Maximum likelihood estimation in R

I got the same error message in R 1.8.1 and S-Plus 6.1.  Then I 
read the error message:  "'start' must be a named list".  Then I read 
help("fitdistr") and learned that "fitdistr" required 3 arguments, the 
third of which was "start: A named list giving the parameters to be 
optimized with initial values.  This can be omitted for some of the 
named distributions (see Details)."  The normal distribution was NOT one 
of the named distributions.  When I supplied a named list for "start", 
it worked: 

 > fitdistr(x, "normal", list(mean=0, sd=1))
      mean          sd   
  2.97093013   0.88852969
 (0.08885297) (0.06281083)

      hope this helps.  spencer graves

Maximum likelihood estimation in R

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