A fat-tailed distribution is a distribution for which the probability density function, for large x, goes to zero as a power x^{-a}. Since such a power is always bounded below by the probability density function of an exponential distribution, fat-tailed distributions are always heavy-tailed. Some distributions, however, have a tail which goes to zero slower than an exponential function (meaning they are heavy-tailed), but faster than a power (meaning they are not fat-tailed). An example is the log-normal distribution . Many other heavy-tailed distributions such as the log-logistic and Pareto distribution are, however, also fat-tailed. | A fat-tailed distribution is a distribution for which the probability density function, for large x, goes to zero as a power x^{-a}. Since such a power is always bounded below by the probability density function of an exponential distribution, fat-tailed distributions are always heavy-tailed. Some distributions, however, have a tail which goes to zero slower than an exponential function (meaning they are heavy-tailed), but faster than a power (meaning they are not fat-tailed). An example is the log-normal distribution . Many other heavy-tailed distributions such as the log-logistic and Pareto distribution are, however, also fat-tailed. |