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From: <HIDDEN>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: Curve fitting to a histogram to give a probability density function.
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 16:04:02 +0000 (UTC)
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"Tom Lane" <tlane@mathworks.com> wrote in message
<g2jil5$j4u$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> >>If you have a histogram of data that is normally
> >>distributed, is there a matlab function that will fit a
> >>curve to the bell shape of the histogram to give you a
> >>general probability density function for that data set.
> ...
> > If you want to pretend that the histogram counts have a
normal
> > distribution even though they do not have infinite
tails, then
> > simply take the mean() and standard deviation of the
count data;
> > the pdf is then just the pdf of the normal distribution
with those
> > mean and standard deviation.
> 
> Noel, whether or not you have the Statistics Toolbox
available, you might 
> find it helpful to look at the following demo on this topic:
> 
>
http://www.mathworks.com/products/statistics/demos.html?file=/products/demos/shipping/stats/cfitdfitdemo.html
> 
> I agree with Walter that you are usually better off
fitting a distribution 
> to the raw data rather than fitting a curve to the histogram.
> 
> -- Tom 
> 
> 

Ok, thanks guys!