Using StatAssist - The Integrated Distribution Viewer Tool

EasyFit: select the best fitting distribution and use it to make better decisions. learn more

In EasyFit 3.0 – back in 2006 – we introduced StatAssist, the built-in distribution viewer tool that closely integrates with the distribution fitting features of EasyFit. Since then, StatAssist has proven to be quite a useful feature, so we decided to include it into EasyFitXL, our distribution fitting add-in for Excel.

StatAssist displays graphs and other useful properties of all the probability distributions available in EasyFit. Even though it has initially been designed as an essential part of EasyFit, StatAssist can be used as a separate application – for example, to take a quick look at a distribution curve or to calculate the distribution statistics.

Contents
How To Use StatAssist With Fitted Distributions
What If You Have No Data Available?
Using StatAssist With Excel

How To Use StatAssist With Fitted Distributions

Once the distributions are fitted and you select the best fitting model, you can use StatAssist to obtain specific information about the random process you are dealing with, and apply that information to make appropriate business decisions.

To launch StatAssist, right click on a fitted distribution, and select StatAssist from the popup menu:

Running StatAssist - The Integrated Distribution Viewer Tool

The most common uses of StatAssist are:

calculating probabilities
making probabilistic estimates & projections
visualizing distribution graphs (PDF, CDF etc.) — see the Graphs tab
calculating distribution statististics (mean, variance etc.) — see the Calculations tab
generating random numbers — use the File|Random Numbers menu option

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What If You Have No Data Available?

StatAssist is not limited to only displaying the fitted distributions: in fact, you can select any model from the list of 55+ distributions and manually specify the distribution parameters. This can be useful if you have no sample data available, but have an idea on what distribution you need. In this case, you can run it from the Tools|StatAssist menu of EasyFit.

The new version of EasyFit also lets you launch StatAssist right from your desktop and use it separately from EasyFit:

Using StatAssist With Excel

Just like StatAssist closely integrates with EasyFit, it can as well be used with EasyFitXL, the dstribution fitting add-in for Excel. After the distributions are fitted to worksheet data, to explore the properties of a particular distribution, right click on its name, and select StatAssist:

Similarly, if you have no sample data available, but would like to see the graphs of a specific distribution or use it to do some calculations when running Excel, you can launch StatAssist by selecting EasyFitXL|StatAssist from the main menu of Excel.

Conclusion

StatAssist can be used with EasyFit and EasyFitXL (when fitting distributions to data) or as an independent application (in the absence of data) to obtain detailed information about a large number of probability distributions, which is essential for making informed decisions under uncertainty.

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