G.E.P. Box and D.R. Cox, "An Analysis of Transformations", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B, 26, 211-252 (1964). Examples -------- >>> from scipy import stats >>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt We generate some random variates from a non-normal distribution and make a probability plot for it, to show it is non-normal in the tails: >>> fig = plt.figure() >>> ax1 = fig.add_subplot(211) >>> x = stats.loggamma.rvs(5, size=500) + 5 >>> prob = stats.probplot(x, dist=stats.norm, plot=ax1) >>> ax1.set_xlabel('') >>> ax1.set_title('Probplot against normal distribution') We now use `boxcox` to transform the data so it's closest to normal: >>> ax2 = fig.add_subplot(212) >>> xt, _ = stats.boxcox(x) >>> prob = stats.probplot(xt, dist=stats.norm, plot=ax2) >>> ax2.set_title('Probplot after Box-Cox transformation') >>> plt.show() r!