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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Scand Stat Theory Appl. 2022 Sep 23;50(3):1048–1067. doi: 10.1111/sjos.12615

TABLE 1.

Common data types, canonical link, and typical variance-stabilizing link functions (up to an affine transformation) for each marginal variance function

Family Mean-variance Canonical link Variance-stabilizing link
Gaussian h(x)1 g(x)=x g(x)=x
Binomial h(x)x(1x) g(x)=log{x/(1x)} g(x)=arcsin(x)
Negative binomial h(x)x(1+x) g(x)=x/(1+x) g(x)=logx+1+x2
Poisson h(x)x g(x)=log(x) g(x)=x
Gamma h(x)x2 g(x)=1/x g(x)=log(x)
Inverse Gaussian h(x)x3 g(x)=1/x2 g(x)=1/x