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In probability theory and statistics, the F-distribution or F-ratio, also known as Snedecor's F distribution or the Fisher–Snedecor distribution (after Ronald Fisher and George W. Snedecor), is a continuous probability distribution that arises frequently as the null distribution of a test statistic, most notably in the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and other F-tests.
Random variables are usually written in upper case Roman letters, such as or and so on. Random variables, in this context, usually refer to something in words, such as "the height of a subject" for a continuous variable, or "the number of cars in the school car park" for a discrete variable, or "the colour of the next bicycle" for a categorical variable.
About 68% of values drawn from a normal distribution are within one standard deviation σ from the mean; about 95% of the values lie within two standard deviations; and about 99.7% are within three standard deviations. [8] This fact is known as the 68–95–99.7 (empirical) rule, or the 3-sigma rule.
The cumulative distribution function (shown as F(x)) gives the p values as a function of the q values. The quantile function does the opposite: it gives the q values as a function of the p values. Note that the portion of F(x) in red is a horizontal line segment.
The F table serves as a reference guide containing critical F values for the distribution of the F-statistic under the assumption of a true null hypothesis. It is designed to help determine the threshold beyond which the F statistic is expected to exceed a controlled percentage of the time (e.g., 5%) when the null hypothesis is accurate.
Also, the characteristic function of the sample mean X of n independent observations has characteristic function φ X (t) = (e −|t|/n) n = e −|t|, using the result from the previous section. This is the characteristic function of the standard Cauchy distribution: thus, the sample mean has the same distribution as the population itself.
Now consider a random variable X which has a probability density function given by a function f on the real number line. This means that the probability of X taking on a value in any given open interval is given by the integral of f over that interval.
For instance, if X is used to denote the outcome of a coin toss ("the experiment"), then the probability distribution of X would take the value 0.5 (1 in 2 or 1/2) for X = heads, and 0.5 for X = tails (assuming that the coin is fair). More commonly, probability distributions are used to compare the relative occurrence of many different random ...