathbb{N} = \{0, 1 , 2, \ldots \}$ with mean $\mu$ and variance $\sigma^2$?

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    $\begingroup$ I think you need to make additional specifications for your question to make sense -- e.g. the normal (or Gaussian) distribution $N(\mu,\sigma^2)$ has maximum entropy among all real-valued distributions with specified mean $\mu$ and standard deviation $\sigma$ (cf. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_entropy_probability_distribution). $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl
    Commented Dec 10, 2013 at 10:48
  • $\begingroup$ If necessary, one can add "for median $\mu$" (or mean?). $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 10, 2013 at 18:01
  • $\begingroup$ For a given mean it should be Poisson, to be consistent with the fact/folk knowledge that this distribution arises from "complete randomness". This paper seems to verify it ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=930936&tag=1 $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 10, 2013 at 18:36
  • $\begingroup$ I edited the question to fix the mean and variance. Also: the paper that Felipe cites is available unpaywalled here: yaroslavvb.com/papers/harremoes-binomial.pdf $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 11, 2013 at 0:59
  • $\begingroup$ @FelipeOlmos: That paper maximizes entropy within some particular class which is constrained by more conditions than just the value of the mean. Without those constraints the result is geometric instead of Poisson. $\endgroup$
    – Noah Stein
    Commented Dec 11, 2013 at 1:39

2 Answers 2

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This follows (modulo any minor technical details I haven't checked) from the theory of exponential families. The main result there says that the distribution which maximizes entropy subject to constraints on moments lies in the exponential family with sufficient statistics corresponding to these moments.

More concretely, let $n$ be distributed according to the distribution $\pi$ on $\{0,1,\ldots\}$. You constrain $\pi$ to satisfy $\mathbb{E}_\pi n = \mu$ and $\mathbb{E}_\pi n^2 = \sigma^2 + \mu^2$ (using the standard relation between the variance and uncentered second moment). Then $\pi$ must be of the form \[ \pi(n) = \frac{1}{Z}\exp\left(\alpha n + \beta n^2\right)\text{ for all }n, \] where $\alpha,\beta\in\mathbb{R}$ and $Z = \sum_n \exp\left(\alpha n + \beta n^2\right)$ is the constant that ensures this distribution normalizes. (Actually we can say $\beta\leq 0$ since otherwise we'd have $Z=\infty$ and the distribution wouldn't be normalizable. Similarly $\alpha<0$ if $\beta = 0$.)

So the problem reduces to one of finding $\alpha$ and $\beta$ given $\mu$ and $\sigma^2$, i.e. we've gone from needing to find infinitely many values $\pi(n)$ to only two. In this case I have a feeling that there is no closed form for $Z$ and so finding an explicit expression for $\alpha$ and $\beta$ in terms of $\mu$ and $\sigma^2$ is unlikely. However, there are optimization techniques for "moment matching" which will let you approximate these numerically.

In the simpler case when only the mean is constrained, things work out more nicely. If you go through the same sort of procedure but without the $\beta n^2$ term, you'll get a $Z$ which you can sum explicitly and which is finite when $\alpha < 0$. You can then relate $\mu$ and $\alpha$. The result is a geometric distribution with parameter $\frac{1}{\mu}$.

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A straightforward calculation with Lagrange Multipliers gives $$p_n=e^{A+Bn+Cn^2}$$ where the three unknowns $A,B$ and $C$ are chosen to satisfy the three conditions $\sum p_n=1$, $\sum np_n=\mu$, and $\sum n^2p_n-\mu^2=\sigma^2$ .

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    $\begingroup$ I do think you could make the argument complete by proving it is indeed the global maximum by showing convexity of entropy within the restrained domain. $\endgroup$
    – Hans
    Commented Dec 11, 2013 at 3:30
  • $\begingroup$ Does the Lagrange Multipliers hold in infinite dimensional spaces? and What happens if we only put restriction on the mean? $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 4, 2023 at 9:29

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