Solved – Determine the limiting distribution of Standard Normal order statistics

asymptoticsnormal distributionorder-statistics

Let $X_1,…,X_n$ be an i.i.d sample from the standard normal distribution. Is there any general formula for the first order statistic of this sample? For example, I have seen a formula by Blom (1958):
$e(r:n) \approx \mu + \Phi^{-1}(\frac{r-\alpha}{n-2\alpha+1})\sigma$. My ultimate goal is actually finding the limiting distribution of the first order statistics for this standard normal sample, will the formula be any helpful? Any suggestion on finding the limiting distribution?

Best Answer

Let $X_1, \dots,X_n, \dots \sim \textrm{ iid } \mathcal N(0,1)$ and let $Y_n = \min\{X_1, \dots, X_n\}$.

The standard way to study iid minima is via the following computation: $$ P(Y_n \leq y) = 1 - P(Y_n \geq y) = 1-P(X_1 \geq y \cap \dots \cap X_n\geq y) $$ $$ = 1-\left(1-\Phi(y)\right)^n. $$

If you are interested in the distribution of $Y_n$ as $n \to \infty$ then we have $$ \lim_{n \to \infty} P(Y_n \leq y) = \lim_{n \to \infty} 1 - \left(1 - \Phi(y)\right)^n = 1 $$ for any $y \in \mathbb R$. This means the limiting distribution is effectively a point mass at $-\infty$. This makes sense because any interval $(-\infty, a)$ has positive probability for a standard normal RV, so as you sample more and more eventually you'll land in $(-\infty, a)$ for any $a$, so the minimum (in the limit) with probability 1 is less than $a$.

Your formula agrees with this (assuming $r$ specifies which order statistic we care about, so in this case $r=1$): $$ \lim_{n \to \infty} \mu + \Phi^{-1}\left(\frac{1-\alpha}{n-2\alpha+1}\right)\sigma = -\infty $$ although I wouldn't trust this as an argument in its own right without careful analysis since without knowing more details about the approximation it's not safe to assume it holds or is meaningful in the limit.