View Full Version : fit an F distribution (starting values??). MATLAB


leo nidas
10-21-2008, 03:08 PM
Hi there,

I want to fit an F distribution to a vector of data using MATLAB.

MATLAB has ready functions if ones wants to fit a distribution such as exprnd for exponential wblrnd for weibull etc. Nothing for the F though..

One could use the mle function instead, a simple example follows:

x= frnd(2,20,1000,1); %produce 1000 numbers from F with 2,20 d.f.
mle(x,'pdf',@fpdf,'start',1:2)


answer=
2.0437 23.6131


but I think that the above is very sensitive concerning the initial values. That is,

mle(frnd(1,5,1000,1),'pdf',@fpdf,'start',[10 10])

yields an error.

specifically I have a vector of data and want to fit an F distribution but I have no idea about the d.f. Is there a quick way to get good starting values in order to run the above and have the desirable fitted F?

vinux
10-21-2008, 03:15 PM
Moment estimators( estimated parameters using moments ) will be a good choice.