Symmetrical Distributions

This chapter includes the symmetrical distributions. The simplest example of a symmetrical distribution is the uniform distribution. Some of the others are the Student t distribution, logistic distribution and the Cauchy distribution. The chapter groups together others that fall into this category. Of the symmetrical distributions considered so far, the best choice is logistic distribution – giving a value of 0.1061 for RSS. This provides the benchmark against which the distributions in the chapter can be assessed. The Laplace distribution might be considered as an alternative to the Cauchy distribution. It is special case of the generalised normal distribution. Related to the raised cosine distribution is the cardioid distribution. It is an example of a circular distribution, in that x can be an angle representing a direction – such as a compass bearing.