Skip to main content
`Ctrl`+`K`

# scipy.special.nbdtrc

scipy.special.nbdtrc(k, n, p, out=None) = <ufunc 'nbdtrc'>

  Negative binomial survival function.

  Returns the sum of the terms k + 1 to infinity of the negative binomial distribution probability mass function,

  \[F = \sum_{j=k + 1}^\infty {{n + j - 1}\choose{j}} p^n (1 - p)^j.\]

  In a sequence of Bernoulli trials with individual success probabilities p, this is the probability that more than k failures precede the nth success.

  Parameters:
    karray_like

      The maximum number of allowed failures (nonnegative int).

    narray_like

      The target number of successes (positive int).

    parray_like

      Probability of success in a single event (float).

    outndarray, optional

      Optional output array for the function results

  Returns:
    Fscalar or ndarray

      The probability of k + 1 or more failures before n successes in a sequence of events with individual success probability p.

  See also

  `nbdtr`

    Negative binomial cumulative distribution function

  `nbdtrik`

    Negative binomial percentile function

  `scipy.stats.nbinom`

    Negative binomial distribution

  Notes

  If floating point values are passed for k or n, they will be truncated to integers.

  The terms are not summed directly; instead the regularized incomplete beta function is employed, according to the formula,

  \[\mathrm{nbdtrc}(k, n, p) = I_{1 - p}(k + 1, n).\]

  Wrapper for the Cephes [1] routine `nbdtrc`.

  The negative binomial distribution is also available as `scipy.stats.nbinom`. Using `nbdtrc` directly can improve performance compared to the `sf` method of `scipy.stats.nbinom` (see last example).

  References

  [1]

  Cephes Mathematical Functions Library, http://www.netlib.org/cephes/

  Examples

  Compute the function for `k=10` and `n=5` at `p=0.5`.

      >>> import numpy as np
      >>> from scipy.special import nbdtrc
      >>> nbdtrc(10, 5, 0.5)
      0.059234619140624986

  Compute the function for `n=10` and `p=0.5` at several points by providing a NumPy array or list for k.

      >>> nbdtrc([5, 10, 15], 10, 0.5)
      array([0.84912109, 0.41190147, 0.11476147])

  Plot the function for four different parameter sets.

      >>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
      >>> k = np.arange(130)
      >>> n_parameters = [20, 20, 20, 80]
      >>> p_parameters = [0.2, 0.5, 0.8, 0.5]
      >>> linestyles = ['solid', 'dashed', 'dotted', 'dashdot']
      >>> parameters_list = list(zip(p_parameters, n_parameters,
      ...                            linestyles))
      >>> fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(8, 8))
      >>> for parameter_set in parameters_list:
      ...     p, n, style = parameter_set
      ...     nbdtrc_vals = nbdtrc(k, n, p)
      ...     ax.plot(k, nbdtrc_vals, label=rf"$n={n},\, p={p}$",
      ...             ls=style)
      >>> ax.legend()
      >>> ax.set_xlabel("$k$")
      >>> ax.set_title("Negative binomial distribution survival function")
      >>> plt.show()

  The negative binomial distribution is also available as `scipy.stats.nbinom`. Using `nbdtrc` directly can be much faster than calling the `sf` method of `scipy.stats.nbinom`, especially for small arrays or individual values. To get the same results one must use the following parametrization: `nbinom(n, p).sf(k)=nbdtrc(k, n, p)`.

      >>> from scipy.stats import nbinom
      >>> k, n, p = 3, 5, 0.5
      >>> nbdtr_res = nbdtrc(k, n, p)  # this will often be faster than below
      >>> stats_res = nbinom(n, p).sf(k)
      >>> stats_res, nbdtr_res  # test that results are equal
      (0.6367187499999999, 0.6367187499999999)

  `nbdtrc` can evaluate different parameter sets by providing arrays with shapes compatible for broadcasting for k, n and p. Here we compute the function for three different k at four locations p, resulting in a 3x4 array.

      >>> k = np.array([[5], [10], [15]])
      >>> p = np.array([0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9])
      >>> k.shape, p.shape
      ((3, 1), (4,))

      >>> nbdtrc(k, 5, p)
      array([[8.49731667e-01, 3.76953125e-01, 4.73489874e-02, 1.46902600e-04],
             [5.15491059e-01, 5.92346191e-02, 6.72234070e-04, 9.29610100e-09],
             [2.37507779e-01, 5.90896606e-03, 5.55025308e-06, 3.26346760e-13]])