### Function Reference: `lognfit`

statistics: paramhat = lognfit (x)
statistics: [paramhat, paramci] = lognfit (x)
statistics: [paramhat, paramci] = lognfit (x, alpha)
statistics: […] = lognfit (x, alpha, censor)
statistics: […] = lognfit (x, alpha, censor, freq)
statistics: […] = lognfit (x, alpha, censor, freq, options)

Estimate parameters and confidence intervals for the lognormal distribution.

`paramhat = lognfit (x)` returns the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the lognormal distribution given the data in vector x. `paramhat([1, 2])` corresponds to the mean and standard deviation, respectively, of the associated normal distribution.

If a random variable follows this distribution, its logarithm is normally distributed with mean mu and standard deviation sigma.

`[paramhat, paramci] = lognfit (x)` returns the 95% confidence intervals for the parameter estimates.

`[…] = lognfit (x, alpha)` also returns the `100 * (1 - alpha)` percent confidence intervals for the parameter estimates. By default, the optional argument alpha is 0.05 corresponding to 95% confidence intervals. Pass in `[]` for alpha to use the default values.

`[…] = lognfit (x, alpha, censor)` accepts a boolean vector, censor, of the same size as x with `1`s for observations that are right-censored and `0`s for observations that are observed exactly. By default, or if left empty, `censor = zeros (size (x))`.

`[…] = lognfit (x, alpha, censor, freq)` accepts a frequency vector, freq, of the same size as x. freq typically contains integer frequencies for the corresponding elements in x, but it can contain any non-integer non-negative values. By default, or if left empty, `freq = ones (size (x))`.

`[…] = lognfit (…, options)` specifies control parameters for the iterative algorithm used to compute ML estimates with the `fminsearch` function. options is a structure with the following fields and their default values:

- `options.Display = "off"`
- `options.MaxFunEvals = 400`
- `options.MaxIter = 200`
- `options.TolX = 1e-6`

With no censor, the estimate of the standard deviation, `paramhat(2)`, is the square root of the unbiased estimate of the variance of `log (x)`. With censored data, the maximum likelihood estimate is returned.

Further information about the lognormal distribution can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-normal_distribution

See also: logncdf, logninv, lognpdf, lognrnd, lognlike, lognstat

Source Code: lognfit

### Example: 1

     ## Sample 3 populations from 3 different log-normal distibutions
     randn ("seed", 1);    # for reproducibility
     r1 = lognrnd (0, 0.25, 1000, 1);
     randn ("seed", 2);    # for reproducibility
     r2 = lognrnd (0, 0.5, 1000, 1);
     randn ("seed", 3);    # for reproducibility
     r3 = lognrnd (0, 1, 1000, 1);
     r = [r1, r2, r3];

     ## Plot them normalized and fix their colors
     hist (r, 30, 2);
     h = findobj (gca, "Type", "patch");
     set (h(1), "facecolor", "c");
     set (h(2), "facecolor", "g");
     set (h(3), "facecolor", "r");
     hold on

     ## Estimate their mu and sigma parameters
     mu_sigmaA = lognfit (r(:,1));
     mu_sigmaB = lognfit (r(:,2));
     mu_sigmaC = lognfit (r(:,3));

     ## Plot their estimated PDFs
     x = [0:0.1:6];
     y = lognpdf (x, mu_sigmaA(1), mu_sigmaA(2));
     plot (x, y, "-pr");
     y = lognpdf (x, mu_sigmaB(1), mu_sigmaB(2));
     plot (x, y, "-sg");
     y = lognpdf (x, mu_sigmaC(1), mu_sigmaC(2));
     plot (x, y, "-^c");
     ylim ([0, 2])
     xlim ([0, 6])
     hold off
     legend ({"Normalized HIST of sample 1 with mu=0, σ=0.25", ...
              "Normalized HIST of sample 2 with mu=0, σ=0.5", ...
              "Normalized HIST of sample 3 with mu=0, σ=1", ...
              sprintf("PDF for sample 1 with estimated mu=%0.2f and σ=%0.2f", ...
                      mu_sigmaA(1), mu_sigmaA(2)), ...
              sprintf("PDF for sample 2 with estimated mu=%0.2f and σ=%0.2f", ...
                      mu_sigmaB(1), mu_sigmaB(2)), ...
              sprintf("PDF for sample 3 with estimated mu=%0.2f and σ=%0.2f", ...
                      mu_sigmaC(1), mu_sigmaC(2))}, "location", "northeast")
     title ("Three population samples from different log-normal distibutions")
     hold off