title: Find distribution parameters of censored variable in R
body: <p>I have a dataset consisting of a single variable which happens to be left censored (censoring point is 0). I believe that the latent variable (i.e. the variable before censoring takes place) more or less follows a normal distribution. How can I - using R - find the parameters of this distribution?</p>
  
  <p>Given the wealth of R-packages I'm surprised I have not been able to find any that easily solves the problem at hand. Judging by the name the <strong>fitdistcens</strong>-function from the fitdistrplus-package might be useful in this context. But if I read the documentation correctly - which I doubt - the function requires two columns, one of which should contain the uncensored data:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><em><strong>censdata</strong> A dataframe of two columns respectively named left and right, describing each observed value as an interval. The left column contains either NA for left censored observations, the left bound of the interval for interval censored observations, or the observed value for non-censored observations. The right column contains either NA for right censored observations, the right bound of the interval for interval censored observations, or the observed value for non-censored observations.</em></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Does this mean that the function can't be used for my purpose? If so what are the alternatives?</p>
  
  <p>Help (possibly involving an example) is much appreciated. </p>