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An elementary renormalization-group approach to the Generalized Central Limit Theorem and Extreme Value Distributions

The Generalized Central Limit Theorem is a remarkable generalization of the Central Limit Theorem, showing that the sum of a large number of independent, identically-distributed (i.i.d) random variables with infinite variance may converge under appropriate scaling to a distribution belonging to a special family known as Levy stable distributions. Similarly, the maximum of i.i.d. variables may converge to a distribution belonging to one of three universality classes (Gumbel, Weibull and Frechet). Here, we rederive these known results following a mathematically non-rigorous yet highly transparent renormalization-group-like approach that captures both of these universal results following a nearly identical procedure.