Asian Journal of Probability and Statistics

The traditional moment generating functions of random variables and their probability distributions are known to not exist for all distributions and/or at all points and, where they exist, serious difficult and tedious manipulations are needed for the evaluation of higher central and non-central moments. This paper developed the generalized multivariate moment generating function for some random vectors/matrices and their probability distribution functions with the intention to replace the traditional/conventional moment generating functions due to their simplicity and versatility. The new functions were developed for the multivariate gamma family of distributions, the multivariate normal and the dirrichlet distributions as a binomial expansion of the expected value of an exponent of a random vector/matrix about an arbitrarily chosen constant. The functions were used to generate moments of random vectors/matrices and their probability distribution functions and the results obtained were compared with those from existing traditional/conventional methods. It was observed that the functions generated same results as the traditional/conventional methods; in addition, they generated both central and non-central moments in the same simple way without requiring further tedious manipulations; they gave more information about the distributions, for instance while the traditional method gives skewness and kurtosis values of  and  respectively for -variate multivariate normal distribution, the new methods gives ((0))_p*1  and  respectively and; they could generate moments of integral and real powers of random vectors/matrices.