FDist {stats}R Documentation

The F Distribution

Description

Density, distribution function, quantile function and random generation for the F distribution with df1 and df2 degrees of freedom (and optional non-centrality parameter ncp).

Usage

df(x, df1, df2, log = FALSE)
pf(q, df1, df2, ncp=0, lower.tail = TRUE, log.p = FALSE)
qf(p, df1, df2,        lower.tail = TRUE, log.p = FALSE)
rf(n, df1, df2)

Arguments

x, q vector of quantiles.
p vector of probabilities.
n number of observations. If length(n) > 1, the length is taken to be the number required.
df1, df2 degrees of freedom.
ncp non-centrality parameter.
log, log.p logical; if TRUE, probabilities p are given as log(p).
lower.tail logical; if TRUE (default), probabilities are P[X <= x], otherwise, P[X > x].

Details

The F distribution with df1 = n1 and df2 = n2 degrees of freedom has density

f(x) = Gamma((n1 + n2)/2) / (Gamma(n1/2) Gamma(n2/2)) (n1/n2)^(n1/2) x^(n1/2 - 1) (1 + (n1/n2) x)^-(n1 + n2)/2

for x > 0.

It is the distribution of the ratio of the mean squares of n1 and n2 independent standard normals, and hence of the ratio of two independent chi-squared variates each divided by its degrees of freedom. Since the ratio of a normal and the root mean-square of m independent normals has a Student's t_m distribution, the square of a t_m variate has a F distribution on 1 and m degrees of freedom.

The non-central F distribution is again the ratio of mean squares of independent normals of unit variance, but those in the numerator are allowed to have non-zero means and ncp is the sum of squares of the means. See Chisquare for further details on non-central distributions.

Value

df gives the density, pf gives the distribution function qf gives the quantile function, and rf generates random deviates.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

See Also

dchisq for chi-squared and dt for Student's t distributions.

Examples

## the density of the square of a t_m is 2*dt(x, m)/(2*x)
# check this is the same as the density of F_{1,m}
x <- seq(0.001, 5, len=100)
all.equal(df(x^2, 1, 5), dt(x, 5)/x)

## Identity:  qf(2*p - 1, 1, df)) == qt(p, df)^2)  for  p >= 1/2
p <- seq(1/2, .99, length=50); df <- 10
rel.err <- function(x,y) ifelse(x==y,0, abs(x-y)/mean(abs(c(x,y))))
quantile(rel.err(qf(2*p - 1, df1=1, df2=df), qt(p, df)^2), .90)# ~= 7e-9

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