Fitting empirical distribution to theoretical ones with Scipy (Python)?
INTRODUCTION: I have a list of more than 30,000 integer values ranging from 0 to 47, inclusive, e.g.[0,0,0,0,..,1,1,1,1,...,2,2,2,2,...,47,47,47,...] sampled from some continuous distribution. The values in the list are not necessarily in order, but order doesn't matter for this problem.
PROBLEM: Based on my distribution I would like to calculate p-value (the probability of seeing greater values) for any given value. For example, as you can see p-value for 0 would be approaching 1 and p-value for higher numbers would be tending to 0.
I don't know if I am right, but to determine probabilities I think I need to fit my data to a theoretical distribution that is the most suitable to describe my data. I assume that some kind of goodness of fit test is needed to determine the best model.
Is there a way to implement such an analysis in Python (Scipy or Numpy)?
Could you present any examples?
Thank you!
Answer
Distribution Fitting with Sum of Square Error (SSE)
This is an update and modification to Saullo's answer, that uses the full list of the current scipy.stats distributions and returns the distribution with the least SSE between the distribution's histogram and the data's histogram.
Example Fitting
Using the El Niño dataset from statsmodels, the distributions are fit and error is determined. The distribution with the least error is returned.
All Distributions
Best Fit Distribution
Example Code
%matplotlib inline
import warnings
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import scipy.stats as st
import statsmodels as sm
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
matplotlib.rcParams['figure.figsize'] = (16.0, 12.0)
matplotlib.style.use('ggplot')
# Create models from data
def best_fit_distribution(data, bins=200, ax=None):
"""Model data by finding best fit distribution to data"""
# Get histogram of original data
y, x = np.histogram(data, bins=bins, density=True)
x = (x + np.roll(x, -1))[:-1] / 2.0
# Distributions to check
DISTRIBUTIONS = [
st.alpha,st.anglit,st.arcsine,st.beta,st.betaprime,st.bradford,st.burr,st.cauchy,st.chi,st.chi2,st.cosine,
st.dgamma,st.dweibull,st.erlang,st.expon,st.exponnorm,st.exponweib,st.exponpow,st.f,st.fatiguelife,st.fisk,
st.foldcauchy,st.foldnorm,st.frechet_r,st.frechet_l,st.genlogistic,st.genpareto,st.gennorm,st.genexpon,
st.genextreme,st.gausshyper,st.gamma,st.gengamma,st.genhalflogistic,st.gilbrat,st.gompertz,st.gumbel_r,
st.gumbel_l,st.halfcauchy,st.halflogistic,st.halfnorm,st.halfgennorm,st.hypsecant,st.invgamma,st.invgauss,
st.invweibull,st.johnsonsb,st.johnsonsu,st.ksone,st.kstwobign,st.laplace,st.levy,st.levy_l,st.levy_stable,
st.logistic,st.loggamma,st.loglaplace,st.lognorm,st.lomax,st.maxwell,st.mielke,st.nakagami,st.ncx2,st.ncf,
st.nct,st.norm,st.pareto,st.pearson3,st.powerlaw,st.powerlognorm,st.powernorm,st.rdist,st.reciprocal,
st.rayleigh,st.rice,st.recipinvgauss,st.semicircular,st.t,st.triang,st.truncexpon,st.truncnorm,st.tukeylambda,
st.uniform,st.vonmises,st.vonmises_line,st.wald,st.weibull_min,st.weibull_max,st.wrapcauchy
]
# Best holders
best_distribution = st.norm
best_params = (0.0, 1.0)
best_sse = np.inf
# Estimate distribution parameters from data
for distribution in DISTRIBUTIONS:
# Try to fit the distribution
try:
# Ignore warnings from data that can't be fit
with warnings.catch_warnings():
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore')
# fit dist to data
params = distribution.fit(data)
# Separate parts of parameters
arg = params[:-2]
loc = params[-2]
scale = params[-1]
# Calculate fitted PDF and error with fit in distribution
pdf = distribution.pdf(x, loc=loc, scale=scale, *arg)
sse = np.sum(np.power(y - pdf, 2.0))
# if axis pass in add to plot
try:
if ax:
pd.Series(pdf, x).plot(ax=ax)
end
except Exception:
pass
# identify if this distribution is better
if best_sse > sse > 0:
best_distribution = distribution
best_params = params
best_sse = sse
except Exception:
pass
return (best_distribution.name, best_params)
def make_pdf(dist, params, size=10000):
"""Generate distributions's Probability Distribution Function """
# Separate parts of parameters
arg = params[:-2]
loc = params[-2]
scale = params[-1]
# Get sane start and end points of distribution
start = dist.ppf(0.01, *arg, loc=loc, scale=scale) if arg else dist.ppf(0.01, loc=loc, scale=scale)
end = dist.ppf(0.99, *arg, loc=loc, scale=scale) if arg else dist.ppf(0.99, loc=loc, scale=scale)
# Build PDF and turn into pandas Series
x = np.linspace(start, end, size)
y = dist.pdf(x, loc=loc, scale=scale, *arg)
pdf = pd.Series(y, x)
return pdf
# Load data from statsmodels datasets
data = pd.Series(sm.datasets.elnino.load_pandas().data.set_index('YEAR').values.ravel())
# Plot for comparison
plt.figure(figsize=(12,8))
ax = data.plot(kind='hist', bins=50, normed=True, alpha=0.5, color=plt.rcParams['axes.color_cycle'][1])
# Save plot limits
dataYLim = ax.get_ylim()
# Find best fit distribution
best_fit_name, best_fit_params = best_fit_distribution(data, 200, ax)
best_dist = getattr(st, best_fit_name)
# Update plots
ax.set_ylim(dataYLim)
ax.set_title(u'El Niño sea temp.\n All Fitted Distributions')
ax.set_xlabel(u'Temp (°C)')
ax.set_ylabel('Frequency')
# Make PDF with best params
pdf = make_pdf(best_dist, best_fit_params)
# Display
plt.figure(figsize=(12,8))
ax = pdf.plot(lw=2, label='PDF', legend=True)
data.plot(kind='hist', bins=50, normed=True, alpha=0.5, label='Data', legend=True, ax=ax)
param_names = (best_dist.shapes + ', loc, scale').split(', ') if best_dist.shapes else ['loc', 'scale']
param_str = ', '.join(['{}={:0.2f}'.format(k,v) for k,v in zip(param_names, best_fit_params)])
dist_str = '{}({})'.format(best_fit_name, param_str)
ax.set_title(u'El Niño sea temp. with best fit distribution \n' + dist_str)
ax.set_xlabel(u'Temp. (°C)')
ax.set_ylabel('Frequency')