Arcsine distribution

Arcsine
Probability density function
Cumulative distribution function
Parameters	none
Support	${\displaystyle x\in (0,1)}$
PDF	${\displaystyle f(x)={\frac {1}{\pi {\sqrt {x(1-x)}}}}}$
CDF	${\displaystyle F(x)={\frac {2}{\pi }}\arcsin \left({\sqrt {x}}\right)}$
Mean	${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{2}}}$
Median	${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{2}}}$
Mode	${\displaystyle x\in \{0,1\}}$
Variance	${\displaystyle {\tfrac {1}{8}}}$
Skewness	${\displaystyle 0}$
Excess kurtosis	${\displaystyle -{\tfrac {3}{2}}}$
Entropy	${\displaystyle \ln {\tfrac {\pi }{4}}}$
MGF	${\displaystyle 1+\sum _{k=1}^{\infty }\left(\prod _{r=0}^{k-1}{\frac {2r+1}{2r+2}}\right){\frac {t^{k}}{k!}}}$
CF	${\displaystyle e^{i{\frac {t}{2}}}J_{0}({\frac {t}{2}})}$

In probability theory, the arcsine distribution is the probability distribution whose cumulative distribution function involves the arcsine and the square root:

${\displaystyle F(x)={\frac {2}{\pi }}\arcsin \left({\sqrt {x}}\right)={\frac {\arcsin(2x-1)}{\pi }}+{\frac {1}{2}}}$

for 0 ≤ x ≤ 1, and whose probability density function is

${\displaystyle f(x)={\frac {1}{\pi {\sqrt {x(1-x)}}}}}$

on (0, 1). The standard arcsine distribution is a special case of the beta distribution with α = β = 1/2. That is, if ${\displaystyle X}$ is an arcsine-distributed random variable, then ${\displaystyle X\sim {\rm {Beta}}{\bigl (}{\tfrac {1}{2}},{\tfrac {1}{2}}{\bigr )}}$. By extension, the arcsine distribution is a special case of the Pearson type I distribution.

The arcsine distribution appears in the Lévy arcsine law, in the Erdős arcsine law, and as the Jeffreys prior for the probability of success of a Bernoulli trial. The arcsine probability density is a distribution that appears in several random-walk fundamental theorems. In a fair coin toss random walk, the probability for the time of the last visit to the origin is distributed as an (U-shaped) arcsine distribution. In a two-player fair-coin-toss game, a player is said to be in the lead if the random walk (that started at the origin) is above the origin. The most probable number of times that a given player will be in the lead, in a game of length 2N, is not N. On the contrary, N is the least likely number of times that the player will be in the lead. The most likely number of times in the lead is 0 or 2N (following the arcsine distribution).