Simple continuous distributions

Continous distributions

Uniform distribution

There is a set \(s\) such that:

\(P(x\in s)=p\)

\(P(x\not\in s)=0\)

Moments of the uniform distribution

The mean is the mean of the set \(s\).

If the set is all numbers of the real line between two values, \(a\) and \(b\), then:

The mean is \(\dfrac{1}{2}(a+b)\).

The variance is \(\dfrac{(b-a)^2}{12}\) in the continuous case.

The variance is \(\dfrac{(b-a+1)^2-1}{12}\) in the discrete case.

Other

Weibull distribution

Power law

\(P(X)=\dfrac{\alpha -1}{a}(\dfrac{x}{a})^{-\alpha }\)

Where \(a\) is the lower bound.

\(P(X)=0\) for \(X<a\).

Moments of the power law

\(E[X^m]=\dfrac{\alpha - 1}{\alpha -1 -m }a\)

If \(m\ge \alpha -1\) then this is not well defined.

Higher order moments, such that the variance, cannot be identified.

Logistic distribution

The logistic distribution has the cumulative distribution function:

\(F(x)=\dfrac{1}{1+e^{-\dfrac{x-\mu }{s}}}\)

Laplace distribution

Lévy distribution

Definition

The Lévy distribution is a continuous probability distribution.

The marginal probability is:

\(P(X)=\sqrt {\dfrac{c}{2\pi }}\dfrac{e^{-\dfrac{c}{2(x-\mu )}}}{(x-\mu )^{\dfrac{3}{2}}}\)

Split-normal distribution