Selvanayagam Ganesalingam

IFS, Massey University

On triangular approximation to symmetric probability distributions

The triangular distribution is shown to be a reasonable approximation for the symmetric distributions such as the normal and the t-distribution. In the case of the t-distribution, the approximation improves as the degree of freedom increases. This paper provides a theoretical basis for the use of the triangular approximation, and simulated examples to demonstrate the practical application of this approximation.