is about estimate of probability distribution scale parameter scale estimator Philippe Rocca-Serra a scale estimator is a measurement datum (a statistic) which is calculated to approach the actual scale parameter of a probability distribution from observed data. adapted from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_parameter last accessed: 2016/11/11 https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/mgcv/html/gam.scale.html user request: https://github.com/ISA-tools/stato/issues/47 estimate ready for release