[SciPy-User] Gamma distribution in scipy.stats

[josef.pktd at gmail.com]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Gökhan Sever <gokhansever at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 11:36, Gökhan Sever <gokhansever at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > Could someone explain to me why doesn't scipy explicitly use the
>> > location
>> > and scaling parameters representing its PDF?
>>
>> Because the transformation for the location and scale parameters are
>> the same for every PDF and is well known. However, including them in
>> the formula often clutters it up and obscures the differences between
>> PDFs.
>>
>
> GSL and R doesn't use the location parameter then. And Numpy's Gamma PDF
> includes scaling in the formulae
> (http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.random.gamma.html#numpy.random.gamma).
> I am guessing that everyone has its own style when it comes to represent the
> distributions. Not so surprisingly it is shown in a different form in my
> Cloud and Precipitation Parametrization book.
>
> I suggest to add a statement like: Gamma distribution is mainly used to
> represent precipitation distribution in bulk cloud parametrization schemes.

I don't think "mainly" is a correct description,

a random quote after a short google search
"The Gamma distribution is widely used in engineering, science, and
business, to model continuous variables that are always positive and
have skewed distributions"

It's a pretty common distribution.

Josef


>
>
>>
>> --
>> Robert Kern
>>
>> "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
>> enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
>> though it had an underlying truth."
>>  -- Umberto Eco
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>
>
> --
> Gökhan
>
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