Fit the gamma distribution to unscaled data using MASS::fitdistr

fitgamma.R

fitgamma <- function(x) {
  # Equivalent to `MASS::fitdistr(x, densfun = "gamma")`, where x are first rescaled to 
  # the appropriate scale for a gamma distribution. Useful for fitting the gamma distribution to 
  # data which, when multiplied by a constant, follows this distribution
  if (!requireNamespace("MASS")) stop("Requires MASS package.")
  
  fit <- glm(formula = x ~ 1, family = Gamma)
  out <- MASS::fitdistr(x * coef(fit), "gamma")
  out$scaling_multiplier <- unname(coef(fit))
  out
}