title: alpha parameter from an alpha-stable distribution
body: <p>Considering I have a collection of data. Let's say for example they are length 100. My hypothesis say that these data follow the alpha-stable distribution. Is there a way to calculate the alpha parameter of these data? </p>
  
  <p>I would like to do that in python more specifically. All I found was that package
  <a href="http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.stats.levy_stable.html#scipy.stats.levy_stable" rel="nofollow">http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/generated/scipy.stats.levy_stable.html#scipy.stats.levy_stable</a></p>
  
  <p>which just calculates an alpha-stable distribution given the parameters of the distribution.</p>
  
  <p>I am not that familiar with alpha-stable distributions. I will try to make it more clear using an example of Poisson distribution. If I have some data that I know they follow Poisson distribution isn't it possible to calculate the λ of that distribution? (Is this possible or am I miss something from statistics theory?)</p>