Tangent of a uniform angle has a Cauchy distribution

ID: tangent-of-a-uniform-angle-has-a-cauchy-distribution

If and has the continuous uniform distribution on , then has the Cauchy distribution with location zero and scale . The tangent function is strictly increasing on this interval, so its cumulative distribution function is
Differentiating gives the probability density function . The probability of either endpoint is zero, so including endpoints in the uniform interval does not alter this probability distribution. The slow quadratic decay makes the expected value undefined: its positive and negative parts both have infinite integrals. Its second moment is also infinite, so it has no finite standard deviation.

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