On Sep 2, 6:51 am, Thomas Philips <tkp...@gmail.com> wrote: > While the random module allows one to generate randome numbers with a > variety of distributions, some useful distributions are omitted - the > Student's t being among them.
I'm curious to hear what your use cases are. My understanding is that t-distribution is an estimation tool used with small samples of a population where the variance or standard deviation is unknown. So, when do you ever need to generate random variables with this distribution? ISTM that this is akin to wanting a generator for a Kolmogorov distribution -- usually the distribution is used to test empirical data, not to generate it. I think most of the existing generators were chosen because they are useful in simulation programs. AFAICT, the Student's t- distribution doesn't fall into that category (usually, you know the population standard deviation when you're the one generating data). ISTM, there ought to be a statistics module that can calculate cumulative distribution functions for a variety of distributions. This would be far more helpful than creating more generators. Raymond -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list