This is an old version, view current version.

18.3 Functions Accessing the Log Probability Accumulator

Functions whose names end in _lp are allowed to use sampling statements and target += statements; other functions are not. Because of this access, their use is restricted to the transformed parameters and model blocks.

Here is an example of a function to assign standard normal priors to a vector of coefficients, along with a center and scale, and return the translated and scaled coefficients; see the reparameterization section for more information on efficient non-centered parameterizations

functions {
  vector center_lp(vector beta_raw, real mu, real sigma) {
    beta_raw ~ std_normal();
    sigma ~ cauchy(0, 5);
    mu ~ cauchy(0, 2.5);
    return sigma * beta_raw + mu;
  }
  ...
}
parameters {
  vector[K] beta_raw;
  real mu_beta;
  real<lower=0> sigma_beta;
  ...
transformed parameters {
  vector[K] beta;
  ...
  beta = center_lp(beta_raw, mu_beta, sigma_beta);
  ...