Examples of these PDFs are illustrated in Figure 1.

One can see that when a=0 it is

symmetric and reduces to a Cauchy distribution, which was discovered by Poisson and
Cauchy. This distribution is famous for having “fat tails” and violating the
Central Limit Theorem. A simple geometric example of this distribution is the
following: Let the point P=(0, 1) be the source of rays that are emanated at an
equal angular separation from the adjacent ray. Then the density of the x-
intercepts of the rays is equivalent to the PDF corresponding to a=0. The family of
PDFs in Figure 1 are a generalization of the Cauchy distribution case. When -1 \le
a < 0 the distribution is more peaked and skewed to the left. Conversely, when 0< a
< 1 the distribution is less-peaked and skewed to the right. When a\to 1, the
distribution become more and more flat and uniform. They all have fat tails like
the Cauchy distribution case. Are these other distributions encountered anywhere?
While we have some suspicions that such distributions might occur in the path-
lengths of searching behaviors of certain organisms, this is a question we have not
been able to definitively answer. Nevertheless, the function behind the above PDFs
generates a very interesting class of maps exhibiting chaotic behavior and this is
what we shall discuss below.

The function which determines the shapes above PDFs can be written as,

y=\dfrac{1+ax+ax^2+ax^3}{1+x^2}

Figure2_Miroid_fx

Figure 2

Examples of this curve as illustrated in Figure 2. One notices that it essentially

produces unscaled versions of the above PDF curves, which are rotated about the
point (-1,0) by the angle \alpha= \textrm{atan}(a). As a result, the x-axis of the
PDF curves now becomes the asymptote of these curves which has the equation y=ax+a.
When a=0, again this curve reduces to the shape-determining curve of the Cauchy
distribution, i.e. the Witch (of Agnesi). For a=1 it becomes identical with the
45^o asymptotic line.

We then consider the following mapping procedure:

1) Take (equally-spaced) points on a circle with center at origin and radius r. For
reasonable aesthetics we commonly take r=5

2) Then subject each of these points P_0=(x_0, y_0) to the iterative mapping:

x_{n+1}=by_n+f(x_n)

y_{n+1}=-x_n+f(x_{n+1})

Here, b is a constant that is taken as 1 or a value close to it; .99 \le b \le
1.001 produces the best aesthetics.

f(x)=\dfrac{1+ax+ax^2+ax^3}{1+x^2}, i.e the above shape-determining function of the

above PDFs.