2015年3月13日星期五

up to a normalizing constant

What does it mean when it says we only know the target distribution [π(x)] up to a normalizing constant?

This means that π(x) is proportional to the p.d.f. for every value x. That is, if f(x) is the p.d.f., then there is some constant K such that
f(x) = K * π(x)
for all values of x.