[R] Fitting Distributions Directly From a Histogram

[Lorenzo Isella]

Dear All,

A simple question: packages like fitdistr should be ideal to analyze
samples of data taken from a univariate distribution, but what if
rather than the raw data of the observations you are given directly
and only a histogram?
I was thinking about generating artificially a set of data
corresponding to the counts binned in the histogram, but this sounds
too cumbersome.
Another question is the following: fitdistr provides the value of the
log-likely hood function, but what if I want e.g. a chi square test to
get some insight on the goodness of the fitting?
I am sure there must be a way to get it straightforwardly without
coding it myself.
Many thanks

Lorenzo