--- On Mon, 5/10/09, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am doing this ,because I am trying to understanding
> a little better, the concept of Gaussian Normal Distribution,
> given that it is what confidence intervals,and hypothesis
> testing ,boils down to.
> I really do not think that it is a fruitless enterprise,to
> get your hands a little dirty on such a pivoting concept.
In general simulation is a wonderful method for exploring
statistical concepts, but in this case you are probably
learning more about how computers work than about the normal
distribution: you are dealing here with concepts like infinity
and infinitely small differences between values, and computers
can necessarily only approximate those. This doesn't matter
normally (no pun intended) as the approximations are so good
we won't notice, but at one point it will start to bite if you
push your computer hard enough. This is likely to occur in the
type of simulation you are running, in which case your results
will say more about the limits of computers to approximate
very small numbers rather than the normal distribution.
-- Maarten
--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany
http://www.maartenbuis.nl
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