[R] Fitting a distribution to peaks in histogram

[hadley wickham]

> I would like to fit a distribution to each of the peaks in a histogram, such
> as this: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7029/2724/1600/DU145-Bax3-Bcl-xL.png

As a first shot, I'd try fitting a mixture of gamma distributions (say
3), plus a constant term for the highest bin.  You could do this using
ML.  If the number of peaks is truly unknown, this will be a little
trickier but still possible and you could use the LRT to chose between
them.

> Integrate the area between each two peaks, using the means and widths of the
> distributions fitted to the two peaks. I will be using the integrate
> function

Why do you want to do this?

>
> The histogram is based on approximately 15000 events, which makes Mclust and
> pam (which both delivers the information I need) less useful.

If you have unbinned data, it would be better (more precise/powerful)
to use that.

Regards,

Hadley