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One of the R language’s most powerful features is its ability to deal with random distributions: not just generating random numbers from various distributions (based on a very powerful pseudo-random number generator), but also calculating densities, probabilities, and quintiles. John Cook provides a handy reference chart listing all of the distributions supported by standard R (reproduced below — and there are many other distributions supported by contributed packages), and also explains the elegant naming scheme for the various functions.

 Distribution Base name Parameters beta beta shape1, shape2, ncp binomial binom size, prob Cauchy cauchy location, scale chi-squared chisq df, ncp exponential exp rate F f df1, df2, ncp gamma gamma shape, rate geometric geom p hypergeometric hyper m, n, k log-normal lnorm meanlog, sdlog logistic logis location, scale negative binomial nbinom size, prob normal norm mean, sd Poisson pois lambda Student t t df, ncp uniform unif min, max Weibull weibull shape, scale

Updated Aug 20: added the ncp parameter to beta, chisq, f, and t with thanks to Doug Bates’ comment below.

John D Cook: Distributions in R and S-PLUS