Probability Distribution Function

Depending upon which text is consulted, a probability distribution function is any of:

  • a probability distribution function,
  • a cumulative distribution function,
  • a probability mass function, or
  • a probability density function.

The similar term probability function may mean any of the above and, in addition,

  • a probability measure function, as in a probability space, where the domain of the function is the set of events.

Famous quotes containing the words probability, distribution and/or function:

    “Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be “too clever by half.” The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.”
    —John Major (b. 1943)

    “In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
    —Erich Fromm (1900–1980)