Dear all, I'm trying to estimate the parameters of a lognormal distribution fitted from some data.
The tricky thing is that my data represent the time at which I recorded certain events. However, in many cases I don't really know when the event happened. I' only know the time at which I recorded it as already happened. Therefore I want to fit the lognormal from the cumulative distribution function (cdf) rather than from the probability distribution function (pdf). My understanding is that methods based on Maximum Likelihood (e.g. fitdistr {MASS}) are based on the pdf. Nonlinear least-squares methods seem to be based on the cdf... however I was unable to use nls{stat} for lognormal. I found a website that explains how to fit univariate distribution functions based on cumulative probabilities, including a lognormal example, in Matlab: http://www.mathworks.com/products/statistics/demos.html?file=/products/demos/shipping/stats/cdffitdemo.html and other programs like TableCurve 2D seem to do this too. There must be a straightforward method in R which I have overlooked. Any suggestion on how can I estimate these parameters in R or helpful references are very much appreciated. (not sure if it helps but) here is an example of my type of data: treat.1 <- c(21.67, 21.67, 43.38, 35.50, 32.08, 32.08, 21.67, 21.67, 41.33, 41.33, 41.33, 32.08, 21.67, 22.48, 23.25, 30.00, 26.00, 19.37, 26.00 , 32.08, 21.67, 26.00, 26.00, 43.38, 26.00, 21.67, 22.48, 35.50, 38.30, 32.08) treat.2 <- c(35.92, 12.08, 12.08, 30.00, 33.73, 35.92, 12.08, 30.00, 56.00, 30.00, 35.92, 33.73, 12.08, 26.00, 54.00, 12.08, 12.08, 35.92, 35.92 , 12.08, 33.73, 35.92, 63.20, 30.00, 26.00, 33.73, 23.50, 30.00, 35.92 , 30.00) Thank you very much! Ahimsa -- ahimsa campos-arceiz www.camposarceiz.com [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.