Is there an exact or good approximate expression for the expectation, variance or other moments of the maximum of $n$ independent, identically distributed gaussian random variables where $n$ is large?
If $F$ is the cumulative distribution function for a standard gaussian and $f$ is the probability density function, then the CDF for the maximum is (from the study of order statistics) given by
$$F_{\rm max}(x) = F(x)^n$$
and the PDF is
$$f_{\rm max}(x) = n F(x)^{n-1} f(x)$$
so it's certainly possible to write down integrals which evaluate to the expectation and other moments, but it's not pretty. My intuition tells me that the expectation of the maximum would be proportional to $\log n$, although I don't see how to go about proving this.