Efficiently generating inverse-Wishart matrices and their Cholesky factors

Abstract

This paper presents a new algorithm for generating random inverse-Wishart matrices that directly generates the Cholesky factor of the matrix without computing the factorization. Whenever parameterized in terms of a precision matrix $\Omega=\Sigma^{-1}$, or its Cholesky factor, instead of a covariance matrix $\Sigma$, the new algorithm is more efficient than the current standard algorithm.