Standard Cauchy distribution with mode = 0.
Also known as the Lorentz distribution.
Parameters : | size : int or tuple of ints
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Returns : | samples : ndarray or scalar
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Notes
The probability density function for the full Cauchy distribution is
P(x; x_0, \gamma) = \frac{1}{\pi \gamma \bigl[ 1+ (\frac{x-x_0}{\gamma})^2 \bigr] }
and the Standard Cauchy distribution just sets x_0=0 and \gamma=1
The Cauchy distribution arises in the solution to the driven harmonic oscillator problem, and also describes spectral line broadening. It also describes the distribution of values at which a line tilted at a random angle will cut the x axis.
When studying hypothesis tests that assume normality, seeing how the tests perform on data from a Cauchy distribution is a good indicator of their sensitivity to a heavy-tailed distribution, since the Cauchy looks very much like a Gaussian distribution, but with heavier tails.
References
Examples
Draw samples and plot the distribution:
>>> s = np.random.standard_cauchy(1000000)
>>> s = s[(s>-25) & (s<25)] # truncate distribution so it plots well
>>> plt.hist(s, bins=100)
>>> plt.show()