Description

This animation illustrates how the t-distribution aproaches the normal distribution as the degrees of freedom (df) increase from 1 to 50. The animation loops df from 1 to 50.

The animation shows the normal distribution in black and begins with a t-distribution having df=1. The degrees of freedom increase until 50. Initially the t-distribution in red has longer tails than the normal distribution in black. As the animation progresses and the df move from 1 to 50, the shape of the t distribution in red approaches the shape of the normal distribution in black. The tails of the t-distribution get smaller to approach the normal distribution.

Already by df=50 the t-distribution is pretty close to the normal distribution.

The t distribution is indexed by degrees of freedom and tends to have longer tails than the normal distribution.

Richard Gonzalez, University of Michigan

gonzo at umich dot edu

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