[SciPy-user] lognormal distribution

[Stephen Walton]

Fernando Perez wrote:

> I'm not a stats person, so perhaps this one is not enough for you.  If 
> that's the case, sorry about the noise.

No, Fernando, ths was what I was looking for, thanks. I have to say, as 
it is relevant to a previous discussion, that some of the more 
object-oriented documentation of the stats package is pretty opaque to a 
new user.  For example, help(scipy.stats.distributions) includes the 
statement:

     |  rvs(self, *args, **kwds)
     |      Random variates of given type.
     |
     |      *args
     |      =====
     |      The shape parameter(s) for the distribution (see docstring 
of the
     |         instance object for more information)

Now, I submit a naive new user of Python is not going to know what the 
"docstring of the instance object" is.  Fortunately, 
scipy.stats.distributions.lognormal? shows it very nicely :-)

FYI, it turns out that the distribution of sunspot areas is log-normal, 
and I'm working on a project to generate a very simple fake sunspot 
activity cycle.  The first simple version, which just generates sunspots 
which all have the same area, is coded in MATLAB, but I'm promising 
myself that this project is going to be my first major one done in scipy.