Dados do Trabalho

Título

STIRLING'S FORMULA VIA THE CHI-SQUARE DISTRIBUTION

Resumo

In this article Stirling's formula is proved using the chi-square distribution and the central limit theorem. The purpose of this text is to present a short and simple demonstration of Stirling's formula from well-known probabilistic facts avoiding a long and tedious demonstration from purely mathematical arguments. Thus, this is a proof of Stirling's formula accessible to undergraduate students in the first year of statistics.

Palavras-chave

Central limit theorem; factorial approximation; Gamma function; normal distribution.