[SciPy-User] Gamma distribution in scipy.stats

[Gökhan Sever]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:07 PM, Bruce Southey <bsouthey at gmail.com> wrote:

>  On 01/28/2010 12:16 PM, josef.pktd at gmail.com wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Gökhan Sever <gokhansever at gmail.com> <gokhansever at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>  On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>  On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 11:36, Gökhan Sever <gokhansever at gmail.com> <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
>
>
>
>
>  I think what  Gökhan is getting at is that limited description provided in
> the documentation link:
> "The Gamma distribution is often used to model the times to failure of
> electronic components, and arises naturally in processes for which the
> waiting times between Poisson distributed events are relevant."
>
> I actually think that part should be removed from the documentation.
>
> Bruce
>
>
It doesn't really too much matter to me to include some extra information or
not to this description, but for the sake of consistency it might be a
better idea to leave this description from the Gamma distribution page.
Since neither it nor my proposed addition properly generalizes the use of
the distribution. Additionally, if such examples exist in other
distributions they should be removed as well.


>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> SciPy-User mailing list
> SciPy-User at scipy.org
> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-user
>
>


-- 
Gökhan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-user/attachments/20100128/d12e7be3/attachment.html>