Simple R programs for statistical distributions most commonly used in engineering

The log normal, Weibull and gamma distributions are the most popular models used in engineering. In this technical note, we provide simple programs for fitting these three distributions, for generating random samples from them and for computing such quantities as the probability density function, cumulative distribution function, quantile function, expected value and the variance. An application of the programs to fracture data is illustrated. The programs are written in R: a freely downloadable statistical software. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 19: 826–834, 2011