Probability playground: a great app/website

What a great website!

I've played around with probability distributions for more than two decades and I'm still finding out new things. Wikipedia helps of course, but it's sometimes obscure and misses things out.

Recently, I came across some wonderful webpages at the University of Buffalo. The pages were created by Adam Cunn (https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~adamcunn/) and are all about probability distributions. I've learned some interesting things from his pages and I thought I would share on my blog.

Probability Playground

The Probability Playground pages are really an app. The home page (https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~adamcunn/probability/probability.html) shows you the "core" probability distributions and how they're related. Clicking on any distribution takes you into the app proper.

Let's click on the beta distribution and I'll show you some interesting  stuff: https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~adamcunn/probability/beta.html. 

• Click on the top right box labeled "Transformation". The dropdown box tells you that the limiting case for the beta distribution is the normal distribution (click it and see) and that a special case of the beta distribution is the normal distribution. 
• Look on the bottom left of the page and you'll see several examples of the beta distribution in the real world. These are all great examples.
• You can explore the effect of changing the distribution parameters on the PDF and CDF. It's a vivid demonstration that the beta distribution is a family of distributions.

As you can see, there's more on the page to explore and you can really get a sense of how distributions differ from one another. 

Of course, there are hundreds of different distributions and this app only has the "greatest hits", but that's fine. It was created as a teaching tool and it serves its purpose very well.

Stop reading this and go try it yourself

I like this app a lot, so I'm going to stop writing and tell you to go off and click on the site for yourself. Here's the link again: https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~adamcunn/probability/probability.html.