Fitting a gamma distribution with (python) Scipy

Question

Can anyone help me out in fitting a gamma distribution in python? Well, I\'ve got some data : X and Y coordinates, and I want to find the gamma parameters that fit this dis

Answer 1

I was unsatisfied with the ss.gamma.rvs-function as it can generate negative numbers, something the gamma-distribution is supposed not to have. So I fitted the sample through expected value = mean(data) and variance = var(data) (see wikipedia for details) and wrote a function that can yield random samples of a gamma distribution without scipy (which I found hard to install properly, on a sidenote):

import random
import numpy

data = [6176, 11046, 670, 6146, 7945, 6864, 767, 7623, 7212, 9040, 3213, 6302, 10044, 10195, 9386, 7230, 4602, 6282, 8619, 7903, 6318, 13294, 6990, 5515, 9157]

# Fit gamma distribution through mean and average
mean_of_distribution = numpy.mean(data)
variance_of_distribution = numpy.var(data)

def gamma_random_sample(mean, variance, size):
    """Yields a list of random numbers following a gamma distribution defined by mean and variance"""
    g_alpha = mean*mean/variance
    g_beta = mean/variance
    for i in range(size):
        yield random.gammavariate(g_alpha,1/g_beta)

# force integer values to get integer sample
grs = [int(i) for i in gamma_random_sample(mean_of_distribution,variance_of_distribution,len(data))]

print("Original data: ", sorted(data))
print("Random sample: ", sorted(grs))

# Original data: [670, 767, 3213, 4602, 5515, 6146, 6176, 6282, 6302, 6318, 6864, 6990, 7212, 7230, 7623, 7903, 7945, 8619, 9040, 9157, 9386, 10044, 10195, 11046, 13294]
# Random sample:  [1646, 2237, 3178, 3227, 3649, 4049, 4171, 5071, 5118, 5139, 5456, 6139, 6468, 6726, 6944, 7050, 7135, 7588, 7597, 7971, 10269, 10563, 12283, 12339, 13066]