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1. Exploratory Data Analysis
1.3. EDA Techniques

1.3.6.

Probability Distributions

Probability Distributions Probability distributions are a fundamental concept in statistics. They are used both on a theoretical level and a practical level.

Some practical uses of probability distributions are:

  • To calculate confidence intervals for parameters and to calculate critical regions for hypothesis tests.
  • For univariate data, it is often useful to determine a reasonable distributional model for the data.
  • Statistical intervals and hypothesis tests are often based on specific distributional assumptions. Before computing an interval or test based on a distributional assumption, we need to verify that the assumption is justified for the given data set. In this case, the distribution does not need to be the best-fitting distribution for the data, but an adequate enough model so that the statistical technique yields valid conclusions.
  • Simulation studies with random numbers generated from using a specific probability distribution are often needed.
Table of Contents
  1. What is a probability distribution?
  2. Related probability functions
  3. Families of distributions
  4. Location and scale parameters
  5. Estimating the parameters of a distribution
  6. A gallery of common distributions
  7. Tables for probability distributions
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