Uniformly sampling on hyperplanes - c

Question

Given the vector size N, I want to generate a vector <s1,s2, ..., sn> that s1+s2+...+sn = S.
Known 0<S<1 and si < S. Also such vectors generated should be uniformly distributed.
Any code in C that helps explain would be great!

Answer 1

The code here seems to do the trick, though it's rather complex.
I would probably settle for a simpler rejection-based algorithm, namely: pick an orthonormal basis in n-dimensional space starting with the hyperplane's normal vector. Transform each of the points (S,0,0,0..0), (0,S,0,0..0) into that basis and store the minimum and maximum along each of the basis vectors. Sample uniformly each component in the new basis, except for the first one (the normal vector), which is always S, then transform back to the original space and check if the constraints are satisfied. If they are not, sample again.
P.S. I think this is more of a maths question, actually, could be a good idea to ask at http://maths.stackexchange.com or http://stats.stackexchange.com

Answer 2

[I'll skip "hyper-" prefix for simplicity]
One of possible ideas: generate many uniformly distributed points in some enclosing volume and project them on the target part of plane.
To get uniform distribution the volume must be shaped like the part of plane but with added margins along plane normal.
To uniformly generate points in such volumewe can enclose it in a cube and reject everything outside of the volume.
select margin, let's take margin=S for simplicity (once margin is positive it affects only performance)
generate a point in cube [-M,S+M]x[-M,S+M]x[-M,S+M]
if distance to the plane is more than M, reject the point and go to #2
project the point on the plane
check that projection falls into [0,S]x[0,S]x[0,S], if not - reject and go to #2
add this point to the resulting set and go to #2 is you need more points

Answer 3

The problem can be mapped to that of sampling on linear polytopes for which the common approaches are Monte Carlo methods, Random Walks, and hit-and-run methods (see https://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume19/18-158/18-158.pdf for examples a short comparison). It is related to linear programming, and can be extended to manifolds.
There is also the analysis of polytopes in compositional data analysis, e.g. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023/A:1023818214614.pdf, which provide an invertible transformation between the plane and the polytope that can be used for sampling.
If you are working on low dimensions, you can use also rejection sampling. This means you first sample on the plane containing the polytope (defined by your inequalities). This later method is easy to implement (and wasteful, of course), the GNU Octave (I let the author of the question re-implement in C) code below is an example.
The first requirement is to get vector orthogonal to the hyperplane. For a sum of N variables this is n = (1,...,1). The second requirement is a point on the plane. For your example that could be p = (S,...,S)/N.
Now any point on the plane satisfies n^T * (x - p) = 0
we assume also that x_i >= 0
With these given you compute an orthonormal basis on the plane (the nullity of the vector n) and then create random combination on that bases. Finally you map back to the original space and apply your constraints on the generated samples.
# Example in 3D
dim = 3;
S = 1;
n = ones(dim, 1); # perpendicular vector
p = S * ones(dim, 1) / dim;
# null-space of the perpendicular vector (transposed, i.e. row vector)
# this generates a basis in the plane
V = null (n.');
# These steps are just to reduce the amount of samples that are rejected
# we build a tight bounding box
bb = S * eye(dim); # each column is a corner of the constrained region
# project on the null-space
w_bb = V \ (bb - repmat(p, 1, dim));
wmin = min (w_bb(:));
wmax = max (w_bb(:));
# random combinations and map back
nsamples = 1e3;
w = wmin + (wmax - wmin) * rand(dim - 1, nsamples);
x = V * w + p;
# mask the points inside the polytope
msk = true(1, nsamples);
for i = 1:dim
msk &= (x(i,:) >= 0);
endfor
x_in = x(:, msk); # inside the polytope (your samples)
x_out = x(:, !msk); # outside the polytope
# plot the results
scatter3 (x(1,:), x(2,:), x(3,:), 8, double(msk), 'filled');
hold on
plot3(bb(1,:), bb(2,:), bb(3,:), 'xr')
axis image