The Student's T distribution is closely related to the Normal()
distribution, but has heavier tails. As \(\nu\) increases to \(\infty\),
the Student's T converges to a Normal. The T distribution appears
repeatedly throughout classic frequentist hypothesis testing when
comparing group means.
We recommend reading this documentation on
https://pkg.mitchelloharawild.com/distributional/, where the math
will render nicely.
In the following, let \(X\) be a central Students T random variable
with df
= \(\nu\).
Support: \(R\), the set of all real numbers
Mean: Undefined unless \(\nu \ge 2\), in which case the mean is
zero.
Variance:
$$
\frac{\nu}{\nu - 2}
$$
Undefined if \(\nu < 1\), infinite when \(1 < \nu \le 2\).
Probability density function (p.d.f):
$$
f(x) = \frac{\Gamma(\frac{\nu + 1}{2})}{\sqrt{\nu \pi} \Gamma(\frac{\nu}{2})} (1 + \frac{x^2}{\nu} )^{- \frac{\nu + 1}{2}}
$$