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What I want to know is, how does one go about finding the distribution that fits a particular set of data? I searched, but found nothing really satisfactory.

Do we have any historical anecdotes which can shed some light on this? For example, I've read a very brief account of how de Moivre discovered the normal distribution, but it doesn't really get down to details that make it possible to follow his thinking. Similarly with other accounts that I ferreted out.

I ask because I was looking at the number of open option contracts for AAPL today, and it occurred to me that there has to be some way to go about fitting a distribution to the data, but I don't recall ever seeing this in any of my reading or any of the courses I took back in the day.

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    Your question is very broad. Just to check, though, do you want to know something about probability distributions or do you just want to know how to find a model that fits some data?2012-12-06
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    If it is too broad, then how about the particular situation I mentioned, which was the number of open AAPL option contracts?2012-12-06
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    Do you want to know something about probability distributions or do you just want to know how to find a model that fits some data?2012-12-06
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    In this case, I think the latter would be sufficient.2012-12-07

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