• denkrishna@midwest.social
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    5 months ago

    Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the student t distribution a set of distributions that includes the normal distribution?

    Because if so, it feels a little like saying “you can’t even call something red unless you’ve confirmed that it’s crimson”

    • Bender_on_Fire@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The t-distribution approaches the normal distribution with increasing degrees of freedom. It is certainly more relevant in for example hypothesis testing, since t-Tests (variance is estimated from the data) is much more common than z-tests (variance is treated as fixed and coming from a normal distribution).

      In all of statistics or probability theory, the normal theory is however way more influential.

      Nonetheless, it’s a cool bit of history where modern statistics got its roots. As a lover of both statistics and guinness, i approve!🍻

    • driving_crooner
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      5 months ago

      The t-student goes to the normal when your degrees of freedom get close to infinitum (in practice with 30 df they’re practically the same).