Jeremy,

I don't seem to remember signing up to have R-help be my personal e-mail :-)

It is common to use phi to represent the standard normal distribution (with 
mean 0, and variance 1), the "script/small/lower case" version is for the 
distribution (height of the bell curve) and the "block/capitol/upper case"  is 
for the cumulative distribution.

So for arbitrary mean and variance you get 1/sigma * phi( (x-mu)/sigma ).

The general idea for any truncated distribution is that it will have the same 
shape as the non-truncated version, it just needs to be scaled so that the area 
is 1, the proper scaling is just the area under the original.  So the formulas 
you see on that page start with the regular normal (phi) divided by the area 
under the curve between A and B which is just the difference in the cumulative 
distribution at those 2 points.

In R dnorm will correspond to phi and pnorm to PHI.  You could use the exact 
formulas on that page, but it would be simpler to use the arguments to dnorm 
and pnorm.

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.s...@imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces@r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of JClark
> Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 4:04 PM
> To: r-help@r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] function of probability for normal distribution
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Greg Snow,
> 
> I'm a biologist trying to write a mathematical formula for a doubly
> truncated normal distribution to be used in the language "R". I realise
> this
> is simple stuff for a mathematician but I'm stumped.
> Wikipedia gives what seems a fairly simple formula - with function =
> maths
> with mean and standard deviation - but also phi - WHAT IS PHI !!?? -
> especially how do I write this in "R" and why is the top "phi" in
> italics ??
> 
> Hoping you can help.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> Jeremy Clark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Re-R-
> function-for-Probabilities-for-the-standard-normal-distribution-
> tp903639p3225457.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
> guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

______________________________________________
R-help@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Reply via email to