1. Exploratory Data Analysis
1.3. EDA Techniques
1.3.6. Probability Distributions

1.3.6.5.

Estimating the Parameters of a Distribution

Model a univariate data set with a probability distribution

One common application of probability distributions is modeling univariate data with a specific probability distribution. This involves the following two steps:

1. Determination of the "best-fitting" distribution.
2. Estimation of the parameters (shape, location, and scale parameters) for that distribution.

Various Methods

There are various methods, both numerical and graphical, for estimating the parameters of a probability distribution.

1. Method of moments
2. Maximum likelihood
3. Least squares
4. PPCC and probability plots