Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
For a sample of n values, a method of moments estimator of the population excess kurtosis can be defined as = = = (¯) [= (¯)] where m 4 is the fourth sample moment about the mean, m 2 is the second sample moment about the mean (that is, the sample variance), x i is the i th value, and ¯ is the sample mean.
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. The third and fourth central moments are used to define the standardized moments which are used to define ...
The fourth central moment is a measure of the heaviness of the tail of the distribution. Since it is the expectation of a fourth power, the fourth central moment, where defined, is always nonnegative; and except for a point distribution, it is always strictly positive. The fourth central moment of a normal distribution is 3σ 4.
An example application of the method of moments is to estimate polynomial probability density distributions. In this case, an approximating polynomial of order is defined on an interval [,]. The method of moments then yields a system of equations, whose solution involves the inversion of a Hankel matrix. [2]
Figure 1. A simple bimodal distribution, in this case a mixture of two normal distributions with the same variance but different means. The figure shows the probability density function (p.d.f.), which is an equally-weighted average of the bell-shaped p.d.f.s of the two normal distributions.
In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution (/ ˈ p w ɑː s ɒ n /) is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time if these events occur with a known constant mean rate and independently of the time since the last event. [1]
In probability and statistics, a moment measure is a mathematical quantity, function or, more precisely, measure that is defined in relation to mathematical objects known as point processes, which are types of stochastic processes often used as mathematical models of physical phenomena representable as randomly positioned points in time, space or both.
Any two probability distributions whose moments are identical will have identical cumulants as well, and vice versa. The first cumulant is the mean, the second cumulant is the variance, and the third cumulant is the same as the third central moment. But fourth and higher-order cumulants are not equal to central moments.