Fitting probability distributions using R software and its application in medicine

Researchers in different disciplines often face phenomena of random nature. Sometimes it is possible to use probability distributions to describe and predict such phenomena. Each distribution has a number of unknown parameters, whose values are estimated from data. In some problems, there are a few competing distributions for fitting to a data set. In this setup, selecting a suitable model based on some criteria is necessary. This article introduces facilities of R statistical software in performing the above steps. Application of the discussed methods is illustrated using a medical data set.