Fitting a density curve to a histogram in R

user5243421 picture user5243421 · Sep 30, 2009 · Viewed 265.6k times · Source

Is there a function in R that fits a curve to a histogram?

Let's say you had the following histogram

hist(c(rep(65, times=5), rep(25, times=5), rep(35, times=10), rep(45, times=4)))

It looks normal, but it's skewed. I want to fit a normal curve that is skewed to wrap around this histogram.

This question is rather basic, but I can't seem to find the answer for R on the internet.

Answer

Dirk Eddelbuettel picture Dirk Eddelbuettel · Sep 30, 2009

If I understand your question correctly, then you probably want a density estimate along with the histogram:

X <- c(rep(65, times=5), rep(25, times=5), rep(35, times=10), rep(45, times=4))
hist(X, prob=TRUE)            # prob=TRUE for probabilities not counts
lines(density(X))             # add a density estimate with defaults
lines(density(X, adjust=2), lty="dotted")   # add another "smoother" density

Edit a long while later:

Here is a slightly more dressed-up version:

X <- c(rep(65, times=5), rep(25, times=5), rep(35, times=10), rep(45, times=4))
hist(X, prob=TRUE, col="grey")# prob=TRUE for probabilities not counts
lines(density(X), col="blue", lwd=2) # add a density estimate with defaults
lines(density(X, adjust=2), lty="dotted", col="darkgreen", lwd=2) 

along with the graph it produces:

enter image description here