Main Content

# evcdf

Extreme value cumulative distribution function

## Syntax

```p = evcdf(x,mu,sigma) [p,plo,pup] = evcdf(x,mu,sigma,pcov,alpha) [p,plo,pup] = evcdf(___,'upper') ```

## Description

`p = evcdf(x,mu,sigma)` returns the cumulative distribution function (cdf) for the type 1 extreme value distribution, with location parameter `mu` and scale parameter `sigma`, at each of the values in `x`. `x`, `mu`, and `sigma` can be vectors, matrices, or multidimensional arrays that all have the same size. A scalar input is expanded to a constant array of the same size as the other inputs. The default values for `mu` and `sigma` are `0` and `1`, respectively.

`[p,plo,pup] = evcdf(x,mu,sigma,pcov,alpha)` returns confidence bounds for `p` when the input parameters `mu` and `sigma` are estimates. `pcov` is a 2-by-2 covariance matrix of the estimated parameters. `alpha` has a default value of `0.05`, and specifies `100(1 - alpha)`% confidence bounds. `plo` and `pup` are arrays of the same size as `p`, containing the lower and upper confidence bounds.

`[p,plo,pup] = evcdf(___,'upper')` returns the complement of the type 1 extreme value distribution cdf at each value in `x`, using an algorithm that more accurately computes the extreme upper tail probabilities. You can use the `'upper'` argument with any of the previous syntaxes.

The function `evcdf` computes confidence bounds for `P` using a normal approximation to the distribution of the estimate

`$\frac{X-\stackrel{^}{\mu }}{\stackrel{^}{\sigma }}$`

and then transforming those bounds to the scale of the output `P`. The computed bounds give approximately the desired confidence level when you estimate `mu`, `sigma`, and `pcov` from large samples, but in smaller samples other methods of computing the confidence bounds might be more accurate.

The type 1 extreme value distribution is also known as the Gumbel distribution. The version used here is suitable for modeling minima; the mirror image of this distribution can be used to model maxima by negating `X` and subtracting the resulting distribution values from `1`. See Extreme Value Distribution for more details. If x has a Weibull distribution, then X = log(x) has the type 1 extreme value distribution.

## See Also

### Topics

Introduced before R2006a

Download ebook