text: will someone please give intuitive explanations for these continuous distributions - ? gamma distribution weibull distribution cauchy distribution beta distribution the hazard rate (failure rate) in exponential distribution  i've been trying to understand the book but all the parameter-speak have been rather counter intuitive and i find them real hard to understand. gamma distribution  a gamma distribution is a general type of statistical distribution that is related to the beta distribution and arises naturally in processes for which the waiting times between poisson distributed events are relevant.   beta distribution a general type of statistical distribution which is related to the gamma distribution. beta distributions have two free parameters, which are labeled according to one of two notational conventions.   weibull distribution the weibull distribution gives the distribution of lifetimes of objects. it was originally proposed to quantify fatigue data, but it is also used in analysis of systems involving a "weakest link."   cauchy distribution the cauchy distribution, also called the lorentzian distribution or lorentz distribution, is a continuous distribution describing resonance behavior. it also describes the distribution of horizontal distances at which a line segment tilted at a random angle cuts the x-axis.   exponential distribution the exponential distribution is the only continuous memoryless random distribution. it is a continuous analog of the geometric distribution.   please also reffere to link, its useful http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stdisfit.html