# What is the extreme value distribution for the Kolmogorov-Smirnov D statistic?

I occasionally find that I want to apply a K-S test in the context of unit-testing software that involves random behaviors. Unit testing with sampling statistics is a bit tricky because you want to minimize false-failures.

Extreme value distributions seem like one useful approach, since they make it possible to run a series of experiments, find a maximum D statisic between experimental results and an expected distribution, and measure the probability that D is an outlier using Extreme Value theory.

The idea is that I might run (n) K-S tests, comparing n pairs of samples. This will result in n D-statistic values; the maximum of these values will adhere to some variation of extreme value distribution. I could use the formula for this (or an approximation).

I have never found an extreme value distribution for the K-S D statistic. I suspect it at least adheres to the Weibull form of the EV distribution since its value has a finite maximum, but not even sure of that. I might do some empirical fitting but a more general formula would be even nicer.

UPDATE: Although I have posted an answer that works for a given sample size, it would also be interesting to derive a limiting cdf, that is identify $\alpha$ for the Weibull family of EVD: $$F(x) = e^{-(-(\frac{x - \mu}{\sigma}))^\alpha}$$

• The downvote doesn't seem exactly welcoming... Anyway, in case you didn't know it, there's also statistics.stackexchange (= Cross Validated) which might be more welcoming. If other users agree that would be a good move, then we could migrate it over. Apr 3, 2018 at 14:49
• @ToddTrimble Perhaps it is out of scope? Hard for me to tell; I see other questions about properties of KS and/or extreme value distributions in this forum.
– eje
Apr 3, 2018 at 17:45

• If you want a result for finite $n$ (instead of only an asymptotic result), you can use the Dvoretzky–Kiefer–Wolfowitz inequality to get an explicit (non-asymptotic) bound. Oct 31, 2018 at 13:44