Re: Good News & Bad News Message #15 Posted by Dieter on 22 May 2012, 4:06 p.m., in response to message #13 by Les Wright
Les,
Quote:
Wonder what Dieter thinks?
Dieter says he's definitely not an F-distribution expert. ;-) Sorry, I think my contribution cannot be of much help here.
Quote:
In real life, the F quantile associated with, say 1e-300 at a single df in the numerator and denominator is effectively zero, but it would nice to get closer in order of magnitude, even if only a few digits are correct.
There's an easy solution to the case df1 = df2 = 1. Here, the F-quantile simplifies to tan^2(x*pi/2, which can be coded very nicely with the respective 34s conversion function:
#090
DEG->
*
TAN
x^2
For the mentioned case this will return as many digits as you like (here the result is 2,4674...E-600). For similar solutions cf. Wikipedia. Yes, that's German, but the English version does not include such a nice table, and the language of mathematics is universal. ;-)
Anyway, maybe this can be a hint: For the Normal and Student quantile there are asymptotic expressions that approach the true value as p gets closer to zero. This, for instance, is used in the estimate for the Student quantile, and it's also the basis of the Normal estimate. Maybe there is a comparable solution for the F distribution as well?!
In general, I think we should not neglect cases like p or x < 1E-100 or similar. Yes, for most real life applications three digits will do, but that's not what the 34s project is designed for. The only limit should be set by the working range, so I think we should get the quantile right even for p = 1E-6140 (in DP mode). At least that's what I think how the 34s should work. ;-)
By the way, my current project is a 34s program for the Normal distribution with two (user-selectable) accuracy levels. It also handles p very close to 0.5 without problems, as well as the central symmetric CDF from -x to +x with x close to 0. The quantile function uses a method that is significantly better than the Halley approach, leading to 32-34 digits (and with a slight tweak about 36) with just two refinements. I wonder how fast this will execute, so I think I will soon post the result of my humble efforts, hoping someone will try it on his "hardware 34s".
Dieter
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