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In mathematics, the second moment method is a technique used in probability theory and analysis to show that a random variable has positive probability of being positive. More generally, the "moment method" consists of bounding the probability that a random variable fluctuates far from its mean, by using its moments. [1]
In mathematics, the moments of a function are certain quantitative measures related to the shape of the function's graph.If the function represents mass density, then the zeroth moment is the total mass, the first moment (normalized by total mass) is the center of mass, and the second moment is the moment of inertia.
The first cumulant is the expected value; the second and third cumulants are respectively the second and third central moments (the second central moment is the variance); but the higher cumulants are neither moments nor central moments, but rather more complicated polynomial functions of the moments.
The "zeroth" central moment μ 0 is 1. The first central moment μ 1 is 0 (not to be confused with the first raw moment or the expected value μ). The second central moment μ 2 is called the variance, and is usually denoted σ 2, where σ represents the standard deviation.
In probability theory and statistics, the moment-generating function of a real-valued random variable is an alternative specification of its probability distribution.Thus, it provides the basis of an alternative route to analytical results compared with working directly with probability density functions or cumulative distribution functions.
This difference between moment of inertia in physics and in statistics is clear for points that are gathered along a line. Suppose many points are close to the x axis and distributed along it. The covariance matrix might look like
The second moment of a random variable, () is also called the mean square. The square root of a mean square is known as the root mean square (RMS or rms), and can be used as an estimate of the standard deviation of a random variable when the random variable is zero-mean.
For the second-order approximations of the third central moment as well as for the derivation of all higher-order approximations see Appendix D of Ref. [3] Taking into account the quadratic terms of the Taylor series and the third moments of the input variables is referred to as second-order third-moment method. [4] However, the full second ...