Probability distribution


In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events.
For instance, if the random variable is used to denote the outcome of a coin toss, then the probability distribution of would take the value 0.5 for, and 0.5 for . Examples of random phenomena include the weather condition in a future date, the height of a person, the fraction of male students in a school, the results of a survey, etc.
A probability distribution is a mathematical function that has a sample space as its input, and gives a probability as its output. The sample space is the set of all possible outcomes of a random phenomenon being observed; it may be the set of real numbers or a set of vectors, or it may be a list of non-numerical values. For example, the sample space of a coin flip would be.
Probability distributions are generally divided into two classes. A discrete probability distribution is applicable to the scenarios where the set of possible outcomes is discrete, and the probabilities are here encoded by a discrete list of the probabilities of the outcomes, known as the probability mass function. On the other hand, continuous probability distributions are applicable to scenarios where the set of possible outcomes can take on values in a continuous range, such as the temperature on a given day. In this case, probabilities are typically described by a probability density function. The normal distribution is a commonly encountered continuous probability distribution. More complex experiments, such as those involving stochastic processes defined in continuous time, may demand the use of more general probability measures.
A probability distribution whose sample space is one-dimensional is called univariate, while a distribution whose sample space is a vector space of dimension 2 or more is called multivariate. A univariate distribution gives the probabilities of a single random variable taking on various alternative values; a multivariate distribution gives the probabilities of a random vector – a list of two or more random variables – taking on various combinations of values. Important and commonly encountered univariate probability distributions include the binomial distribution, the hypergeometric distribution, and the normal distribution. The multivariate normal distribution is a commonly encountered multivariate distribution.

Introduction

To define probability distributions for the simplest cases, it is necessary to distinguish between discrete and continuous random variables. In the discrete case, it is sufficient to specify a probability mass function assigning a probability to each possible outcome: for example, when throwing a fair die, each of the six values 1 to 6 has the probability 1/6. The probability of an event is then defined to be the sum of the probabilities of the outcomes that satisfy the event; for example, the probability of the event "the dice rolls an even value" is
In contrast, when a random variable takes values from a continuum then typically, any individual outcome has probability zero and only events that include infinitely many outcomes, such as intervals, can have positive probability. For example, the probability that a given object weighs exactly 500 g is zero, because the probability of measuring exactly 500 g tends to zero as the accuracy of our measuring instruments increases. Nevertheless, in quality control one might demand that the probability of a "500 g" package containing between 490 g and 510 g should be no less than 98%, and this demand is less sensitive to the accuracy of measurement instruments.
Continuous probability distributions can be described in several ways. The probability density function describes the infinitesimal probability of any given value, and the probability that the outcome lies in a given interval can be computed by integrating the probability density function over that interval. The probability that the possible values lie in some fixed interval can be related to the way sums converge to an integral; therefore, continuous probability is based on the definition of an integral.
The cumulative distribution function describes the probability that the random variable is no larger than a given value; the probability that the outcome lies in a given interval can be computed by taking the difference between the values of the cumulative distribution function at the endpoints of the interval. The cumulative distribution function is the antiderivative of the probability density function provided that the latter function exists. The cumulative distribution function is the area under the probability density function from minus infinity to as described by the picture to the right.
of the normal distribution, also called Gaussian or "bell curve", the most important continuous random distribution. As notated on the figure, the probabilities of intervals of values correspond to the area under the curve.

Terminology

Some key concepts and terms, widely used in the literature on the topic of probability distributions, are listed below.

Functions for discrete variables

A discrete probability distribution is a probability distribution that can take on a countable number of values. For the probabilities to add up to 1, they have to decline to zero fast enough. For example, if for n = 1, 2,..., the sum of probabilities would be 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 +... = 1.
Well-known discrete probability distributions used in statistical modeling include the Poisson distribution, the Bernoulli distribution, the binomial distribution, the geometric distribution, and the negative binomial distribution. Additionally, the discrete uniform distribution is commonly used in computer programs that make equal-probability random selections between a number of choices.
When a sample is drawn from a larger population, the sample points have an empirical distribution that is discrete and that provides information about the population distribution.

Measure theoretic formulation

A measurable function between a probability space and a measurable space is called a discrete random variable provided that its image is a countable set. In this case measurability of means that the pre-images of singleton sets are measurable, i.e., for all.
The latter requirement induces a probability mass function via. Since the pre-images of disjoint sets
are disjoint,
This recovers the definition given above.

Cumulative distribution function

Equivalently to the above, a discrete random variable can be defined as a random variable whose cumulative distribution function increases only by jump discontinuities—that is, its cdf increases only where it "jumps" to a higher value, and is constant between those jumps. Note however that the points where the cdf jumps may form a dense set of the real numbers. The points where jumps occur are precisely the values which the random variable may take.

Delta-function representation

Consequently, a discrete probability distribution is often represented as a generalized probability density function involving Dirac delta functions, which substantially unifies the treatment of continuous and discrete distributions. This is especially useful when dealing with probability distributions involving both a continuous and a discrete part.

Indicator-function representation

For a discrete random variable X, let u0, u1,... be the values it can take with non-zero probability. Denote
These are disjoint sets, and for such sets
It follows that the probability that X takes any value except for u0, u1,... is zero, and thus one can write X as
except on a set of probability zero, where is the indicator function of A. This may serve as an alternative definition of discrete random variables.

Continuous probability distribution

A continuous probability distribution is a probability distribution whose support is an uncountable set, such as an interval in the real line. They are uniquely characterized by a cumulative density function that can be used to calculate the probability for each subset of the support. There are many examples of continuous probability distributions: normal, uniform, chi-squared, and others.
A random variable has a continuous probability distribution if there is a function such that for each interval the probability of belonging to is given by the integral of over. For example, if then we would have:
In particular, the probability for to take any single value is zero, because an integral with coinciding upper and lower limits is always equal to zero. A variable that satisfies the above is called continuous random variable. Its cumulative density function is defined as
which, by this definition, has the properties:
It is also possible to think in the opposite direction, which allows more flexibility. Say is a function that satisfies all but the last of the properties above, then represents the cumulative density function for some random variable: a discrete random variable if is a step function, and a continuous random variable otherwise. This allows for continuous distributions that has a cumulative density function, but not a probability density function, such as the Cantor distribution.
It is often necessary to generalize the above definition for more arbitrary subsets of the real line. In these contexts, a continuous probability distribution is defined as a probability distribution with a cumulative distribution function that is absolutely continuous. Equivalently, it is a probability distribution on the real numbers that is absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure. Such distributions can be represented by their probability density functions. If is such an absolutely continuous random variable, then it has a probability density function, and its probability of falling into a Lebesgue-measurable set is:
where is the Lebesgue measure.
Note on terminology: some authors use the term "continuous distribution" to denote distributions whose cumulative distribution functions are continuous, rather than absolutely continuous. These distributions are the ones such that for all. This definition includes the continuous distributions defined above, but it also includes singular distributions, which are neither absolutely continuous nor discrete nor a mixture of those, and do not have a density. An example is given by the Cantor distribution.

Kolmogorov">Andrey Kolmogorov">Kolmogorov definition

In the measure-theoretic formalization of probability theory, a random variable is defined as a measurable function from a probability space to a measurable space. Given that probabilities of events of the form satisfy Kolmogorov's probability axioms, the probability distribution of X is the pushforward measure of , which is a probability measure on satisfying.

Random number generation

Most algorithms are based on a pseudorandom number generator that produces numbers X that are uniformly distributed in the half-open interval 0,1). These random variates X are then transformed via some algorithm to create a new [random variate having the required probability distribution. With this source of uniform pseudo-randomness, realizations of any random variable can be generated.
For example, suppose has a uniform distribution between 0 and 1. To construct a random Bernoulli variable for some, we define
so that
This random variable X has a Bernoulli distribution with parameter. Note that this is a transformation of discrete random variable.
For a distribution function of a continuous random variable, a continuous random variable must be constructed., an inverse function of, relates to the uniform variable :
For example, suppose a random variable that has an exponential distribution must be constructed.
so and if has a distribution, then the random variable is defined by. This has an exponential distribution of.
A frequent problem in statistical simulations is the generation of pseudo-random numbers that are distributed in a given way.

Common probability distributions and their applications

The concept of the probability distribution and the random variables which they describe underlies the mathematical discipline of probability theory, and the science of statistics. There is spread or variability in almost any value that can be measured in a population ; almost all measurements are made with some intrinsic error; in physics many processes are described probabilistically, from the kinetic properties of gases to the quantum mechanical description of fundamental particles. For these and many other reasons, simple numbers are often inadequate for describing a quantity, while probability distributions are often more appropriate.
The following is a list of some of the most common probability distributions, grouped by the type of process that they are related to. For a more complete list, see list of probability distributions, which groups by the nature of the outcome being considered
All of the univariate distributions below are singly peaked; that is, it is assumed that the values cluster around a single point. In practice, actually observed quantities may cluster around multiple values. Such quantities can be modeled using a mixture distribution.

Linear growth (e.g. errors, offsets)