Can scipy.stats to calculate pmf automatically?

Question

I have two questions.

1) I have an array like [1,2,3,4,5,5,3,1] . and I don't know which distributions it is. Can I use scipy.stats to calculate pmf,cdf automatically?

2) scipy.stats is just like a library of distributions? If I want to analysis data, I have to find one distributions or define one? I need to manually calculate some of data, like pmf. Am I understanding correctly?

Answer 1

Well, scipy.stats is not a library for telling you the distribution of data and calculating pmf and cdf automatically. Its a library for easing your tasks while estimating the probabily distribution. You have to explore your data and find which distribution which fits your data with least error ,which is the ultimate task and scipy.stats helps you achieving this.... you don't have to reinvent the wheel as they say by writing all the mathematical functions again and again.

Well, to answer your question in the comment, lets suppose you have a dataset, to get an insight and get a starting point for your analysis, what you'll do is plot the data in a historgram (which also shows distribution of data), now you can plot different distributions on the same plot using scipy.stats to get a feel of bestfit....

Check out this answer, it might help ya...

https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/132652/how-to-determine-which-distribution-fits-my-data-best